I think Prof. Cole has outdone himself this time. From his post today:
Fisking the "War on Terror"
Once upon a time, a dangerous radical gained control of the US Republican Party.
Reagan increased the budget for support of the radical Muslim Mujahidin conducting terrorism against the Afghanistan government to half a billion dollars a year.
One fifth of the money, which the CIA mostly turned over to Pakistani military intelligence to distribute, went to Gulbuddin Hikmatyar, a violent extremist who as a youth used to throw acid on the faces of unveiled girls in Afghanistan.
Thus begins a brief history of terror, with its roots in - you guessed it - Reagan, Bush, and Bush. Truly a must read!
More on the flip.
You really have to go to juancole.com and check out the whole thing, but here are some highlights, followed by the response to a question that I asked Prof. Cole about Clinton and his administration's role.
Not content with creating a vast terrorist network to harass the Soviets, Reagan then pressured the late King Fahd of Saudi Arabia to match US contributions. He had earlier imposed on Fahd to give money to the Contras in Nicaragua, some of which was used to create rightwing death squads. (Reagan liked to sidestep Congress in creating private terrorist organizations for his foreign policy purposes, which he branded "freedom fighters," giving terrorists the idea that it was all right to inflict vast damage on civilians in order to achieve their goals).
There is so much more and I don't want to deny Prof. Cole the pageviews by including too much here. Please click here to read the whole piece, then come back to read my email exchange with Cole.
After reading his analysis I sent the following email to Prof. Cole:
Date: Tue, 2 Aug 2005 16:15:43 -0700 (PDT)
From: "Mark" <markinsanfran0@yahoo.com> Add to Address Book
Subject: Your middle east history lesson
To: jrcole@umich.edu
Juan,
Spectacular tutorial on recent middle east history. A
real "Fisk you" to the Reaganite/BushCorp crowd!
A few questions:
1. With apologies to Pete Seeger, where have all the
Stingers gone?
2. More importantly, what about Clinton? My take is
that, while the republican administrations have been
guilty of huge and numerous sins of commission, it
would seem that the Clinton administration was guilty
of lesser, but still decisive, sins of omission. What
say you?
I'll have my trip itinerary firm by early next week
and I'll check with you on the exact day/time for our
interview. Thanks again for your willingness to meet
with me.
Cheers.
Mark
What you dare to Dream, dare to Analyze
Prof. Cole's interesting response:
Subject: RE: Your middle east history lesson
Date: Tue, 2 Aug 2005 19:18:29 -0400
From: "Cole, Juan" <jrcole@umich.edu> Add to Address Book
To: "Mark" <markinsanfran0@yahoo.com>
Thanks Mark.
I would argue that in regard to Afghanistan, Clinton's hands were tied
by the formal agreement that Bush senior made with the Soviets. As for
the rest, Clinton did more than is realized. He had arranged for Nawaz
Sharif to send a Pakistani force in after Bin Laden, but it was
torpedoed by Musharraf's coup; Musharraf refused to follow through.
Look forward to seeing you.
Cheers Juan
I will have to ask him to give greater detail on this when I see him at the end of the month.
Update [2005-8-3 1:27:56 by MarkInSanFran]: I flagged Prof Cole on Deminla's rebuttal regarding the republican nature of the US creation of the terrorists, and he said that:
Under Carter, the US was giving the Mujahidin $60 million a year.
Under Reagan, the US came to give the Muj $500 million a year, plus Reagan had the Saudis match it, for a total of $1 billion a year.
The idea that all this happened because of a flamboyant congressman is a good journalistic story, but the fact is that it was run from the White House and Reagan didn't need convincing. See Steve Coll's Ghost Wars.
The decision-making body for covert ops like the Afghanistan campaign is the White House, not Congress. Congress didn't even appropriate a lot of the money spent on this, which came from the Saudi government, Gulf millionaires, and Muj drug trafficking (which the Reagan administration winked at).
P.S. on the uneasiness of the Democrats in Congress as this juggernaut rolled on, see:
Copyright 1985 The Washington Post
The Washington Post
October 10, 1985, Thursday, Final Edition
Correction Appended
SECTION: First Section; A16
LENGTH: 514 words
HEADLINE: Secret Votes Give Afghans $300 Million;
Lawmakers Uneasy As Outlays Climb
BYLINE: By Joanne Omang, Washington Post Staff Writer
BODY:
Congress has secretly approved another $300 million in military aid for anti-Soviet rebels in Afghanistan over the next two years, according to sources in the intelligence community.
The funding, voted late last month after several weeks of heated debate in the House and Senate intelligence committees, is in addition to secret funds already appropriated for fiscal 1986 and 1987. It is expected to be used primarily for ammunition and small weapons, but part of it may also be spent for a new ground-based antiaircraft missile system to battle Soviet helicopters.
The new funding is a major jump from the reported fiscal 1985 total of about $250 million, which at the time was reported to make up the bulk of the Central Intelligence Agency's fund for covert operations worldwide.
The additional spending has sparked concern among Democrats in both the House and Senate intelligence committees over the scope and direction of the Afghanistan program, the sources said.
"People are seeing the potential of a $1 billion-a-year program pretty soon. For the first time there's a realization of that, and there's a lot of questions about just what are the policy implications and what are we getting out of this," one highly placed source said.
Congress has been uncommonly unified in backing the Afghanistan guerrilla resistance to Soviet occupation forces, who poured into Afghanistan in 1979 in what they said was a response to a request from the Marxist government of President Babrak Karmal. Casualties have been heavy on both sides, and the current funding request was justified on grounds that the rebels need to be confident of stable supplies over the next two years.
However, critics have charged that much of the aid intended for the rebels has somehow disappeared into a maelstrom of graft and political maneuvering involving the CIA, assorted intermediaries and officials of the Pakistani government who are thought to be facilitating the transfers.
The Reagan administration launched the current debate several weeks ago with a request to reprogram $300 million to the Afghan aid program out of fiscal 1985 money left unspent in a secret Defense Department account, the sources said.
Although several members of the House intelligence committee argued that the new funding should be delayed until the mushrooming program could be evaluated, the administration pushed to obtain approval before the fiscal year ended Sept. 30 and the funds reverted to the Treasury.
The procedure avoided the need for approval by the full Congress because it had already appropriated the funds for national security purposes, the sources said. But the high-pressure approach raised some lawmakers' hackles and led to questions about the sudden discovery of so much unspent money at a time of rising congressional interest in cutting defense spending.
"The purpose of one of the meetings got lost," one participant reported. "But it became clear that the program is not going to continue at this rate of increase . . . . We support it but we can't just give a blank check."
CORRECTION-DATE: October 11, 1985, Friday, Final Edition