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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I'll be happy to point out that indeed they can.
Communists of the early 20th century have turned out to be remarkably prescient, actually.
That the countries of Latin America are democracies has nothing to do with US meddling. The Latin American countries became democracies in imitation of the US. When they got their independence they created Republics with constitutions modelled on that of the US.
Anyway, I fail to see why spreadin "democracy" is considered a good thing. Why should I care if my neighbors live in a democracy or a monarchy?
HAHAHA the joke is on most of us.
Pure BS. We were checking another attempt by the Soviet Union to reach the Indian Ocean via expansion. They tried it through Iran in the 1950s, and we blocked that one too. The Soviet Union overthrew the previous Constitutional, pro-Western government in Afghanistan in 1976 and replaced it with a violent Marxist regime. We aided those who resisted that Marxist regime.
As to what kind of 'aid' the Carter administration gave to the rebels, it surely was not effective. By 1983, the rebels were all but beaten --- driven deep into the mountains with the Soviets holding every city in the country. That is when the Reagan administration stepped in and gave the Soviet Union the biggest pain in the ass that they ever had and one that contributed significantly to the downfall of the Evil Empire. It was a good thing. It may well have helped save the world from nuclear holocaust.
Is your view of Geo Politics that we should always mind our own business and let the chips fall where they may. If so, you are a fool. The rest of the world pays very much attention to what we do and who we support, and at least half the world hates us, our system, our way of life, our freedom and our very existence. They do not hate us because of what we do. They hate us for who we are --- free, prosperous, happy people. If we 'do nothing' we will be destroyed by those haters.
As to ‘muddling’, (meddling?) you're damn right we meddle. If we ever stop, we're dead. As to Empire --- exactly where in the hell is the American Empire? Who are our subjects? And if we have this huge Empire, why don’t we get them to pay some taxes instead of us paying them? Even the Romans figured that one out. It’s a no-brainer if we were an Empire.
I’m tired of this crap. Your insinuation that somehow every problem that befalls the world is the fault of America is another damn Marxist lie. It’s time we started calling it that every time one of the fellow travelers or a ‘useful idiot’ who has no conception of how the world works begins to spout it. .
The United States, and our foreign policy, have saved 100s of millions of people around the world from the misery and poverty of toleration despots. We ain’t perfect, but we’re the best there is or ever was.
Freedom ain’t Free.
I don't think it's about pipelines. That doesn't seem important enough to me. It can only be an attempt to distract Muslim fanatics from Israel. I think it's an attempt to make Muslims think that Slavs, and not Israel, is the enemy. It's an attempt to make Muslims think the US is their friend. I think it's all an attempt to protect Israel by diverting the energies of the Muslims into fighting Christian Slavs.
You might be right. But there seldom is ONE reason for anything. Don't discount pipelines, though. With them we are talking billions of dollars. That kind of money leads amoral people to do immoral things.
People in West are not aware of what really happened. Boris Yeltsin went to privatize the government industries. How did he do it? He gave them away to people who promised to scratch his back in return. The oligarchs that run Russia didn't earn their business empires. They got them by promising to scratch the government's back.
The United States, and our foreign policy, have saved 100s of millions of people around the world from the misery and poverty of toleration despots. We ain’t perfect, but we’re the best there is or ever was.
Alright, dude. Just keep believing that. Don't cancel your subscription to the Weekly Standard. You'd be lost without it.
Some of the old nomenklatura did continue on. But I think that there was a lot of social mobility, much of it of the "shit floats" variety.
Okay ... wars AND ego will go a long way to illuminating the prints and distinguishing the different sides.
(Thanks for the mail, sawdring. Bumming hard hard hard, I was.)
I was wondering when you would do that! We've sparred gently over this subject a few times in the past without any explosive engagements. A Cold Debate, as it were.
I just can't buy the conspiracy line on this. Some Communists may have believed that they could survive the fall of the Soviet Union and the loss of their empire in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Gorbachev, for instance, seems a prime candidate for this kind of delusion. He was--and continues to be--a very dangerous man.
But as Zviadist is so fond of pointing out, there is this nasty phenomenon of unintended consequences that tends to foil the most intricate long term plans.
Eastern Europe has tasted freedom again, and would easily submit to another tyranny. It is returing to its old Orthodox faith again--as is Russia. China continues to flex its muscle as a national socialist power and now represents a clear territorial threat to the Russian far East. The market reforms introduced in Russia, while far from a resounding success, make it nearly impossible to centralize the economy under government control.
If anything, the danger is that Russia will engineer more trouble in the world in order to justify and accelerate its realignment with the West, with Europe.
Even if you ignore these purely pragmatic considerations and choose to view recent history as an occulted battle of ideologies and transcendent beliefs played out on the field of politics, why would the Communists feel the need to overthrow the capitalists? We in the West have done more to create the rationalist-materialist worker's paradise envisioned by Marx than Lenin or any of his disciples. The transition from Communist apparatchik to neo-capitalist is so common and so easy because it is so logical.
How many countries are free because of the efforts of Islam, Marxism, Fabianism, or Isolationism?
Some of the old nomenklatura did continue on. But I think that there was a lot of social mobility, much of it of the "shit floats" variety.
Well, as someone who was there throughout, I can assure you of one thing: you are mistaken. There was nearly NO social mobility in the former communist world. Why do you think they all went communist in the second elections? They saw "democratic capitalism" and realized that even communism was better than what came afterward. Little more needs said.
I can do this discussion if you like, we can talk about assets and how they were privatized, about wage levels and standards of living, about utilities prices, about new, domestic-owned startup businesses, and so on and so on.
This thread is positively bursting with some of my favorite pieces of wisdom and truth. This is one of the most important, though.
Bump.
Tell that to Manuel Noriega and Salvadore Allende.
Eastern Europe has tasted freedom again, and would easily submit to another tyranny. It is returing to its old Orthodox faith again--as is Russia.
Aside from Russia, most of the old East is NOT Orthodox, friend. You have a mistaken view of the region based on mistaken information and a limited understanding. Also, there is no "conspiracy" of the former communists. They saw "democratic capitalism" as the opportunity of a lifetime. So they took it. The same people who were poor and voiceless under communism are still poor and voiceless. More so, because the old social contracts like a social safety net no longer have to be observed -- ALL the money can go into the pockets of the former nomenklatura.
I'll fall back to one of the wisest statements I've seen on FR in a long while: "Things seldom happen for one reason." You said it a few posts back.
Wars are seldom fought for one reason. Many of us were in the Cold War for freedom, for God, for Western Civilization, for simple human decency. Others were in it for money, or worse. The trouble is, once the War was over, the mercenary crowd managed to do two incredible things: 1) it gained a sort of superficial legitimacy, and 2) it got a hell of a lot more powerful.
I never completely figured out how this happened. I've always blamed it on a deft repositioning by the Left toward the so-called "Third Way." The new Third Way Left managed to shed all of its baggage from the Cold War and immediately begin implementing a program of rapid globalization and economic materialism. They did as the inheritors of the "peace dividend" and the new leaders of the victorious "West."
It's all so complicated; as I said, I haven't begun to figure it out. But I'm pretty sure these people weren't really in control of the West throughout the Cold War.
Sure they do. The consequences are, at least on average, that the regions where we have intervened are less miserable sh!t holes than they would have been otherwise.
Even a case of American having unequivocally supported an unequivocally depostic regime, that of the Shah of Iran, makes the point. The Shah never would have gotten involved in that horrible, senseless and destructive war with Iraq. If we had managed to keep the Shah or a similar monarch in power, therefore, a million or two (whatever the figure is) Iranians and Iraqis who today are dead would instead still be alive. Similarly if our efforts to kill Sadam Hussein had succeded a million more Iraqis (the children your friend bin Laden mentioned, dead because Sadam wouldn't negotiate for the easing of sanctions) might be alive today.
That perhaps there was motivation beyond "they hate us because we are so noble and good and have such good fast food restaurants" that most Americans seem to feel so smug and snug believing
Yes, we do, thank you. We are in fact (quite markedly, if again on average) a force for stability, freedom, prosperity and moderation in the world. I'm not just smug, I'm proud of that. I hope you have as much reason to be proud of your country's contributions to human civilization. Where are you writing from?
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