Thirty three years ago, thousands of American boys died to chase the Italians and Germans out of North Africa. Nobody thanked us for our blood, sweat and tears, and a pro-Communist dictator took over in Libya after we left.
Since World War II, our State Department has exerted its leader ship to get most other European nations out of Africa, too. The prevailing propaganda winds helped to push the Belgians out of the Congo, the French out of Algeria, and the Portuguese out of Angola and Mozambique — just as, in other parts of the world, the British were pushed out of India and the Dutch out of Indonesia.
Colonialism was the bete noire that must be eliminated at all cost, even though the resulting vacuum became an irresistible target for native dictators and international Communism. No voice defended the alleged ogre of European colonialism. The United Nations even sent a military expedition to overthrow the black government of Tshombe in Katanga because he was too friendly to Belgian interests.
Colonialism is a word that is always selectively defined. By definition, only Western nations can be guilty. When Communists conquer and control other nations, that is never labelled colonialism; it is called liberation.
No one seems to be bothered by the obvious double standard - even though Western nations sent peaceful missionaries and teachers to their colonies, built hospitals and schools, waterworks and sewers and substantially raised the local standard of living, while the Communist emissaries to their colonies are always armed troops, and commissars to stamp out freedom.
The double standard has never been more apparent than it is today in Angola, the richest prize of central Africa. Now that a combination of Soviet Communist weapons and Cuban Communist troops has conquered Angola, where are all those people who urged the Portuguese to get out in the name of native democracy?
If it was our patriotic duty to drive the Italians and Germans out of Africa, why isn’t it our duty to drive out the Cuban and Russian Communists?
It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that there may be only one consistent premise on which our policy toward colonial powers and captive nations can be reconciled. If the rulers are Communist, our government supports them. If the rulers are anti-Communist, our Government works diligently and effectively to replace them.
In Leonid Brezhnev’s recent speech to the 25th Congress, he admitted there are only 15,694,000 Communist Party members in all of Russia. Solzhenitsyn tells us that 80 percent of the people in the U.S.S.R. are our secret allies and hate their Communist Party rulers.
The same is true in Red China, the world’s biggest prison. Every year twenty to thirty thousand young men and women attempt to escape by swimming eight to ten hours to Hong Kong through patrolled and shark-infested waters.
Our leaders make the mistake of toasting the few Red jailers and ignoring their hundreds of millions of captives.
