How Carter and Brzezinski Helped Start the Afghan Mess

Le Nouvel Observateur (France) ^ | Jan 15-21, 1998 | Bill Blum

[byteback]

Interview of Zbigniew Brzezinski Le Nouvel Observateur (France), Jan 15-21, 1998, p. 76*

Q: The former director of the CIA, Robert Gates, stated in his memoirs ["From the Shadows"], that American intelligence services began to aid the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan 6 months before the Soviet intervention. In this period you were the national security adviser to President Carter. You therefore played a role in this affair. Is that correct?

Brzezinski: Yes. According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahadeen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise: Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of The pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.

Q: Despite this risk, you were an advocate of this covert action. But perhaps you yourself desired this Soviet entry into war and looked to provoke it?

B: It isn't quite that. We didn't push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.

Q: When the Soviets justified their intervention by asserting that they intended to fight against a secret involvement of the United States in Afghanistan, people didn't believe them. However, there was a basis of truth. You don't regret anything today?

B: Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter: We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.

Q: And neither do you regret having supported the Islamic [intégrisme], having given arms and advice to future terrorists?

B: What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?

Q: Some stirred-up Moslems? But it has been said and repeated: fundamentalism represents a world menace today.

B: Nonsense! It is said that the West had a global policy in regard to Islam. That is stupid. There isn't a global Islam. Look at Islam in a rational manner and without demagoguery or emotion. It is the leading religion of the world with 1.5 billion followers. But what is there in common among Saudi Arabian fundamentalism, moderate Morocco, Pakistan militarism, Egyptian pro-Western or Central Asian secularism? Nothing more than what unites the Christian countries.

[byteback]

Stumbled onto this and thought it was interesting. Looks like Prez Carter isn't mr goodie two shoes in this mess after all.

[Post Toasties]

I can't believe it! You made Jimmuh Cahtuh look even more incompetent than I had previously thought wrt foreign policy. He is truly the Godfather of Islamic Fundamentalism.

[LenS]

Sorry, but hurting the Soviets in Afghanistan was the right thing to do at the time. You always deal with the greater threat first. Soviet ICBM's put them at the top of the list. So using a lesser threat to help take out the greater threat is basic survival tactics. Just like we worked with the butcher Stalin to take down Hitler.

Now it's time to smash Islamofascism since they managed to leap frog the PRC on 9-11.

[John Valentine]

I'd like to say that everyone has known this for donkey years. It was cetainly no secret even during the Carter administration that Certer was playing the "Islamic Card" against the Soviet Union, and that Brzezinski was the chief architect of this policy.

But, I have waited in vain for a year now to see this embarassing fact mentioned in public by the Democrat buttlicking press. We gave Russia their Chechnya problem, and we are reaping our share of the whirlwind sown by Brzezenski.

His conceit that the Afghan war caused the collapse of the Soviet Union is a flattering fiction. It may have hastened it slightly, but it sure didn't cause it. The collapse of the Soviet Union was caused directly and demonstrably by the policies of the greatest president of this or any century, Ronald Reagan.

[ganesha]

So we'll just go on creating one Golem after another.

[DTA]

>>>>So we'll just go on creating one Golem after another<<<

Bear trap hurt Eagle too.

[dfwgator]

I agree, a rare case where Carter actually did do the right thing. Thank God we had Reagan to finish the job.

[LenS]

You're right. We should have just surrendered to the Nazis and saved all this effort. /sarcasm>