Posted on 10/08/2001 1:57:12 PM PDT by Zviadist
Ex-National Security Chief Brzezinski admits: Afghan Islamism Was Made in Washington
Interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Jimmy Carter's National Security Adviser in 'Le Nouvel Observateur' (France), Jan 15-21, 1998, p. 76
Translated by Bill Blum
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Question: The former director of the CIA, Robert Gates, stated in his memoirs ["From the Shadows"], that American intelligence services began to aid the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan 6 months before the Soviet intervention. In this period you were the national security adviser to President Carter. You therefore played a role in this affair. Is that correct?
Brzezinski: Yes. According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahadeen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise: Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.
Q: Despite this risk, you were an advocate of this covert action. But perhaps you yourself desired this Soviet entry into war and looked to provoke it?
B: It isn't quite that. We didn't push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.
Q: When the Soviets justified their intervention by asserting that they intended to fight against a secret involvement of the United States in Afghanistan, people didn't believe them. However, there was a basis of truth. You don't regret anything today?
B: Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter: We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.
Q: And neither do you regret having supported the Islamic fundamentalism, having given arms and advice to future terrorists?
B: What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?
Q: Some stirred-up Moslems? But it has been said and repeated: Islamic fundamentalism represents a world menace today.
B: Nonsense! It is said that the West had a global policy in regard to Islam. That is stupid. There isn't a global Islam. Look at Islam in a rational manner and without demagoguery or emotion. It is the leading religion of the world with 1.5 billion followers. But what is there in common among Saudi Arabian fundamentalism, moderate Morocco, Pakistan militarism, Egyptian pro-Western or Central Asian secularism? Nothing more than what unites the Christian countries.
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Note: There are at least two editions of 'Le Nouvel Observateur.' With apparently the sole exception of the Library of Congress, the version sent to the United States is shorter than the French version. The Brzezinski interview was not included in the shorter version. *
Translated from the French by Bill Blum, author of "Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II" and "Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower" Portions of the books can be read at: http://members.aol.com/superogue/homepage.htm
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One thought. Especially since this thread is so interesting. We are being told that to deliver any criticism in this time of war is unpatriotic or - in my case - anti-American. At the same time we are being told that the war may last months and months and even years. Does that mean we are supposed to shut up for years to come? That does not sound much like a war to preserve freedom and democracy to me. Or am I missing something here? (By the way, I am NOT anti-American, I am NOT an anti-semite, I am NOT a racist, and I am NOT anything else that people throw at you in order to try to intimidate you into shutting up).
The Soviets interfered before 1979, without a peep from Washington. It was only after they actually invaded and posed a threat to the region, the West's oil supply [hint, hint], and to other countries like Pakistan that Brzezinski and others decided to take action.
Recognizing spheres of influence only goes so far. If the US had invaded Cuba the Soviets would have had something to say about it.
No one is dusputing whether the Soviets started to interfere before they invaded -- an obvious matter. And totally expected.
The point is, that the old point that the Soviets made that has been laughed at -- about their being afraid of Afghanistan turning into a hostile country and a launchpad for the CIA operations -- has gained more credibility with this admission from Brzezinsky.
As long as people know who are the members of the so-called "Russian Mafia", I have no problem with that term. However, it's grossly unfair to point to Russians when in fact that "Russian Mafia" mostly consists of Jewish emigres from Odessa, Ukraine.
After the 1979 invasion, it became clear to everyone in the world that Afghanistan was a "hostile country." That's just stating the obvious.
Jimmy Carter - Brzezinski's boss - was quite ineffectual in doing anything against the Soviets or for the Afghans, with little more than a grain embargo and a boycott of the 1980 Olympics to show.
Once Ronald Reagan took over in 1981, Brzezinski was no longer in the loop and his theories are irrelevant. But Reagan's course of action was to subordinate the CIA to Pakistan's ISI, as we've discussed at great length elsewhere.
But none of this was happening before the 1979 invasion, and that's the bottom line.
Odessa Mafiya?
When we see that AIPAC drives and forms our foreign policy, any dern fool can realize that we citizens count for naught.
While I'm no fan of Zbignew and think he's stretching the truth to declare the Soviet Union's folly in Afghanistan the cause of the collapse of communism, I think he's right on the money about Islam. In fact, there seem to be only 2 unifying principles right now, and it could be argued that they are one: Hatred for the United States, and Hatred for the Jews. Otherwise, historically, they appear no better off than Africa in terms of unity. It is we who intervene when they continue on as they have for centuries. Why do we do it?
I deny its relevance to anything we are discussing. What in the hell does the method of selecting the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire and the rights that emperor has, have to do with American or contemporary European democracy. Maybe it was a big point in European History in leaving the feudal age and developing the nation-state in Central Europe, but of no significant in terms of bringing democracy to the world stage. Only princes and bishops had a say. At least the Magna Carta acknowledged that even commoners may have some rights. The Golden Bull did not. It was every bit as democratic as the rules whereby the Central Committee of the Communist Party selected its Chairman. And if was such a great system, why did it degrade back into heraldic empires that only ended in Central and Eastern Europe with World War.
Can you comprehend the importance of what happened in Philadelphia 225 years ago when for the first time in history, we eliminated monarchy and put citizens above the state? Probably not. Silly boy.
At least the Magna Carta acknowledged that even commoners may have some rights. The Golden Bull did not.
Again I say, you do not understand the significance of the document, coming in 1222, just a couple of years after the Magna Carta. Your point was that nothing east of the Elbe ever knew any kind of democracy before the United States created one there. My point is that, with the Golden Bull, Hungary had a kind of representative democracy 550 years BEFORE the United States even existed. End of story.
And by the way, it had nothing to do with the Holy Roman Empire. You should not speak so forcefully of European history if you don't know what you are talking about.
Is that you Lyndon LaRouche?
At the end of WWII, the Communist parties in France and Italy and to a lessor extent Great Britain, were very powerful. They, as part of the Soviet International, took their orders directly from Stalin. If that isn't 'Sovietizing", I don't know what is. I agree that in 1945-50, Stalin had no illusion about invading Western Europe. He was still licking his own wounds and consolidating his new Eastern European Empire. And, America had the bomb. He didn’t. But he was quite confident that economic and political turmoil in Western Europe would lead to Soviet style governments in the West with their leaders directly under his control. It was a pretty safe bet. There were regular riots on the streets of Paris and Rome. Active revolution in Greece. Governments collapsed as fast as they were formed. All of those countries were shattered economically and politically.
Surely the Western Europeans could have rebuilt their economies with out US aid. But it would have taken more than a decade at best for them to rebuild their physical infrastructure and commercial and financial institutions to reach even pre-war levels. As democracies, they did not have that long. Millions of people were quite literally homeless, jobless and hungry. The Communists would have taken power long before the Europeans could have pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps, and Stalin would have had them directly under his control. The Marshall Plan jump started Western Europe and allowed them to quickly reach, and by the early 50s, exceed their pre-war economic status. With well feed people, their governments stabilized. Did Poland prosper? Czechoslovakia? Hungary? Any unbiased observer acknowledges these facts. Was it purely altruistic for America to do so? No. It was in our best interests and the best interests of the people of Europe, to have a peaceful and prosperous Europe. It is called enlightened self-interest, and in dealings between nations, it is the most laudable of traits. It wasn’t charity. In American business, we call it win-win.
You see, your rant reveals you treat Europeans like children. I think I was right in my original question. You seem to think that without the glorious Americans Europeans would still be living in the Dark Ages. And that is a-historical, to say the least.
Not at all. What I said was that without America’s military and economic support, Western Europe would be in the same condition as Eastern Europe is today. Sorry. Facts are stubborn things.
As to if Stalin alone could have defeated Hitler, without a Southern or Western front, without a sea blockade on Germany, without massive infusions of American war material into Russia, without strategic bombing of Hitler’s transportation arteries and manufacturing base, and with Japan invading Siberia at the same time, we will never know for sure. But if I were a betting man, all my money would surely have been on the German Army. The ability of the Russian people to suffer is staggering, but there is a limit to everything.
As to who ‘suffered more losses” I remind you of what Patton said. ”No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making some other bastard die for his country” Stupid command decisions made by inhuman monsters in either Berlin or Moscow are stupid either way. The ‘sacrifice’ was neither Hitler’s or Stalin’s but the poor souls who were unfortunate enough to be under the command of these monsters.
I thought you wanted to talk about who abused the Serbs. Who killed Mahalovich? Who drew the boundaries that were fought over in the 90s. Who made Kosovo a semi-independent province? Who imported Albanians to become the majority in Kosovo? Who forcefully relocated Serbs throughout Yugoslavia to keep their concentrations low and dispersed? And who raised a commie thug like Slobo and appointed him to be the head Serb?
As to the events of the 90s, I take no credit for the actions of German in granting immediate recognition to Slovenia, NATO for their blundering consensus building, and the self-righteous academic idiots of Clinton administration. Collectively, they took a mess that had been 50 years in the making, and turned it into a humanitarian disaster. It could have been solved peacefully. And all the while, they claimed, and I think truly deluded themselves into thinking, to be conducting a ‘humanitarian’ foreign policy. When anyone says they want to conduct foreign policy that way, run fast. They are idiots.
Sovietising a country is different from keeping Stalinist control over communist parties in countries. So, no, France and Italy were not Sovietised; neither did Stalin aim to do so.
As to your comment on dictatorial bastards I concur, obviously. But by holding out and dying for their country by the millions while at the same time inflicting damage on the enemy, the Russian people and their resistance to the Nazi's must be given the credit that is due. I am no commie or whatever, but had Hitler defeated Russia, the Western front would have been much, much harder to take. Then the question would have to be: would Hitler have been defeated without Soviet Russia?
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