The Arabian Che Guevaras

Today NYT writes about how American officials meet with Iraqi insurgents toto exploit the rift between them and the arabian mujahedins. This is definitively a smart move, as every conflict from Afghanistan and onwards have shown that the guests - mainly from the Saudi-Arabian peninsula - often overstay their welcome and become despised in the local population or with the political elite. Bin Laden's short stay in Sudan was a good example.

In this way they are exporters of revolution in the vein of Che Guevara, but with the added element of indiscriminate killing of civilians...

From a rhetorical viewpoint it really shows that the appeal to an international revolution is important to keep the rag-tag of forces together, but that this is at odds with the old Maoist conception of the revolution as a first and foremost national occurence.