Arming the Terrorists By: shep

by shep

Certain people, who need not be named but who whisper in the ear of the president and the leading Republican candidate to replace him and who are hired by the most prestigious (and not so much) news organizations to share their opinions with the public, think we should attack the country of Iran for providing (completely unproven) support for insurgents fighting against the US occupation of Iraq.

Well, who wouldn’t want to attack the country that arms its enemies, who end up killing their troops? Still, the main moral difference between Iraq/Iran and this seems to be that the Soviets were actually invited into Afghanistan by its government (much like our own venture into Vietnam). (Can you imagine if they simply came up with some phony excuse to invade and occupy the country, hanging its leaders and killing a million innocent Afghanis?)

Yet the IEDs Stinger missiles and other support supplied by our Quds Force CIA and China, Pakistan and Iran (”The Coalition of the Willing”), killed 10,000 or more Soviet troops (good thing the Soviets didn’t have nuclear weapons and strategic bombing capability, huh?).

The (most ironic) poison fruit, poisons us still:

“Some American groups, particularly neoconservatives came to believe that they were responsible for the fall of the Soviet Union. The Islamists that fought also believed that they were responsible for the fall of the union, and this may have indirectly lead to 9/11. Osama bin Laden, for example asserting the credit for ‘the collapse of the Soviet Union ... goes to God and the mujahidin in Afghanistan ... the US had no mentionable role,’ but ‘collapse made the US more haughty and arrogant.’”

But, as we have learned from tragic effect, they are absolutely incapable of learning anything from history:

“Some participants felt leverage was not the main issue; rather, US policymakers
knowingly abandoned Afghanistan to the Pakistanis and Saudis to ‘sort out’ Afghanistan’s future. However, the participant said, ‘The Pak-Saudi agenda for Afghanistan was totally ruinous . . . it was [that] agenda which leads to Al Qaeda and all the rest of it. . . . Did you not see this in
1992, as it emerges?’”

The obvious answer is either “no” or they just didn’t think it mattered very much.

Regardless, the Soviets didn’t attack the US over arming its enemies in Afghanistan, we didn’t attack China for arming our enemies in Korea and Vietnam and China didn’t attack us for arming theirs. Pakistan has illegal nuclear weapons, Maddrassas, a Muslim population that is far more radicalized than Iran and it arms Islamic radicals who kill our troops in Afghanistan while it provides safe haven to Osama bin Laden (if he's still alive). We call it an ally.

In any event, the people who have shaped the foreign and military policy of the United States for the past seven years (especially Vice President Cheney) are not the people who should be allowed anywhere near that sort of power ever again. Just as their authoritarianism, bellicosity and aggression has made Osama bin Laden’s fondest wishes come true it has also driven the price of oil to record highs, funneling ever more $billions to countries like Iran and Russia even as it unites Muslim nations against us and weakens us economically and militarily.

If the nation’s political and media leaders had either the slightest bit of level-headed judgement or a functioning moral compass the neoconservatives wouldn't be setting the agenda, they would be driven from the public sphere in shame and eventually tried for their crimes against humanity.

[Cross-posted at E Pluribus Unum]