Both authors (Oliver and Sperry) are wrong. The Soviet-Afghan war did not “create a new era of wars and terrorism...” The modern era of war and terrorism started in 1979 when Islamic militants stormed the US embassy in Iran and Carter folded. This was followed by hijackings and bombings by Muslim terrorists around the globe.
The etymology of the word “terrorism” notwithstanding, jihadists made a spectacle of lopping off the heads of bound captives centuries before the French Revolution.
Jihadists have been at war with everyone else since the 8th century. Neither the Russians, French, or Americans are to blame for that.
The photo show locked up my computer twice. I finally had to restart it. It’s still acting wonky.
Atheist communism claimed more lives in the 20th Century alone than all the religious crusades of past centuries combined. Up to 90 million dead some estimate, 20 million just in Russia.
And while people moan and complain about the British Empire, not enough responsibility is laid on the Soviet Union for its role in sabotaging Israel and shaping the dynamics of the modern Middle East. The KGB capitalized on pre-existing hostilities and activated jihadist tendencies. Directly, financially, morally. Figures like Arafat and Abbas and several other figures who pioneered techniques like hijacking — received their training in Moscow.
Not saying that the U.S./CIA are saints.
You are exactly right. The Beiruit barracks bombing, the attack on the USS Cole, the WTC bombing and 9/11 all trace back to Carter's failures. He showed weakness to people who were spoiling for a fight and only needed an adversary. And on 12.24.1978 he signed an Executive Order that decimated all US-run Human Intelligence activities.
Peanut-Brain, like Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson before him, believed that 'gentlemen should not open other gentlemen's mail.' Both believed that human spying was a base and deplorable activity. And Carter believed that since we could learn everything that could be learned from spy satellites, human spies were completely unnecessary. So Carter issued EO12036, which gutted all US HUMINT.
By December of 1979, HUMINT assets were so thinned in Iran that after the seizure of the US Embassy in Tehran, there were exactly this many US intelligence operatives still living and at large in Iran: zero. Any and all that had managed to survive the "revolution" were among the Americans being held hostage.
And it was the same throughout the much of the Middle East. Owing to the clannishness/xenophobia [pick one] of the Arabs, it would take decades to rebuild the infrastructure from scratch that Carter had demolished, leaving us largely blind in the region for the next decade and with still diminished capacities for most of the next. Which explains (in part) how we managed to get so far behind the intelligence power curve on Muslim terrorism.