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His name is Zabignew Brazinski He created Al-Qaeda to fight the russians in the 80's
by I AM TRUTH on Fri Feb 29, 2008 at 08:48:34 AM PDT
for box office, your screenplay is unique.
My trusty Rocinante and I have moved to a friendlier MB forum
by Theghostofkarlafayetucker on Fri Feb 29, 2008 at 08:55:10 AM PDT
[ Parent ]
Zbigniew Brzezinski, 1998:
Brzezinski: 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: And neither do you regret having supported the Islamic fundamentalism, 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?
Brzezinski: 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: And neither do you regret having supported the Islamic fundamentalism, 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?
Arguably, he has a point that the fall of the Soviet Union was a more momentous world event than the civil war that took place in Afghanistan for 20 years, and even compared to the subsequent US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, it's a big deal, but an awful lot of people died because of Brzezinski's little scheme. And nearly 30 years later, they're still dying from the aftershocks.
Dennis Perrin's Savage Mules: The Democrats and Endless War
by darrelplant on Fri Feb 29, 2008 at 09:32:51 AM PDT
AQ did not evolve from the Taliban any more than people evolved from gibbons. These are separate lines.
The mujahadeen did not directly become the Taliban, and the Taliban sure as hell did not become AQ.
The Taliban came out of Pakistan's and Afghanistan's madrassas while OBL was living in Africa haggling over theology with the Egyptian wing of what became AQ.
by bernardpliers on Fri Feb 29, 2008 at 09:49:45 AM PDT
Nobody said Al Qaeda descended from the Taliban. Brzezinski made a reference to the Taliban in a dismissive manner and didn't mention Al Qaeda at all, perhaps because the interview was from 1998, before most people had begun paying attention to Al Qaeda.
Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri were both in Pakistan and Afghanistan in the 1980s, while the Soviets occupied Afghanistan. The Taliban didn't come to power in Afghanistan until years after the Soviets had left.
Your grasp of the historical timeline is a bit shaky.
by darrelplant on Fri Feb 29, 2008 at 11:18:31 PM PDT
They wandered back to Afghanistan in '96 and gained protection from a local Taliban commander soon after the Taliban went national. The Taliban tolerated OBL because they did not know he was flat broke and thought he had money. OBL started funneling in Saudi money to the Taliban.
by bernardpliers on Fri Feb 29, 2008 at 09:14:30 AM PDT
The people who started what became known as Al Qaeda all came out of the CIA-backed Afghan opposition to the Soviet Union in the 1980s. That's where they got their start.
by darrelplant on Fri Feb 29, 2008 at 09:37:04 AM PDT
There were a couple of groups, and it was mainly Egyptian at first because AQ was really born in Africa after the Russian-Afghan war.
"The Looming Tower" explains this all in great detail about the infighting and defections within AQ, but I don't have my copy handy. It's great for keeping all the bad guys straight.
I've spent a lot of time bickering with wingnuts about how "it's all Clintons fault," so I read up on this pretty well.
by bernardpliers on Fri Feb 29, 2008 at 09:44:14 AM PDT
Clinton wasn't in power in the '70s or '80s.
Deny it all you want to, split hairs all you want, but the people who founded Al Qaeda cut their teeth in Afghanistan during the Mujihideen's fight with the Soviet Union. Osama bin Laden was certainly there. So was Ayman al-Zawahiri. Al Qaeda wasn't formed until after the Soviets pulled out of Afghanistan, but the people who formed it didn't spring into existence out of thin air.
From Chalmers Johnson's Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire, p. xiv
The CIA supported Osama bin Laden, like so many other extreme fundamentalists among the mujahideen in Afghanistan, from at least 1984 on. In 1986 it built for him the training complex and weapons storage tunnels around the Afghan city of Khost where he trained many of the 35,000 "Arab Afghans." Bin Laden's men constituted a sort of Islamic Abraham LIncoln Brigade of young volunteers from around the Muslim world who wanted to fight on the side of the Afghans against the Soviet Union. In August 1998, on President Bill Clinton's orders, the Khost complex was hit with cruise missiles, in retaliation for bin Laden's attacks that month on the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. For once the CIA knew exactly where the targets were, since it had built them.
So go ahead, tell me again that the guy who is the presumed leader of Al Qaeda was never a part of the US effort -- begun under Carter and continued and greatly expanded under Reagan -- to use Islamic fundamentalists to hobble the Soviet Union.
by darrelplant on Fri Feb 29, 2008 at 11:12:00 PM PDT
wide narrow
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