DAR AL HARB/ISLAM - NICARAGUA/IRAN: ORTEGA IN TEHRAN, ENOYING THE "HATE AMERICA FEST"

Ortega in Tehran: Attracted not by love, but hate [of U.S.]
by Sol Sanders

Yes, in case you missed it, indeed, Daniel Ortega, Fidel Castro’s old wannabe, was grandstanding in Tehran. The Nicaraguan — whom American apologists once told us was just an “agrarian radical” — went to visit the Mullahs because “the Sandanistas’ revolution [which] took over the power in 1979, the exact year that the Islamic revolution succeeded in Iran… are twin revolutions which had and still pursue similar goals, such as justice, freedom, sovereignty, and fighting imperialism.”

Never mind defining those terms: But why would an archtypical Latin American, Marxist, anticlerical caudillo join with a hate spewing Islamofascist [awaiting he says the return of the Lost Inman], President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to “work together to put in place a world order based on peace and justice"?

It’s been love at first sight. Ahmadinejad had already visited Managua in January shortly before Ortega's trip back into power courtesy the fracturing of Nicaragua’s democratic forces and maladroit Washington strategies in Central America.

Through the din of media hype and the gruesome reality of suicide bombings against innocents, a significant pattern is developing, not to be ignored by Washington strategists and the Democratic Party skeptics of the Bush Administration’s proclaimed war on terror. Despite all the unique qualities of jihadist violence, it borrows heavily not only tactics and weapons from the Cold War – as it improvises very effectively new ones. Increasingly, worldwide the jihadists are fitting their campaigns into old overall patterns and strategies not all that alien to regional and world politics.

True, the Islamofascists are largely loosely allied autonomous gangs of fanatics dedicated to nihilistic goals in particular regions. But increasingly their activities merge into old state-directed campaigns, sometimes outgrowths of the Cold War itself, but as often even older struggles for hegemony.

It’s not clear how much the lovefest between Tehran and Managua will produce in the long run when the rhetoric cools. There are opportunities for the jihadists in Latin America. There have been rumors of training camps and drug-related funding operations in the old black market triangle of Argentina-Paraguy-Brazil. That two of the accused plotters for a JFK Airport terror attack came into this country as illegal teenagers across the southern border gives one pause.

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Pertinent Links:

1) Ortega in Tehran: Attracted not by love, but hate [of U.S.]