11/09/01: U.S. Chickens Coming Home to Roost?

Great Debates
1

In the article linked below, Cohen talks about post-09/11 information, ignored by the mainstream press, that is circulating on the Internet. One of the items he mention is an interview in which Zbigniew Brzezinski (Jimmy Carter’s National Security Advisor) reveals some shocking (well IMHO, we should be shocked) info about U.S. involvement in Afganistan.

http://www.commondreams.org/views01/1130-10.htm
Article from the December 2001 issue of FAIR’s Extra! Update – Internet Samizdat Releases Suppressed Voices, History, by Jeff Cohen

Quotes: “One of the most fascinating items of Internet samizdat is a 1998 interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Jimmy Carter’s national security advisor, conducted by the French publication Le Nouvel Observateur. In the interview… Brzezinski boasts that the CIA was supporting guerilla activities inside Afghanistan six months before the Soviet intervention, taking steps to ‘induce’ the Soviets to intervene.”

And: “A free press would be debating the issue of Washington’s relations with Islamist extremists in Afghanistan and elsewhere, and whether such movements are bred by U.S. policy committed to suppressing secular reformers and leftists in Islamic countries. When the CIA funded the Afghan Mujaheddin in 1979 before the Soviet occupation, it hoped to destabilize a secular, Soviet-friendly government… which supported land reform and rights for women.”

Finally: “As a U.S. State Department memo stated at the time: ‘The United States’ larger interest would be served by the demise of the Taraki-Amin regime, despite whatever setbacks this might mean for future social and economic reforms in Afghanistan.’”

Looking back now, I can’t help wondering, what if we had just left Afganistan the heck alone? Presumably, the Taliban would never have come to power, Bin Laden would not have gone to Afganistan, and 09/11 would not have happened. Would the Soviet empire be still standing today, or would it have collapsed anyway?

But perhaps the thing to debate is, is it time for the U.S. to stop running around the 3rd world, destabilizing this government, and propping up that one, with no regard for what might be best for the people living in those countries?

2

No time to comment on the specifics of your OP, Hazel. Just a word to say that the “DEHUMANIZATION” thread is taking a turn in a direction that I think would interest you.

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=101773

3

Did something important happen November 9th? Did I miss it??

4

>> Did something important happen November 9th? Did I miss it??

Yes, The rest of the world decided to continue to ignore the American sytem of writing dates. You missed that? I guess you did. There was a great celebration avec vin et fromage.

5

That was kind of a joke. A dumb one, I’ll admit.

6

>> That was kind of a joke. A dumb one, I’ll admit

A winking smiley would have helped :slight_smile:

OOps, I just realised I did not put one in my post either! :wink:

7

Sorry. As an American, I normally render Sept. 11th as 09/11. But I guess when I reverse the digits, I’m correct in Europe? (Albeit accidently.)

8

Hazel, you have no mercy!

9

We should never stop running around the 3rd world, attempting to assert a little influence. When doing so, however, we should be ever-mindful of the best interests of the people living in those countries.

To be sure, we’ve messed up from time to time (although I am not necessarily convinced that we are especially deserving of blame for the fucked-up situation in Afghanistan). But the most fucked-up places–like Afghanistan–would surely be worse off if we altogether * neglected * them and their people’s best interests.

10

Hazel wrote:

That’s why, whenever I abbreviate a date, I always write out the month by name, never by number. So if I want to sound American, I write “Sep-9-2001”, and if I want to sound European, I write “9-Sep-2001” – and everybody on either side of the pond can understand me in both cases.

11

Rmat, it sounds to me as though the people of Afganistan would be better off if we had not interfeared.

The problem is, in our cold war era interfearence in the 3rd world, we did not have the best interests to the people there in mind. Our goal was always to topple any govt that could be seen as pro-soviet, even if it was otherwise a pretty good govt, while at the same time aiding, assisting, and generally propping up any govt that could be considered pro-American, no matter how oppressive it was.

tracer – you’re right. To be sure of avoiding any misunderstanding, it’s better to spell out the month.

12

Please identify the “otherwise pretty good” pro-Soviet gov’t that we toppled in favor of something more oppressive.

13

Rmat one example would be Chile. Anther would be Afganistan, as discussed in the article to which I provided a link in the OP.

14

Fine. But what is the proposition you are debating here:

A) No US involvement is always better than any US involvement

or

B) Bad US involvement is worse than good US involvement?

“A” will make for an interesting debate, even if its outcome can be easily predicted by reasonably minded people. “B” alone (without substantive inquiry into what constitutes “good” or “bad” policy) does not merit serious discussion.

And please be concrete: Do you (or anyone else) believe that there could have been NO form of US involvement in either Chile or Afghanistan that would have been better than no US involvement at all? Or are you merely arguing that the particular policies we followed in those two instances were ill-advised? These preliminaries matter. Until you nail them down, I see a flurry of “you missed my point!” replies on the horizon. (Pardon the mixed metaphor.)

15

This is something that has puzzled me for a long time. For years, I kept hearing about the domino theory. It made no sence to me. It seemed to be based on the assumption that all countries everywhere that had governments that were communist or semi-communist were one monolithic block. Any small, impoverished, 3rd world country that went communist, or moved in a direction that could be labeled communistic, was seen as joining that block.

It seemed plain to me that this was not actually the case. These various communist and communist-leaning countries were often quite different from each other, and were often at odds with each other.

Why, I wondered, should we (the U.S.) give a darn if some little 3rd world country went communist? For one thing, going communist often did not result in the country becoming part of the Soviet Union’s evil empire. And if it did, so what? Was the addition of some tiny, impoverished nation to their empire really going to do them any great amount of good?

And, often, the move toward communistic or socialist ways seemed to be a good move for the people at the bottom of society in these little countries. Often, their lives were better under the new government then they’d been under whatever repressive regime it replaced. However bad/mistaken/unworkable-in-the-long-run communism and socialism are, communist/socialist governments were in these cases bringing about a better situation for many people.

But it seemed that all the US government cared about was the label. Nevermind what would be best for the people, all that mattered to us was that their country not bear a communist label.

Hence the toppling of the Allende regime in Chile. Hence the Korean War. Hence the war in Viet Nam. And hence our actions in Afganistan, as described in the article in the OP.

So – I would not go so far as to say that “No US involvement is always better than any US involvement,” but that’s almost my position. We can do some real good in the 3rd world. We have done some real good: food aid, medical aid, emergency assistance, the Peace Corps and simliar programs. We should increase this sort of assistance. But we should not have done the sort of thing Brzezinski bosted of in that interview. And we should not be the world’s biggest arms merchant.

I don’t think I agree that it’s impossible to sort out good interfearence from bad. Unless you only call it interfearene when it’s bad? And use other terms for anything good we do?

16

The domino theory did not purport to describe the degree of cohesion that came to exist among communist countries adter their transformation to that system, but to describe the creeping, geographically progressive, self-momentumizing process by which the transformation occurred.

**

You and Gerald Ford. As Jimmy Carter got to say in a rare moment of keen insight and rhetorical flair, “Ask the people of eastern Europe how they feel about that.”

**

This is an odd question to see posed by someone who purports to have such heart-felt concern for the “best interests” of “the people” of the world.

And just what countries do you have in mind with this observation? You later mention Chile, Korea, Vietnam, and Afghanistan. Surely these are not the examples you hope to invoke in support of an argument about the relative merits of communist and pre-communist regimes?

I never said it was impossible to distinguish good involvement from bad involvement. Quite clearly, I invited that precise distinction, and suggested that once you draw it in your own mind, you’ll see that there is nothing inherently wrong with a powerful country–and one that also happens to be demonstably committed to democratic ideals, as well as the single greatest governmental model to stand in testament of the wisdom of such commitment–from throwing its weight around a little here and there and from time to time. Your praise for all the humanitarian, cultural, and educational assistance we have provided, and your hope for its continuation, provide an eloquent rebuttal to your assertion that it is “almost” true that NO US involvement is better than any US involvement.

17

What I was getting at was this: I fear that the good we’ve done may not be sufficient to outweigh the bad. Therefore, doing doing nothing might have added up to being less harmful then the sum total of what we did do. Please note the “might”. Maybe the good does outweigh the bad. But do you deny the existance of the bad?

Remember these quotes from the article cited in the OP?

“When the CIA funded the Afghan Mujaheddin in 1979 before the Soviet occupation, it hoped to destabilize a secular, Soviet-friendly government… which supported land reform and rights for women.”

And: “As a U.S. State Department memo stated at the time: ‘The United States’ larger interest would be served by the demise of the Taraki-Amin regime, despite whatever setbacks this might mean for future social and economic reforms in Afghanistan.’”

Evidently, in 1979, Afganistan had a secular government that supported land reform and rights for women. Progress was being made. But that governemnt was Soviet-friendly, so it had to go. Regardless of any resulting setbacks that might mean for social and economic reforms. The end result of our interfearence was to saddle the Afgans with the Taliban. Surely doing nothing at all re Afganistan would have been a better choice.

18

“Soviet-friendly”? You seem to be forgetting a little something, Hazel. You know, that part about the Red Army invading and occupying the country against the wishes of its people?

19

Hazel, my guess is that you may be younger than I and may not have lived through the Cold War. I can remember hiding under my desk during air raid drills in 1949, when I was a first-grader. The Soviet government was one of the worst ever. The victory of the West, while avoiding WW III, was a marvelous achievement.

The USSR were imperialists. They were bringing countries under their control, by whatever means they could. Revolution, invasion, taking over an existing government – whatever. When countries succumbed, that naturally inspired others in nearby countries. Also, the newly Communist countries could supply base of operations, materiel, military support, etc.

I’m not sure what you’re referring to. At a certain point, there was a split between the USSR and China, which the US wisely encouraged. But, prior to that, communist countries pretty much obeyed the USSR. After the split, they tended to be in eithe the Russian or Chinese camp.

This quesiton would have made more sense 20 years ago. Now the containment policy has proved its worth by working.

Actually, before the split, going Communist generally did result in becoming part of the Soviet sphere. After the split, some Communist countries went with China. There may have been some independent Communist countries, but few and far between

Cites? Examples? Talk to the freed people of Eastern Europe or the Cubans who risk their lives to flee to other Latin American countries and to the US. (Did you know that Cuba has lost 20% of their population since Castro took over?)

Whatever sins Allende and Pinochet committed, the people of Chile are very well off, today. Allende might have turned Chile into another Cuba.

Obviously South Korea is a properous conntry and North Korea is a hell hole. You can criticize our strategic decisions in Korea, but it’s obvious that keeping the South Koreans free of Communism did more good for those people than just about anything I can think of.

20

Another good example would be the US involvement that kept West Berlin from falling under Soviet control.

On the matter of Afghanistan, could anyone provide any sort of information on what the government before 1979 was like, and how different it was from the government that the US left in place after the Soviets withdrew?

I don’t think people are being fair to the US. They claim that US lack of involvement after 1990 allowed the Taliban to take control, and that US involvement prior to that created the circumstances that allowed the Taliban to exist.

When looking at whether US involvement in a particular case was correct, one must carefully figure what the most likely results of other courses of action would have been, and what alternatives there were at the time. Against the argument that the US destabilised Afghanistan must be weighed the probable results of doing otherwise. As far as I can tell, without the Soviet Union’s costly attempt to take Afghanistan, it probably would have lasted longer. A Soviet victory there would have left the same power void that occurred after the war, possibly with Soviet nukes in the country.