To: epsteinbd who wrote (42940 ) 9/9/2002 6:34:46 PM From: Neocon Read Replies (1) | Respond to NO:Mais peut-être même souhaitiez-vous cette entrée en guerre des Soviétiques et cherchiez-vous à la provoquer ? But perhaps you wished to start a war with the Soviets and were looking for a provocation? That isn't how it was. We didn't push the Russians into intervening, but we knowingly increased the probability of them doing so. When the Soviets justified their invention by affirming that they were fighting against a secret intervention in Afghanistan by the United States, no one believed them. Yet, it was based on the truth.....Do you regret nothing today? Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of luring the Russian into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the frontier, I wrote to President Carter, in substance:" We have now the opportunity to give the USSR its Vietnam War." In fact, Moscow put nearly ten years into an insupportable war over the regime, a conflict which set in motion demoralization and finally the collapse of the Soviet Empire. You don't regret helping fundamentalist Islam, giving them arms and advising future terrorists? What is the most important as regards world history? The Taliban or the fall of the Soviet Empire? Some fanatic Muslims or the the liberation of central Europe and the end of the Cold War? "Some fanatics"? But it is said and repeated: fundamentalist Islam represents today a world menace. Nonsense! it is necessary, one is told, for the West to have a global policy regarding Islam. This is stupid, there is no global Islam. Let us look at Islam in a rational manner, without demagogy or emotionality. It is the first religion of the world, with 1.5 billion faithful. But what have Saudi Arabian fundamentalists, moderate Morocco, Pakistani militarists, pro- Western Egypt, and secular central Asia, in common? Nothing more than that which unites Christian countries.......
