Obama Talks Tough About Afghanistan; Here's What He's Really in For

[NicholeW.]

Obama Talks Tough About Afghanistan; Here's What He's Really in For
By Anand Gopal, Tomdispatch.com. Posted October 10, 2008.

Afghanistan is filled with poor, jobless people who have seen their families blown up by Americans. And they're itching to get revenge.

http://www.alternet.org/audits/102340/obama_talks_tough_about_afghanistan%3B_here%27s_what_he%27s_really_in_for/

In a 1998 interview with Le Nouvel Observateur, Zbigniew Brzezinski, former national security adviser to President Jimmy Carter, spoke proudly of how, in July 1979, he had "signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul" and so helped draw a Russian interventionary force into Afghanistan. "On the day that the Soviets officially crossed the border," Brzezinski added, "I wrote to President Carter, saying, in essence: 'We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam War.'" And so they did -- with the help of the CIA, Saudi money, the Pakistani intelligence services, and an influx of Arab jihadis, including Osama bin Laden. In fact, their Afghan War would prove far more disastrous for the Soviet Union than defeat in Vietnam had been for the United States. By the time the Soviets withdrew their last troops in February 1989, the economy of the Cold War's weaker superpower was tottering on the brink. Less than three years later, the Soviet Union itself was no more, even as Washington, at first unbelieving, then celebratory, declared eternal victory.


An interesting article from the pov of someone who writes as an outsdier, not a neo-con observer. His analogies to the separate demises of two great empires are particularly cogent and well-researched. His views, not congenial, may well be more astute than those from inside The Beltway.
-- Nichole

[tekla]

There is little doubt that we set the Soviets up in Afgan.  We just turned around and didn't real our own memos.  But old Zibbgy Brzezinski was a son of a bitch, no doubt.

[NicholeW.]

Kat, when was the last time someone read "our own memos" in Washington? Policy and procedure follow new rules every few years, dependent on elections and/or the whims of a chief executive.

Truth to tell, I'm sometimes surprised that the memos are there to read. I suspect if the authors hadn't thought in terms of "how history will see me" we'd have none at all.

Nikki

[tekla]

You know these people as I do.  They never think, never consider, that they might be wrong.  So leaving a paper trail, well, it only proves they were 'right'.

[NicholeW.]

Indeed, I do. I suppose one should hope more for their heads to have some understanding and less that they read one another's memos. Alas, I fear that neither ability resides in that place.

Nikki

[tekla]

Oh, but the memos are so dull.  So boring. 

And its exactly the kind of 'you're such a cleaver little boy' solution that they had always been loved for coming up with.  How perfect, sink the USSR into a quagmire. 

Certainly - well back when people in the White House had scholars on the staff - people knew that the British (and if the British couldn't win a colonial war, no one could) got tied down in those mountains for years, and never made any progress.  So perfect if we could somehow get the USSR in that mess.

What of course happened was that we planed the seeds of our own much worse problem later, because clever solutions almost always mess up in the end.

[NicholeW.]

So, given Brit problems in Afghanistan and their decision to stay east of Khyber, what was their history in Mesopotamia?

Just askin' *wink*

N~