Lindy, didn't you know that Carter's Brzezinski planned and gave the USSR "their own Vietnam" in Afghanistan? They deliberately baited the USSR into invasion, thinking it was a good idea. Ronald Raygun was also so dumb he provided goods and services to Osama and co, and I dare say you can remember whether it was the Soviet Union or Islamic Jihad which brought down the Twin Towers. The USA supported the wrong side: < It was part of Carter's hatred for them, and his belief that we were the problem in dealing with the Soviets. He should have learned how bad his judgement was when they invaded Afghanistan and the Iranian Mullahs crapped on him. >
Read the interview with Zbigniew counterpunch.org
He claims to have ended the Soviet Union. <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 [integrisme], having given arms and advice to future terrorists?
Brzezinski: 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?>
Others claim it was the arms race.
I think it was neither. I think it had a lot more to do with internal dissension, fragmentation, exhaustion and Gorby refusing to continue the barbarous repressions of the past. Thank Gorby, not the arming and training of Islamic Jihad which blew right back in the USA's face in a great karmic reflection. Maybe those killed in the Twin Towers would think their deaths were worthwhile in niggling the USSR in Afghanistan and Chechnya with Islamic Jihad.
When you turn people into murderous megalomaniac ideologues, you don't get to turn them off so easily. Islamic Jihad is a USA construction. Not planned, but just another outcome of the law of unintended consequences.
Having the CIA cut a lot would perhaps have counterintuitively INCREASED USA security. Some of us think that governments are so bad that almost everything they do is worse than if they did nothing.
Carter posturing as Mr Peacemaker is absurd when he precipitated the USSR invasion and start of Islamic Jihad against the superpower infidels. Ronald Raygun exacerbated the situation by loading them up with weaponry and support.
My point was really just the silliness of the writer thinking things were unimaginable. But now we've gone off in another direction. I'm sure the CIA is, like all government departments, an overblown, blundering, expensive, counterproductive monster. I suspect I'd fire the whole lot if I was in charge. And a lot more besides. I have never been impressed by government "intelligence". Usually, I am very unimpressed. They couldn't even get Iraq's WMDs right, yet I could deduce from limited information that Saddam was very unlikely to have anything significant.
Actually, I think they knew there were no WMDs, but along with King George II wanted an invasion, so were happy to do some shroud waving.
The enemy of your enemy is not necessarily your friend. In fact, Gorby should have got as much support as the USA could provide. He was the friend. The USA mindlessly carried on the cold war, unable to change their faulty thinking. They thought they were doing a good thing boosting Osama against Gorby. Which would you support in attacking the other, Gorby or Osama? Yes, I thought so.
Strangely, the rabid Republicans right is unable to see the light, even with hindsight and explication. People don't usually reason. Like Adolf, they just sit in their mental bunker with their fixed opinions and ideology while reality comes over the top and all around them collapses. Better to die than change one's mind. Cognitive dissonance is usually dealt with by psychotic reaction at worst or at best dissembling and rationalisation.
Mqurice |
