In 1977 Kissinger had been negotiating with Sadat in Egypt to come to peace with Israel, on grounds that world peace required it. When Sadat went to Jerusalem to come to peace terms with Israel, Islamists called this a betrayal of their cause and a corrupting influence. Sayyid Qutb's influence on the the Muslim Brotherhood led to their idea that if Sadat negotiated with Israel he could no longer be considered a Muslim and so could not speak for the Islamic world. This was the position of Ayman Zawahiri, mentor of Osama Ben Laden. Ayatollah Ruhollah-Khomeini (see note 5) agreed that Egypt and Islamic countries were being corrupted by Western influences with the ideas of "freedom" and lack of moral values.Together with Azwahiri and others they formed an organization for an Islamic jihad and planned to kill Sadat in "a shocking way." They believe this would shock Muslims back into reality of the corruption of life without Islam. Some of them killed Sadat, but Muslims did not react as the jihadists expected. Many were sent to prison and tortured, including Azwahiri, who stood firmly in the beliefs of Qutb and became even more convinced of the illness of society and firmly of the belief that those who turned away from Islam should be killed.
Around the same time, end of 70s and early 80s, religious fundamentalists in the U.S. were being encouraged by neoconservatives to give political support to their goals. The neoconservative fundamentalists also believed religion was necessary to achieve high moral values in society, and that liberalism was a corrupting influence. Fundamentalist preachers, like James Robison, encouraged their followers to get involved in Republican politics to defeat the "radicals," and "leftists," and "perverts," and "liberals," and "communists," and "gays." "Liberal" especially became a bad name. Irving Kristol was a founder of this neoconservative movement, because he believed that secularism could not cope with all the "terrible pathologies that effect our society," and religion must be given a role in our culture to combat the bad influences of liberalism. By enlisting the support of religious organizations, neoconservatives believed they were gaining the troops they needed to lead America away from liberalism. Millions of newly politicized fundamentalists joined neoconservatives in the Republican party and helped Ronald Reagan become elected President in 1981.
Under Reagan, Richard Pipes became a chief adviser, Paul Wolfowitz became head of the State Department Policy Staff, and Wolfowitz's friend Richard Perle became Assistant Secretary of Defense. These leaders and their fundamentalist religious followers were united in the cause of defeating the evils of communism and socialism, and especially the dreadful Russians.
One adviser to Secretary of State from 1981-1982 was Michael Ledeen, who convinced Reagan that the Soviets had created a terror network all over the world with the aim of taking over world. Most revolutions and uprisings, they said, were instigated and coordinated by Moscow. They got this idea from "a best-selling book" that had been published to prove that Soviets were behind most terror organizations. CIA again said this was just more fantasy and they found no evidence for it. Eventually, however, a new head of the CIA, William Casey, agreed with the ideas of Ledeen. After Casey read the book and was also convinced of such a network, the CIA showed evidence "that most of what was in the book had been made up by the CIA covert operations as black propaganda to discredit the Soviet Union. They were certain a terror network did not exist because they, themselves, had made it up."
Undaunted, Casey engaged an academic to prove that terror networks did exist, and convinced Ronald Reagan that Americans must fight the evils of Communism and battle against the Soviet Union by covert actions of our own in order to establish democracy throughout the world. The neocons began to call themselves democratic revolutionaries whose purpose was to defeat tyranny everywhere in the world. Curtis maintains "they came to believe their own myths," the myths that they had come to believe were needed to unify society for a purpose.
NOTES
1. Leo Strauss - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://bit.ly/1p9ll4D). There are many who disagree that Leo Strauss
was influential or a mastermind behind the neoconservative ideologues
who controlled foreign policy. "Likewise Strauss's daughter, Jenny
Strauss Clay, in a New York Times article defended Strauss against the
charge that he was the "mastermind behind the neoconservative ideologues
who control United States foreign policy." "He was a conservative," she
says, "insofar as he did not think change is necessarily change for the
better." Since contemporary academia "leaned to the left," with its
"unquestioned faith in progress and science combined with a queasiness
regarding any kind of moral judgment," Strauss stood outside of the
academic consensus. Had academia leaned to the right, he'd have
questioned it, too--and on certain occasions did question the tenets of
the right."[58]
2. Ayman al-Zawahiri - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://bit.ly/1zJo241). "Ayman Mohammed Rabie al-Zawahiri[2] (Arabic: Ø �Ù�...Ù" ......Ø � Ø �Ø �Ù�Ø � Ø �Ù"�Ø �ÙˆØ �Ù"�Ø �Ù�" Ê �Ayman Mua' � �ammad RabÄ �Ê � a"-'awÄ �hirÄ �, born June 19, 1951) is an Egyptian physician, [3] Islamic theologian and current leader of the militant Islamist organization al-Qaeda.[4] Ayman al-Zawahiri is a former member of Islamist organizations which have both orchestrated and carried out multiple attacks on the continents of North America, Asia, Africa and the Middle East. In 2012, he called on Muslims to kidnap western tourists in Muslim countries."[5] Since the September 11 attacks, U.S. State Department has offered a US$25 million reward for information leading to al-Zawahiri's apprehension.[6] He is under worldwide sanctions by the United Nations Security Council 1267 Committee as a member or affiliate of al-Qaeda.[7]
3. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandr_Solzhenitsyn.Aleksandr Isayevich [a] Solzhenitsyn (11 December 1918 -- 3 August 2008) was a Russian novelist, historian, and critic of Soviet totalitarianism. He helped to raise Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn was a Russian novelist, historian, and critic of Soviet totalitarianism. He helped to raise global awareness of the gulag and the Soviet Unions forced labour-camp system.
4. Wolfowitz Doctrine is an unofficial name given to the initial version of the Defense Planning Guidance for the 1994--99 fiscal years (dated February 18, 1992) authored by Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Paul Wolfowitz and his deputy Scooter Libby. Not intended for public release, it was leaked to the New York Times on March 7, 1992,[1] and sparked a public controversy about U.S. foreign and defense policy. The document was widely criticized as imperialist as the document outlined a policy of unilateralism and pre-emptive military action to suppress potential threats from other nations and prevent any other nation from rising to superpower status. Such was the outcry that the document was hastily re-written under the close supervision of U.S. Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell before being officially released on April 16, 1992. Many of its tenets re-emerged in the Bush Doctrine, [2] which was described by Senator Edward M. Kennedy as "a call for 21st century American imperialism that no other nation can or should accept."[3]
5. Biography.com: http://bit.ly/1qR01lE biography Ayatollah Ruhollah-Khomeini (Ayatollah Khomeini became supreme religious leader of the Islamic republic of Iran in 1979).
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