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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (183467)	3/13/2006 3:57:18 PM
From: Maurice Winn	Respond to of 281500

Thanks for the detail Hawk. I realize the flow of funds and munitions was circuitous, but the outcome is what Carter and en.wikipedia.org planned = give the USSR their own Vietnam via the Mujahideen. <We immediately launched a twofold process when we heard that the Soviets had entered Afghanistan. The first involved direct reactions and sanctions focused on the Soviet Union, and both the State Department and the National Security Council prepared long lists of sanctions to be adopted, of steps to be taken to increase the international costs to the Soviet Union of their actions. And the second course of action led to my going to Pakistan a month or so after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, for the purpose of coordinating with the Pakistanis a joint response, the purpose of which would be to make the Soviets bleed for as much and as long as is possible; and we engaged in that effort in a collaborative sense with the Saudis, the Egyptians, the British, the Chinese, and we started providing weapons to the Mujaheddin, from various sources again - for example, some Soviet arms from the Egyptians and the Chinese. We even got Soviet arms from the Czechoslovak communist government, since it was obviously susceptible to material incentives; and at some point we started buying arms for the Mujaheddin from the Soviet army in Afghanistan, because that army was increasingly corrupt. Full Text of Interview > I can understand their reaction at the time as the USSR was the major threat with nasty people at the helm wanting to rule the world. They were funding the communists in NZ and around the world. Socialism and communism were common and apparently a major threat with ICBMs galore [albeit some of them apparently wooden models in May Day Red Square parades]. But by the time Gorby came along and set the course, the USSR really was not looming over the world. Islamic Jihad was in fact the one which did the harm on 911, not the USSR. So, hindsight being excellent, the USSR wasn't as much threat as Islamic Jihad. When the USSR rolled into Afghanistan, my geopolitical buddy and I were poring over maps to see how long it would take them to get to the sea and how they might do it. Which was surely part of their idea. My main complaint was that when Gorby took over, it was obvious that everything was different, but the USA failed to notice and change. In fact, the USA gave Osama assistance over the decades; ooops. Yes, yes, it was via Pakistan and so on, but it's results that matter, not excuses. Unintended consequences and unknown unknowns are part of the game. That's a bit like Americans giving the IRA "freedom fighters" cash over the years, which went towards bombing innocent people in Britain, blowing up Brighton and so on, including a family of Kiwi tourists in the White Tower. Which made me realize just how hideous such people are. The IRA used to do joint venture training and technique swapping with Arab terrorists apparently - birds of a feather and all that. Those were chickens coming home to roost, with the ultimate irony being IRA-supporting firemen dying in the Islamic Jihad destruction of the Twin Towers. Irony, or poetic justice, or karma. Live by the sword, die by the sword. Blessed are the meek ... etc Mqurice