Were The Russians Right To Have Invaded Afghanistan?

[No DUplicitous DUpe]

Were The Russians Right To Have Invaded Afghanistan?
posted with permission from: http://sane-ramblings.blogspot.com/2011/01/were-russians-right-to-have-invaded.html

In 1979, the Soviet Union invaded and occupied Afghanistan in support of a puppet government they put in power, causing widespread death and destruction. The U.S. government was horrified and funded and armed the "freedom fighters" who fought the Soviets, "freedom fighters" now called Al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

As an additional sign of the U.S. government's condemnation of the Soviet's Afghan invasion, it boycotted the Moscow Olympic Games in 1980 and encouraged other nations to do so as well. In response, the Soviets boycotted the Los Angeles Olympic Games in 1984 as did many other nations under their influence.

The Afghanistan War, which then was often called "Russia's Vietnam," was the final straw that bankrupted the Soviet Union in 1989 and brought its collapse. Since 2001, when the U.S. overthrew the Taliban and put in its own puppet government, America has fought to keep it in power at a horrific price in lives and dollars. And the U.S. economy is sinking.

Why was it wrong for the Soviets to have invaded and occupied Afghanistan but not for the U.S. to do so? What can the Afghans or America and its allies possibly gain by this military occupation?

Author's Note: This topic and the irony of the Olympic boycotts came from comments made by Stephen Colbert on the Colbert Report (1-20-11)

[Jackpine Radical]

1. They were stupid to invade Afghanistan.

Same as us.

Afghanistan is where empires go to die. It'll be the death of our imperial adventures too.

[No DUplicitous DUpe]

3. Re: Afghanistan is where empires go to die.

That seems to be the case. Like the song "blowin in the wind", "When will we ever learn..."

[Swamp Rat]

9. A foo' cayn't get foo'ed uhgain!

[RZM]

17. The 'where empires go to die' meme is really pretty inaccurate

Plenty of empires have done very well in Afghanistan. The Persians, Alexander the Great, the Mongols (and their Ilkhanate successors). While the British did receive a setback in the First Anglo-Afghan War, the empire hardly 'died' after that and actually grew larger during the 'new imperialism' of the late 19th century. In the end, Afghanistan more or less served one of its main purposes from the British perspective -- to be a barrier between the Russians and India.

Granted, the Soviets didn't do so well there. The Soviet-Afghan War was quite ill-thought-out (only a tiny handful participated in the decision) and very unsuccessful, but it was far from the main reason for the Soviet collapse, though it didn't help. The Soviet Union imploded for a lot of reasons, a good number of which can be traced back to the fundamental flaws built into the system itself, particularly the economy.

The US will not 'die' in Afghanistan either. I doubt we'll be successful there (whatever that means), but the US economy is more than capable of absorbing the costs of the Afghan war and then some. Once we do pull out (probably under Obama's successor), our foreign policy will still be just as robust and 'imperial.'

[Fool Count]

33. The Afghanistan war may not have bankrupted the Soviet Union directly,

but it definitely did lead to the chain of events that eventually caused its demise. Namely, without the Soviet
occupation of Afghanistan the US would never have been able to convince the Saudies to flood the World markets
with cheap oil causing its price to drop precipitously. That was the low price of oil, on which USSR depended
for most of its foreign currency revenues, in combination with the simultaneous anti-alcohol campaign, depriving
the state of large portion of its internal revenues, which over a decade's time did USSR in. If the oil price in
1980s were even half of what it is now, Soviet Union would still be alive and going strong.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

2. About as "right" as we were. Except they had a president willing to admit defeat and get out.

Ours still wants to look tough.

[No DUplicitous DUpe]

4. Thank you..

You make an excellent point.

[BOG PERSON]

5. it is my understanding that the mujahideen which the soviets

fought against went on to form the "government" of afghanistan, which got overthrown by the taliban, which went on to become the Northern Alliance after Nato intervened

[BOG PERSON]

10. just to be clear

the northern alliance contains what is left of the anti-soviet mujahideen. the western powers are propping up the same "freedom fighters" who beat the soviets in the 80s and made afghanistan into a pederastic waking nightmare, against the taliban, who are an altogether different group and oppose both the Nato intervention as well as pederasty

[jobycom]

21. That's pretty much right, although the lines are a little blurry.

The Taliban is not the direct descendant of the mujahideen we funded, although we at first thought they were (that's part of where the myth started). There was no central government when the Taliban emerged, there was just a feudal system of warlords, many of whom were mujahideen. The Taliban grew up in the southeast region as a resistance to a corrupt warlord--legend has it they rose up to execute him after he kidnapped and raped a couple of local teenage girls--and then spread outward to overthrow other corrupt warlords as their movement gained momentum. At some point they moved from being a vigilante force to a conquering force, and along the way some of the former mujahideen joined up with them. In many regions they were an improvement, but the Taliban under Mullah Umar never formed a controlling central government, so in many other regions the Taliban used their fundamentalist sense of justice for violent oppression, and Umar never tried (nor seemed to want to) rein them in.

So, the Taliban included mujahideen, but weren't really formed out of them. In some areas, it seems likely that the ruling warlords just swore allegiance to the Taliban. In other areas there was fierce resistance. In some areas very corrupt criminals were overthrown for strict but somewhat fair idealists, in others good people were overthrown by fanatics, in some areas one group of pragmatists yielded to another. Pretty standard stuff through revolutionary history. Overall, the Taliban brought a little stability and a lot of oppression to the country.

Al-Qaeda was a different group. Bin Laden was sort of one of the mujahideen, though reports vary on how much of one. Some say he was a fierce resistance fighter living in holes in the ground. Others say he was a rich dude living in Arabia who visited sometimes, funding terrorists and orphanages, possibly on our behalf. His brother Salem bin Laden was a friend and business investor of George Bush's (actually lived in Marble Falls, Texas, about forty miles outside of Austin--cute little town) and Abby Hoffman actually wrote an article claiming that Salem was the pilot who flew Bush the Father to Spain to orchestrate the October Surprise (evidence is sketchy, as always in secret conspiracy things), so it's not improbable that VP and President Bush had some contact with Usama. Either way, Usama developed a hatred for America in the 80s, and in 1996 Clinton's terrorist guys discovered his name as the leader and funder of a group of terrorists linked to very deadly plans against the US and the West, and allied to the guy who pulled off the first WTC bombing. After 96, Clinton became obsessed with Usama, appointing Gore to head an anti-terrorism advisory committee and trying various methods to get him dead or in prison. He tried to get Saudi Arabia to arrest him, but instead they expelled him (his family was very wealthy and the Saudis were stuck between two forces), and he went to the Sudan, where Clinton negotiated to have him arrested there (the Republicans twisted this into the head-on-a-silver-platter lie), but again he fled. This time he went back to Afghanistan and set up camp there in some caves (which sounds primitive but wasn't), and ran his group from there, and Clinton fired missiles at him there in 98 after the embassy bombings (and was attacked by the Republicans for doing so).

There are varying reports on how close he and Umar were. Some say Usama was basically his right hand man, others say Usama was actually the boss, and some say Usama was just a visitor that Umar never fully trusted but protected anyway. Probably he was all three in different stages of the game, but it's hard to know because the people telling the stories are doing so for political reasons (on all sides), so facts are slanted. Most of Bin Laden's group in Afghanistan were Saudis, though there were other groups, too (including a couple of Americans), so he was definitely an alien presence and not part of the old mujahideen system, no matter how closely he was identified with the mujahideen during the 80s.

Yeah, history major. Sorry. :) But you're right that the idea that we funded the Taliban during the 80s as a resistance against the Soviets is a myth. We funded the mujahideen against the Soviets, and we helped keep the country torn apart (not that the Soviets weren't more guilty), but we didn't bring Mullah Umar or Usama bin Laden to power. We helped create the conditions that did through short-sighted, machismo-istic foreign policy, but we weren't the only, or even the strongest, factor. About the only person who had good ideas was Jimmy Carter, and he lost the election soon after it all began, so his ideas were scrapped by an actor who thought he was playing John Wayne in a movie.

Yeah, it's long. You should see me when I really get going. :)

[Robb]

36. Good stuff.

I'd only add that the Taliban creation tale in the first paragraph is most likely apocryphal; the "true" story probably proves your overall point better -- the power vacuum we helped create was too tempting for Punjabi jihadi and Deobandi muslims from Pakistan to resist.

...Another "foreign invasion," that time of ideology with a good fund-raising arm in the Middle East. :hi:

[Hannah Bell]

39. Foreign Affairs says different.

Rise of the Taliban

The Taliban was initially a mixture of mujahideen who fought against the Soviet invasion of the 1980s, and a group of Pashtun tribesmen who spent time in Pakistani religious schools, or madrassas, and received assistance from Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI).

Prior to the group's ouster in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, the Taliban's main supporters were Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. Along with the United Arab Emirates, they were the only countries to recognize Taliban-led Afghanistan. During the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan cooperated in efforts by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency to arm the anti-Communist mujahideen. After the Soviet withdrawal, Afghanistan ceased to be a priority for U.S. strategists, but Saudi Arabia and Pakistan continued their support.

Involvement in Afghanistan served a strategic interest for Pakistan, which also has a large ethnic Pashtun population, and appealed to the conservative Wahhabi Muslims who hold substantial political clout in Saudi Arabia. After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia became partners in the U.S.-led "war on terrorism" and halted their official support of the Taliban...

It's unclear who currently leads the Taliban. Mohammed Omar, a cleric, or mullah, led the group during their rise to power. Omar is also a military leader, and he lost his right eye fighting the Soviets. From 1996 to 2001 he ruled Afghanistan with the title "Commander of the Faithful"

http://www.cfr.org/publication/10551/taliban_in_afghanistan.html

i.e. the supposed original leader of the Taliban was a mujahideen, & he wasn't the only one.

[jobycom]

40. How's that different?

:shrug:

"The Taliban was initially a mixture of mujahideen who fought against the Soviet invasion of the 1980s, and a group of Pashtun tribesmen who spent time in Pakistani religious schools, or madrassas..."

Just a different emphasis. Umar was a mujahideen who had retired and become a teacher. When he began fighting the warlords (who had also been mujahideen), his first recruits were Pashtu. As the movement grew, many of the former mujahideen joined him in fighting other mujahideen... same thing I said. FA was less worried about the history and more about the makeup of the Taliban. Either way, they weren't claiming the Taliban were descended from the mujahideen, just that they included many former mujahideen. Which is what I said.

Mullah Umar is pretty secretive. All those photos they circulated of him when the invasion started were not really him. He's been described by people who swear they've met him as short, tall, very tall, fat, thin... Probably a lot of people think they've met him but have met an underling using his name. Given the way Umar (or Usama) took out the leader of the Northern Alliance just before 9-11, it's likely that he's very wary of meeting anyone. That's why I don't buy the arguments that Bin Laden or Umar are dead--they are very good at hiding, not just from us, but from anyone they don't absolutely trust, especially with the prices on their heads.

[qazplm]

6. bit of a difference

whether you think the difference wide enough to justify notwithstanding, the Soviet Union wasn't attacked like we were and Afghanistan wasn't harboring and aiding those non-existent attackers.
The Soviets invaded for different reasons.

I believe our invasion was not wrong, I believe the manner in which we conducted it was horribly wrong. If we'd done it the right way, we'd have been out within a year, two tops, and we'd probably have OBL sitting in jail along with other top leaders.
What should have been a targeted invasion to root out AQ and capture OBL turned into something rather useless for 7 years while we did the Iraq debacle.

[yurbud]

7. 92% of Afghans haven't heard of 9/11. How long should we punish them for

al Qaeda hanging out there?

[qazplm]

13. which part of this did you miss?

"If we'd done it the right way, we'd have been out within a year, two tops, and we'd probably have OBL sitting in jail along with other top leaders."

[yurbud]

20. Do you think that was the goal? Seymour Hersh wrote a good piece about how we

let Osama get away at Tora Bora that sounded more intentional that stumblefuck.

Nations don't occupy other nations at the cost of hundreds of billions of dollars for revenge. There has to be a financial incentive or it would have been over faster than a cruise missile strike on on a baby formula factory.

[jobycom]

22. They let Osama escape so they could prolong the war because they hadn't finished yet.

Usama was a real goal of the invasion, but as with Iraq, Bush was looking for an excuse to invade before 9-11, and had other goals when he did. If 9-11 had been the whole motivation we'd have sent ground and air forces into the Tora Bora region and covered every escape route. Instead, we sent some forces there, but we sent air raids all over Afghanistan, bombing villages with no connection to Al-Qaeda and very little to the Taliban. Our goal was conquest, not law enforcement, and that's why I opposed the invasion from the beginning.

The overwhelming percentage of the tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of people we killed in Afghanistan were victims of Bin Laden and Mullah Umar every bit as much as we were. That's why we lost the moral high ground before we even invaded. Consider the irony of us slaughtering tens of thousands of innocent people to punish their government for killing thousands of innocent people here because their leaders didn't like our government.

[qazplm]

29. we actually didn't lose the moral high ground

when we invaded and we had the support of the people for several years after we did.

IF we'd have focused only on Afghanistan instead of placing it on the back burner for five plus years, we'd have been fine.

You cannot use the current situation as a basis to say the very idea of invasion was wrong because the current situation is almost completely the result of the horrid execution of that invasion.

[jobycom]

30. Support of what people? Our people? That's not moral high ground.

People in Afghanistan whose children were being ripped apart by our bombing strikes on local villages never supported us, except in our press releases. We had no moral high ground. We had a justification to go after Bin Laden, and that's all.

And that's not revisionist. A lot of people here (and elsewhere in the Democratic Party) opposed the Afghanistan invasion every bit as fiercely as the Iraq invasion, before it happened. I was, and still am, one of those.

When you bomb innocent villages in a country that can't even wage war against you, you have no moral high ground.

[qazplm]

31. not true

initially we did have much support among the people, the problem is we did nothing to continue those good graces and eventually patience ran out and as things ramped up so did the deaths and suffering.

The idea that somehow there was no period at all where the people were grateful for the invasion is in fact revisionist history.

They certainly stopped being grateful because of our own excesses and the excesses of the Taliban insurgency, but yes, we were supported for a period of time by the general population.

[jobycom]

38. Again, what people? If you are under some delusion that people are happy when there kids are murdere

then I don't know how to show you otherwise. The people of Afghanistan were not happy that we were bombing their villages, dropping flyers telling them to stay inside after dark or they would be bombed, arresting anyone in any village that someone pointed a finger at and yelled "Taliban!" etc. The well-publicized story about the man who walked out his front door, had a bomb hit his house, then went back in to the wreckage to find a part of his daughter's cheekbone and some bloody flesh attached never supported us.

You've hopefully heard the story from one of our soldiers in WW II of conquering a French village, and as the troops marched in the people threw flowers and waived American flags and welcomed our boys into their homes with much fanfare. He said he had never felt such an outpouring of love. The next week the Germans retook the city, and as the Americans were leaving, he looked back to see the same citizens throwing flowers and waiving German flags and welcome the Nazis into their homes with much fanfare. He said it was then he realized that the exuberance wasn't to demonstrate their joy at either invasion, but to convince the invaders not to murder, rape, and pillage.

Afghanistan has been the playtoy of empires for two hundred years. Nobody there believes the next army is going to be the one that sets things right. They just know how to pretend so they don't get shot.

[No DUplicitous DUpe]

32. Thank you, Jobycom - Your comment rings true for me.

You said, "When you bomb innocent villages in a country that can't even wage war against you, you have no moral high ground."

Perfectly stated.

[RZM]

26. Sy Hersh isn't always right

I find that argument hard to believe. The political windfall from finding Osama Bin Laden would have been enormous. Maybe I'm wrong, but I doubt they intentionally let him get away. One thing we've learned post-9/11 (although it wasn't exactly a new revelation before that) is that our military and intelligence systems were still stuck in Cold War mode. Some have argued that the US has been fighting the 'last war' since 1865 -- applying huge amounts of force in a short space of time with limited goals and not low/medium amounts over a long period with broader goals. Trying the new approach hasn't gone all that great since 2001.

[RC]

34. Of course they let him get away.

The war would have been over shortly after that because that was the stated objective, to get bin Laden.
Where's the profit for the MIC in that? That would have wasted all the time and effort invested in 9/11.

[yurbud]

35. it would have been a political windfall that would have ended Afghanistan and precluded Iraq

once Osama was caught or officially dead, public support for endless wars would have dropped to zero.

[qazplm]

37. doubtful

capturing OBL would give Bush the credit to do pretty much whatever he wanted.

[RZM]

41. We'll never know

But I have a hard time believing anything was going to dissuade the Bush team from going into Iraq. I think 9/11 gave them the confidence to go ahead with it no matter what. You're probably right that capturing Bin Laden might haven even further strengthened their resolve to do so. The narrative/reasons given for the invasion might have been slightly adjusted, but I have a difficult time believing it wouldn't have happened.

[qazplm]

28. I think the decision to invade

Afghanistan to get OBL was made immediately, and was a no brainer that Gore, Obama, Kerry, anyone would have made.

At that moment in time, there was nothing, nothing in Afghanistan to exploit.

At that moment, it didn't and wouldn't have cost hundreds of billions of dollars.

The problem was not the decision to invade Afghanistan. That was not wrong. The problem came once everyone had a chance to sit around and think. Then whether you want to believe it was a conspiracy to invade Iraq for oil, or as revenge for going after papa bush, or some misguided belief in Pax Americana, or a stupid bonehead decision, or all of the above, the end result was hundreds of billions of dollars and a ton of lives wasted.

I do not believe we intentionally let OBL get away, the immediate political payoff of his quick capture would have continued to pay political dividends for the republicans to this day. I think it was a clusterfuck born out by the craziness of spending more blood, sweat and resources in Iraq than in Afghanistan. We went light, and we should have went heavy, swept through the country, picked up all the AQ folks, then left.

[leveymg]

8. Iraq turned into a quagmire. The 2001-03 plans were for US forces to "fall forward" into the center

after stabilizing their positions in Iraq and Afghanistan. Couldn't do it with their rears exposed. Look at the map and see what's in the center of Iraq and Afghanistan. Then read "A Clean Break" that describes a series of dominoes that the US was supposed to overturn in the region starting with Iraq. http://www.iasps.org/strat1.htm

The U.S. warplan for Iran originated in the White House and was cooked up by Stratcom (which is mostly AF) and neocons in Rumsfeld's office, and centered on the threat (or actual use) of nuclear weapons if Iran were to launch a chemical counterstrike against US or allied targets. Here's an extract of a good article on that: http://www.fas.org/blog/ssp/2007/11/white_house_guidance_led_to_ne.php.

The 2001 Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) and White House guidance issued in response to the terrorist attacks against the United States in September 2001 led to the creation of new nuclear strike options against regional states seeking to acquire weapons of mass destruction, according to a military planning document obtained by the Federation of American Scientists.

Rumors about such options have existed for years, but the document is the first authoritative evidence that fear of weapons of mass destruction attacks from outside Russia and China caused the Bush administration to broaden U.S. nuclear targeting policy by ordering the military to prepare a series of new options for nuclear strikes against regional proliferators.

Responding to nuclear weapons planning guidance issued by the White House shortly after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, U.S. Strategic Command created a series of scenario driven nuclear strike options against regional states. Illustrations in the document identify the states as North Korea and Libya as well as SCUD-equipped countries that appear to include Iran, Iraq (at the time), and Syria – the very countries mentioned in the NPR. The new strike options were incorporated into the strategic nuclear war plan that entered into effect on March 1, 2003.

The creation of the new strike options contradict statements by government officials who have insisted that the NPR did not change U.S. nuclear policy but decreased the role of nuclear weapons.

Non-Denial Denials and a Few Hints

When portions of the 2001 Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) were leaked in the Los Angeles Times in March 2002, government officials responded by playing down the importance of the document and its effect on nuclear planning. And officials have since continue to credit the NPR with reducing the reliance on nuclear weapons.

The NPR is “not a plan, it’s not an operational plan,” then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Richard B. Myers insisted on CNN the day after the NPR was leaked. “It’s a policy document. And it simply states our deterrence posture, of which nuclear weapons are a part….And it’s been the policy of this country for a long time, as long as I’ve been a senior officer, that the president would always reserve the right up to and including the use of nuclear weapons if that was appropriate. So that continues to be the policy.”

A formal statement published by the Department of Defense added that the NPR “does not provide operational guidance on nuclear targeting or planning,” but that the military simply “continues to plan for a broad range of contingencies and unforeseen threats to the United States and its allies.”

Most recently, on October 9, 2007, Christina Rocca, the U.S. permanent representative to the Conference on Disarmament, told the First Committee of the U.N. General Assembly that the United States has been “reducing the…degree of reliance on weapons in national security strategies….It was precisely the new thinking embodied in the NPR that allowed for the historic reductions we are continuing today.”

Yet a few officials hinted in 2002 that the same guidance expanded nuclear planning. “There are nations out there developing weapons of mass destruction,” then Secretary of State Colin Powell said on CBS’ Face the Nation. “Prudent planners have to give some consideration as to the range of options the president should have available to him to deal with these kinds of threat,” he said.

The declassified U.S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM) document shows that one of the first results of “the new thinking” of the NPR was the creation of a series of new nuclear strike options against regional states.

A Series of Regional Options

The 26-page declassified document, an excerpt from a 123-page STRATCOM briefing on the production of the 2003 strategic nuclear war plan known as OPLAN 8044 Revision 03, includes two slides that describe the planning against “regional states.” The first of these slides lists a “series of options” directed against regional countries with weapons of mass destruction programs. The planning is “scenario driven,” according to the document. The majority of the document deals with targeting of Russia and China, but virtually all of those sections were withheld by the declassification officer.

The names of the “regional states” were also withheld, but three images used to illustrate the planning were released, and they leave little doubt who the regional states are: One of the images is the North Korean Taepo Dong 1 missile; another image shows the Libyan underground facility at Tarhuna; and the third image shows a SCUD B short-range ballistic missile. The SCUD B image is not country-specific, but the Air Force National Air and Space Intelligence Center report Ballistic and Cruise Missile Threat from 2003 listed 12 countries with SCUD B missiles: Belarus, Bulgaria, Egypt, Iran, Kazakhstan, Libya, North Korea, Syria, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, Vietnam and Yemen. Five of these were listed in the NPR as examples of countries that were “immediate, potential, or unexpected contingencies…setting requirements for nuclear strike capabilities”: Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea and Syria.

[qazplm]

15. I'm pretty sure

I said we shouldn't have invaded Iraq at all...that's kinda why I called it a debacle.

[leveymg]

18. Hail Mary pass for the neocons. And, a last-chance grab of the region's oil reserves, before

control permanently shifted out of US and UK hands, as it has. The fabrication of the rationale for the invasion of Iraq was a coalition effort. I understand perfectly well the reasons why they tried it, and at the time it seemed coldly, murderously logical, and even seemed possible to pull off after 9/11.

[WinkyDink]

12. Your flavor of Kool-Aid is?

[qazplm]

16. I tend to respond to substatntive comments

not lazy ad hominems.

[NuclearDem]

19. +1

All we needed to do in Afghanistan was grab OBL and the high-ranking al-Qaeda operatives and be gone. That could've been done easily without the nation building.

We had our chance to nation-build after the Soviet withdrawal, but no one wanted to follow up on that.

[WinkyDink]

11. How big a helping of "Hell, NO" would you like?

[JVS]

14. It depends on whether one believes in the Brezhnev Doctrine.

That invasion force might have been better used on Poland in 1980 instead of Afghanistan in 1979.

[JohnyCanuck]

23. Brezinski has acknolwedged the US funded "freedom fighters" before the Soviets invaded

in the hope that they would invade to prop up their allies in the Afghan government against the US supported rebels and they (the USSR) could be handed their own "Vietnam."

So this summation in the OP, is not quite correct:

In 1979, the Soviet Union invaded and occupied Afghanistan in support of a puppet government they put in power, causing widespread death and destruction. The U.S. government was horrified and funded and armed the "freedom fighters" who fought the Soviets, "freedom fighters" now called Al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

When I wrote those words I did not know (and could not have imagined) that the actor Tom Hanks had already purchased the rights to the book to make into a film in which he would star as Charlie Wilson, with Julia Roberts as his right-wing Texas girlfriend Joanne Herring, and Philip Seymour Hoffman as Gust Avrakotos, the thuggish CIA operative who helped pull off this caper.

What to make of the film (which I found rather boring and old-fashioned)? It makes the U.S. government look like it is populated by a bunch of whoring, drunken sleazebags, so in that sense it's accurate enough. But there are a number of things both the book and the film are suppressing. As I noted in 2003,

"For the CIA legally to carry out a covert action, the president must sign off on -- that is, authorize -- a document called a 'finding.' Crile repeatedly says that President Carter signed such a finding ordering the CIA to provide covert backing to the mujahideen after the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan on December 24, 1979. The truth of the matter is that Carter signed the finding on July 3, 1979, six months before the Soviet invasion, and he did so on the advice of his national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, in order to try to provoke a Russian incursion. Brzezinski has confirmed this sequence of events in an interview with a French newspaper, and former CIA Director Robert Gates says so explicitly in his 1996 memoirs. It may surprise Charlie Wilson to learn that his heroic mujahideen were manipulated by Washington like so much cannon fodder in order to give the USSR its own Vietnam. The mujahideen did the job but as subsequent events have made clear, they may not be all that grateful to the United States."

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/174877/%20chalmers_johnson_an_imperialist_comedy

[JohnyCanuck]

27. Zbigniews Brzezinski's Interview in Le Nouvel Obersvateur

Brzezinski's Interview with Le Nouvel Observateur

Le Nouvel Observateur: Former CIA director Robert Gates states in his memoirs: The American secret services began six months before the Soviet intervention to support the Mujahideen . At that time you were president Carters security advisor; thus you played a key role in this affair. Do you confirm this statement?

Zbigniew Brzezinski: Yes. According to the official version, the CIA's support for the Mujahideen began in 1980, i.e. after the Soviet army's invasion of Afghanistan on 24 December 1979. But the reality, which was kept secret until today, is completely different: Actually it was on 3 July 1979 that president Carter signed the first directive for the secret support of the opposition against the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And on the same day I wrote a note, in which I explained to the president that this support would in my opinion lead to a military intervention by the Soviets.

Le Nouvel Observateur: Despite this risk you were a supporter of this covert action? But perhaps you expected the Soviets to enter this war and tried to provoke it?

Zbigniew Brzezinski: It's not exactly like that. We didn't push the Russians to intervene but we knowingly increased the probability that they would do it.

Le Nouvel Observateur: When the Soviets justified their intervention with the statement that they were fighting against a secret US interference in Afghanistan, nobody believed them. Nevertheless there was a core of truth to this...Do you regret nothing today?

Zbigniew Brzezinski: Regret what? This secret operation was an excellent idea. It lured the Russians into the Afghan trap, and you would like me to regret that? On the day when the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote president Carter, in essence: "We now have the opportunity to provide the USSR with their Viet Nam war." Indeed for ten years Moscow had to conduct a war that was intolerable for the regime, a conflict which involved the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet Empire.

http://www.emperors-clothes.com/interviews/brz.htm

[Catherina]

24. Of course not and of course not. Rec'd n/t

[ixion]

25. No. Just like the US wasn't right to do so, either...