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Interesting Robert Fisk article, and a technical question

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Parry

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Sep 17, 2001, 11:17:10 PM9/17/01

The article is attached below. Fisk writes: “Every effort will be made
in the coming days to switch off the ‘why’ question and concentrate on
the who, what and how.” I think that discussion in this newsgroup has
already considered the “why,” and that the latter questions are
interesting in their own right: one likes to know what to expect, and to
know the details of how the deeds will be pulled off.

By the time the World Trade towers crumbled into rubble it was assumed
bin Laden in particular and Afghanistan by extension would be targeted
for retaliation. The American leadership has spoken of anti-terrorist
measures, big expenditures, and a lengthy campaign to rid the world of
(Islamic) terrorism. Clearly they have to deliver some heads to satisfy
the bloodlust of the viewing public (where’s that christian “turn the
other cheek” shit when you need it?), but what specific actions will
they take?

They likely won’t send ground troops in as that would mean ignoring a
principle that’s guided military action for decades: casualties
undermine support for a war. They can bomb endlessly but that will have
a limited effect. In Yugoslavia, they could bomb power stations,
chemical plants, infrastructure and so on, but Afghanistan has little of
that stuff. CNN has spoken of legislation that would allow the US to
employ unsavory characters in their war effort. But they’ve always done
that anyway. So what’s different here? Are they considering a genuinely
capitalist solution of hiring a sadistic mercenary army to execute their
solution? Fisk: “...the man responsible for so much of the bloodbath in
Chechnya -- the career KGB man whose army is raping and murdering the
insurgent Sunni Muslim population of Chechnya -- is now being signed up
by Mr Bush for his ‘war against people’.”

-- Parry

“So kill all you want, amour.
Make sure you do it right.
Dead is dead, and doornails forget.
And then you’ll notice how the waster and the wasted
get to look like one another in the end.”
John Cale, “Guts”

---------------------------------------------------------------------

Robert Fisk: Bush is walking into a trap
16 September 2001

Retaliation is a trap. In a world that was supposed to have learnt that
the rule of law comes above revenge, President Bush appears to be
heading for the very disaster that Osama bin Laden has laid down for
him. Let us have no doubts about what happened in New York and
Washington last week. It was a crime against humanity. We cannot
understand America's need to retaliate unless we accept this bleak,
awesome fact. But this crime was perpetrated -- it becomes ever clearer
-- to provoke the United States into just the blind, arrogant punch that
the US military is preparing.

Mr bin Laden -- every day his culpability becomes more apparent -- has
described to me how he wishes to overthrow the pro-American regime of
the Middle East, starting with Saudi Arabia and moving on to Egypt,
Jordan and the other Gulf states. In an Arab world sunk in corruption
and dictatorships -- most of them supported by the West -- the only act
that might bring Muslims to strike at their own leaders would be a
brutal, indiscriminate assault by the United States. Mr bin Laden is
unsophisticated in foreign affairs, but a close student of the art and
horror of war. He knew how to fight the Russians who stayed on in
Afghanistan, a Russian monster that revenged itself upon its
ill-educated, courageous antagonists until, faced with war without end,
the entire Soviet Union began to fall apart.

The Chechens learnt this lesson. And the man responsible for so much of
the bloodbath in Chechnya -- the career KGB man whose army is raping and
murdering the insurgent Sunni Muslim population of Chechnya -- is now
being signed up by Mr Bush for his "war against people''. Vladimir Putin
must surely have a sense of humour to appreciate the cruel ironies that
have now come to pass, though I doubt if he will let Mr Bush know what
happens when you start a war of retaliation; your army -- like the
Russian forces in Chechnya -- becomes locked into battle with an enemy
that appears ever more ruthless, ever more evil.

But the Americans need look no further than Ariel Sharon's futile war
with the Palestinians to understand the folly of retaliation. In
Lebanon, it was always the same. A Hizbollah guerrilla would kill an
Israeli occupation soldier, and the Israelis would fire back in
retaliation at a village in which a civilian would die. The Hizbollah
would retaliate with a Katyusha missile attack over the Israeli border,
and the Israelis would retaliate again with a bombardment of southern
Lebanon. In the end, the Hizbollah -- the "centre of world terror''
according to Mr Sharon -- drove the Israelis out of Lebanon.

In Israel/Palestine, it is the same story. An Israeli soldier shoots a
Palestinian stone-thrower. The Palestinians retaliate by killing a
settler. The Israelis then retaliate by sending a murder squad to kill a
Palestinian gunman. The Palestinians retaliate by sending a suicide
bomber into a pizzeria. The Israelis then retaliate by sending F-16s to
bomb a Palestinian police station. Retaliation leads to retaliation and
more retaliation. War without end.

And while Mr Bush -- and perhaps Mr Blair -- prepare their forces, they
explain so meretriciously that this is a war for "democracy and
liberty'', that it is about men who are "attacking civilisation''.
"America was targeted for attack,'' Mr Bush informed us on Friday,
"because we are the brightest beacon for freedom and opportunity in the
world.'' But this is not why America was attacked. If this was an
Arab-Muslim apocalypse, then it is intimately associated with events in
the Middle East and with America's stewardship of the area. Arabs, it
might be added, would rather like some of that democracy and liberty and
freedom that Mr Bush has been telling them about. Instead, they get a
president who wins 98 per cent in the elections (Washington's friend, Mr
Mubarak) or a Palestinian police force, trained by the CIA, that
tortures and sometimes kills its people in prison. The Syrians would
also like a little of that democracy. So would the Saudis. But their
effete princes are all friends of America -- in many cases, educated at
US universities.

I will always remember how President Clinton announced that Saddam
Hussein -- another of our grotesque inventions -- must be overthrown so
that the people of Iraq could choose their own leaders. But if that
happened, it would be the first time in Middle Eastern history that
Arabs have been permitted to do so. No, it is "our'' democracy and
"our'' liberty and freedom that Mr Bush and Mr Blair are talking about,
our Western sanctuary that is under attack, not the vast place of terror
and injustice that the Middle East has become.

Let me illustrate what I mean. Nineteen years ago today, the greatest
act of terrorism -- using Israel's own definition of that much misused
word -- in modern Middle Eastern history began. Does anyone remember the
anniversary in the West? How many readers of this article will remember
it? I will take a tiny risk and say that no other British newspaper --
certainly no American newspaper -- will today recall the fact that on 16
September 1982, Israel's Phalangist militia allies started their
three-day orgy of rape and knifing and murder in the Palestinian refugee
camps of Sabra and Shatila that cost 1,800 lives. It followed an Israeli
invasion of Lebanon -- designed to drive the PLO out of the country and
given the green light by the then US Secretary of State, Alexander Haig
-- which cost the lives of 17,500 Lebanese and Palestinians, almost all
of them civilians. That's probably three times the death toll in the
World Trade Centre. Yet I do not remember any vigils or memorial
services or candle-lighting in America or the West for the innocent dead
of Lebanon; I don't recall any stirring speeches about democracy or
liberty. In fact, my memory is that the United States spent most of the
bloody months of July and August 1982 calling for "restraint".

No, Israel is not to blame for what happened last week. The culprits
were Arabs, not Israelis. But America's failure to act with honour in
the Middle East, its promiscuous sale of missiles to those who use them
against civilians, its blithe disregard for the deaths of tens of
thousands of Iraqi children under sanctions of which Washington is the
principal supporter -- all these are intimately related to the society
that produced the Arabs who plunged America into an apocalypse of fire
last week.

America's name is literally stamped on to the missiles fired by Israel
into Palestinian buildings in Gaza and the West Bank. Only four weeks
ago, I identified one of them as an AGM 114-D air-to-ground rocket made
by Boeing and Lockheed-Martin at their factory in -- of all places --
Florida, the state where some of the suiciders trained to fly.

It was fired from an Apache helicopter (made in America, of course)
during the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, when hundreds of cluster
bombs were dropped in civilian areas of Beruit by the Israelis in
contravention of undertakings given to the United States. Most of the
bombs had US Naval markings and America then suspended a shipment of
fighter bombers to Israel -- for less than two months.

The same type of missile -- this time an AGM 114-C made inGeorgia -- was
fired by the Israelis into the back of an ambulance near the Lebanese
village of Mansori, killing two women and four children. I collected the
pieces of the missile, including its computer coding plate, flew to
Georgia and presented them to the manufacturers at the Boeing factory.
And what did the developer of the missile say to me when I showed him
photographs of the children his missile had killed? "Whatever you do,"
he told me, "don't quote me as saying anything critical of the policies
of Israel."

I'm sure the father of those children, who was driving the ambulance,
will have been appalled by last week's events, but I don't suppose,
given the fate of his own wife -- one of the women killed -- that he was
in a mood to send condolences to anyone. All these facts, of course,
must be forgotten now.

Every effort will be made in the coming days to switch off the "why''
question and concentrate on the who, what and how. CNN and most of the
world's media have already obeyed this essential new war rule. I've
already seen what happens when this rule is broken. When The Independent
published my article on the connection between Middle Eastern injustice
and the New York holocaust, the BBC's 24-hour news channel produced an
American commentator who remarked that "Robert Fisk has won the prize
for bad taste''. When I raised the same point on an Irish radio talk
show, the other guest, a Harvard lawyer, denounced me as a bigot, a
liar, a "dangerous man'' and -- of course potentially anti-Semitic. The
Irish pulled the plug on him.

No wonder we have to refer to the terrorists as "mindless''. For if we
did not, we would have to explain what went on in those minds. But this
attempt to censor the realities of the war that has already begun must
not be permitted to continue. Look at the logic. Secretary of State
Colin Powell was insisting on Friday that his message to the Taliban is
simple: they have to take responsibility for sheltering Mr bin Laden.
"You cannot separate your activities from the activities of the
perpetrators,'' he warned. But the Americans absolutely refuse to
associate their own response to their predicament with their activities
in the Middle East. We are supposed to hold our tongues, even when Ariel
Sharon -- a man whose name will always be associated with the massacre
at Sabra and Shatila -- announces that Israel also wishes to join the
battle against "world terror''.

No wonder the Palestinians are fearful. In the past four days, 23
Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank and Gaza, an astonishing
figure that would have been front-page news had America not been
blitzed. If Israel signs up for the new conflict, then the Palestinians
-- by fighting the Israelis -- will, by extension, become part of the
"world terror'' against which Mr Bush is supposedly going to war. Not
for nothing did Mr Sharon claim that Yasser Arafat had connections with
Osama bin Laden.

I repeat: what happened in New York was a crime against humanity. And
that means policemen, arrests, justice, a whole new international court
at The Hague if necessary. Not cruise missiles and "precision'' bombs
and Muslim lives lost in revenge for Western lives. But the trap has
been sprung. Mr Bush -- perhaps we, too -- are now walking into it

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john adams

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Sep 18, 2001, 12:46:54 PM9/18/01

In the wake of the attacks on U.S. soil, Afghanistan and its ruling Taliban are at the center of media
attention.

The Taliban, whose name means "holy student," was created by the the Pakistani Intelligence Agency (ISI), and
developed during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. The Taliban army consists of Muslim fundamentalist
mercenaries from Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia, armed and financed primarily by the United States
and Saudi Arabia. Over the last six years the Taliban have gained control over 90% of the country. (Until
recently the Taliban have been referred to as 'freedom fighters' in the western press.)

The Taliban, thus, began as a U.S.-backed paramilitary organization, using the same strategy as was used in
Colombia with the formation of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC). As in South America, the
explosive mixture of paramilitary groups and the massive profits to be made in narco-trafficking under drug
prohibition has grown into a force beyond control of its makers. Even as the U.S. government today opposes the
Taliban in Afghanistan, it is creating another one in Colombia.

And as with the Colombian people and the paramilitaries unleashed upon them by U.S. policy, the Afghan people
are not supporters of the Taliban. In fact, there is a very strong opposition movement in Afghanistan to the
Taliban. Yet, as with Plan Colombia, a U.S. military intervention in Afghanistan could end up harming the
innocent Afghani people who oppose the Taliban.

Just last week, the opposition movement to the Taliban lost its heroic leader.

AFGHAN COMMUNITY MOURNS
The Afghan community is now mourning the death of their most highly regarded leader, Ahmad Shah Mas'ood,
commander of the Northern Alliance (NA), opposition forces to the Taliban in Afghanistan. (The NA is referred
to a as a 'rebel group' in the western press.)

Commander Ahmad Shah Mas'ood has held this fragile opposition group together since the 1979-89 Soviet
occupation of Afghanistan. He is famous for leading battles on the frontlines.

Kamran, an Afghan-American states, "It is with great pain that I inform you that Ahmad Shah Masood, commander
of the Northern Alliance forces against the Taliban and Osama bin Laden passed away on Sunday, September 9,
2001."

Afghan commander Ahmad Shah Mas'ood was the victim of an assassination attempt by bin Laden this last
Sunday -- two Arab men posing as journalists exploded a bomb at a meeting being held in his office in the
Takhar Province of Northern Afghanistan.

Saudi dissident Ossama bin Laden is blamed for the attack. Osama bin Laden is not a member of the Taliban, but
apparently assists the Taliban in it's objectives by violent means.

Mas'ood's death is viewed with such deep concern that countries wary of Afghanistan's Taliban held an
emergency meeting on Thursday, representatives from Iran, Russia, Tajikistan, India and Uzbekistan attended.
His loss will be a major blow to the NA as Mas'ood has been an important Afghani leader for 22 years, fighting
the Soviet Red Army and, for the past six years, as leader of the NA.

Kamran explains, "While the whole world has been preoccupied with the events in NY and DC, this has been an
extremely painful week for millions of Afghans who will never forget their fallen heroes and the sacrifices
they have made for their country."
Alia, another Afghan-American, went on to say that, "Ahmad Shah Mas'ood was one of the bravest heroes in the
history of Afghanistan. He spent his entire lifetime fighting to free his nation. The only dream and hope he
had was for a free and peaceful Afghanistan. "

On Tuesday September 11th, two hours after the bombings of the World Trade Center, the Northern Alliance
retaliated for the assassination of their leader by shelling Kabul, the Taliban controlled capitol of
Afghanistan. At which point CNN reported that the US government could be responsible for the bombings -- and
later apologized for the erroneous report.

HISTORY
Afghanistan, once a stable nation, has been literally destroyed as it has been forced to fight a civil war the
past 20 years. Six million of its population are refugees, with more than 75 percent of the country laid to
waste.

"The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in December 1979. It was the last hot war it would fight, and one whose
failure played a leading role in its loss in the Cold War and disintegration. Afghanistan is infamous today
for being in the grip of the most benighted, fanatical and misogynist government in the world." [Cosma
Shalizi's review of "The Soviet Invasion and the Afghan Response, 1979-1982" (University of California Press,
1995), by M. Hassan Kakar, (http://www.santafe.edu/~shalizi/reviews/kakar-soviet-invasion/)]

Over the last few years the US has known that the Taliban has been a threat to the stability in the region -
the Gulf, Central Asia, and South Asia - because of the growth of terrorism and the drug trade (Afghanistan is
the second-largest producer of heroin in the world). And, especially because the Taliban can no longer be
controlled by Pakistan and therefore cannot be controlled by the United States.

The US government has been examining its options for protecting its interests in the region for some time, and
just this year chose to give the Taliban in Afghanistan $10 million dollars 'to institute a ban on drugs,'
part of an overall US aid package of $43 million dollars, hailed by U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell.

CURRENT SITUATION
According to a September 14 report by the BBC, "A quarter of Afghanistan's 26 million people face starvation
this autumn following three years of drought and the pull-out [of all foreign aid workers from the country]."
The plea for help given by the Afghan people has been for the most part been ignored.

Pakistan's own civil stability is now at extreme risk because of economic pressures from decades of mounting
debt combined with political and economic corruption that has made the country virtually ungovernable.

Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf has reluctantly promised full co-operation with US demands Saturday
September 15th, placing Pakistan in an extremely precarious situation. There are millions of Taliban-aligned
extremists in Pakistan along with Islamic militant training camps. The Pakistani corps commanders and
intelligence chiefs are deeply divided as its own secret service is backed by Islamic militants.

With current events unfolding as they are right now, Alia remembers, "Mas'ood's famous prediction that the war
would end in Pakistan. Even if Pakistan sides with the US, the Taliban-aligned fundamentalists of Pakistan
will declare a holy war against it's own government and destroy it."

... an attack on Afghanistan, could come as early as this week.

Kim Alphandary, freelance journalist and international news contributor to Radio for Peace International, has
traveled and studied extensively in Pakistan, Turkey, Colombia, Bolivia and Peru.
For more background information see http://www.antiwar.com for current coverage, such as current links
entitled: "US Troops Land in Pakistan," Taliban Threatens Pakistan with War," and "Bush Finalizes Battle
Plan."

http://www.narconews.com/alphandry1.html

Parry

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Sep 19, 2001, 12:26:47 AM9/19/01

“America’s New War” is promised to be intensive and protracted, but how
will the new war on terrorism be different from the old one, other than
the internal domestic changes Americans will experience? Defense
rhetoric -- which has for a decade had to make do with an awkward
amalgam of official enemies: drug cartels, terrorists, and rogue nation
-- now has a firm center of gravity in “Islamic terrorists.” Actual
actions in Asia, though, should not conflict with long-standing policy
objectives. If the attached article is any indication, the new war and
long-range objectives are in harmony.

-- Parry

===============================

Subject: Why Washington Wants Afghanistan
From: NY-Trans...@tania.blythe-systems.com
Date: 18 Sep 2001 11:17:19 -0500

Why Washington Wants Afghanistan

Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit

source - List: emperorsclothes URL: http://www.emperors-clothes.com

Why Washington Wants Afghanistan

by Jared Israel, Rick Rozoff & Nico Varkevisser [posted 18 September
2001]

"Does my country really understand that this is World War III? And if
this attack was the Pearl Harbor of World War III, it means there is a
long, long war ahead." (Thomas Friedman, 'New York Times,' September 13,
2001)

Key U.S. government representatives and media figures have used the
bombing of the World Trade Center (WTC) and Pentagon to create an
international state of fear.

This has swept Washington's closest allies (notably Germany and England,
though not Italy) into agreeing carte blanche to participate in U.S.
reprisals.

It has also served to obscure a most important question: does Washington
have a hidden agenda here, a strategy other than hurling bombs? If so,
what is it, and what does it mean for the world?

Amid the increasingly implausible and frequently contradictory
explanations (2) offered by U.S. government officials for their
inability or unwillingness to intervene effectively before and during
this past Tuesday's aerial attacks in New York and Washington, D.C. --
and as the cries for war drown out the voices of reason -- a deadly
scenario is unfolding.

Columns in major mainstream newspapers have borne such titles as:
"World War III" ('New York Times,' 9/13)
"Give War A Chance" ('Philadelphia Inquirer,' 9/13)
"Time To Use The Nuclear Option" ('Washington Times,' 9/14).

A government that claims it had no knowledge of or was at a loss knowing
how to deal with painstakingly organized terrorist attacks now calls for
"exterminating" previously unseen assailants by, in the words of Deputy
Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, "ending states who sponsor
terrorism."

Henry Kissinger argues ('Los Angeles Times,' 9/14) that alleged
terrorist networks must be uprooted wherever they exist. Former Israeli
Prime Minister Netanyahu writes an article entitled "Dismantle Terrorist
Supporting Regimes" ('Jerusalem Post,' 9/14).

And to raise the level of international intimidation a notch, we have
R.W. Apple, Jr. in the 'Washington Post' (9/14): "In this new kind [of]
war...there are no neutral states or geographical confines. Us or them.
You are either with us or against us."

Initially, a mix of countries was threatened as so-called 'states
supporting terrorism,' who are not with us and therefore must be against
us: Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Sudan and Syria. Although
differing in most respects, especially political ideology, they are
indeed alike in three ways: They all bear decades of U.S. government
hostility; they all have secular governments; they all have no
connection to Osama bin Laden.

In, "Give War A Chance" ('Philadelphia Inquirer'), David Perlmutter
warns that if these states do not do Washington's bidding, they must
"prepare for the systematic destruction of every power plant, every oil
refinery, every pipeline, every military base, every government office
in the entire country...the complete collapse of their economy and
government for a generation."

Meanwhile, the countries which collaborated to create the Taliban,
training and financing the forces of Osama bin Laden, and which have
never stopped pouring money into the Taliban -- namely Pakistan, close
U.S. allies Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, and the United
States itself -- have not been placed on the "we've got to get them"
list. Instead these states are touted as core allies in the New World
War against terrorism.

Raising the pitch, yesterday:

"Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said the US would engage in a
'multi-headed effort' to target terrorist organizations and up to 60
countries believed to be supporting them.

The US, Mr. Rumsfeld told American TV, "had no choice" than to pursue
"terrorists and countries giving them refuge."

The threats to bomb up to a third of the world's countries has scared
many people, worldwide. This, we think, is the intention. It serves two
functions.

First, it means that if Washington limits its aggressive action mainly
to attacking Afghanistan, the world will breathe a sigh of relief.

And we think Washington will mainly attack Afghanistan -- at first.
Other immediate violations of sovereignty, such as the forced use of
Pakistan, will be backup action to support the attack on Afghanistan.
There may also be some state terror, such as increased, unprovoked
bombing of Iraq, as a diversion. But the main immediate focus will, we
think, be Afghanistan.

Second, this scare tactic is meant to divert attention from Washington's
real strategy, far more dangerous than the threat to bomb many states.
Washington wants to take over Afghanistan in order to speed up the
fulfillment of its strategy of pulverizing the former Soviet Republics
in the same way Washington has been pulverizing the former Yugoslavia.
This poses the gravest risks to [humanity].

WHAT DOES WASHINGTON WANT WITH IMPOVERISHED AFGHANISTAN?

To answer this question, look at any map of Europe and Asia. Consider
the immense spread of the former Soviet Union, particularly Russia.

European Russia is 1,747,112 square miles. That's between a third and
half the landmass of all Europe. Add the Asian part of Russia and you
get 6,592,800 sq. mi. That's equal to most of the US and China combined.
More than half of Africa.

Russia borders Finland in the far West. It borders Turkey and the
Balkans in the south. It extends to the edge of Asia in the Far East. It
is the rooftop of Mongolia and China.

Not only is Russia spectacularly large, with incalculable wealth, mostly
untapped, but it is the only world-class nuclear power besides the U.S.
Contrary to popular opinion, Russia's military might has not been
destroyed; indeed, it is arguably stronger, in relation to the US, than
during the early period of the Cold War. It has the most sophisticated
submarine technology in the world.

If the U.S. can break up Russia and the other former Soviet Republics
into weak territories dominated by NATO, Washington would have a free
hand to exploit Russia's great wealth and do whatever it wanted
elsewhere without fear of Russian power.

Despite talk of Russia and the U.S. working together, and despite the
great harm that has been done to Russia by the International Monetary
Fund (IMF), this remains the thrust of US policy. (3)

Afghanistan is strategically placed, not only bordering Iran, India, and
even, for a small stretch, China (!) but, most important, sharing
borders and a common religion with the Central Asian Republics of the
former Soviet Union (SU): Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan. These
in turn border Kazakhstan, which borders Russia.

Central Asia is strategic not only for its vast deposits of oil, as we
are often told but, more important, for its strategic position. Were
Washington to take control of these Republics, NATO would have military
bases in the following key areas: the Baltic region; the Balkans and
Turkey; and these Republics. This would constitute a noose around
Russia's neck.

Add to that Washington's effective domination of the former Soviet
Republics of Azerbaijan and Georgia in the south, and the US would be
positioned to launch externally instigated 'rebellions' all over Russia.

NATO, whose current doctrine allows it to intervene in states bordering
NATO members, could then initiate "low intensity wars" including the use
of tactical nuclear weapons, also officially endorsed by current NATO
doctrine, in 'response' to myriad 'human rights abuses.'

It is ironic that Washington claims it must return to Afghanistan to
fight Islamist terrorism, because it was precisely in its effort to
destroy Russian power that Washington first created the Islamist
terrorist apparatus in Afghanistan during the '80s.

This was not, as some say, a matter of aiding rebels against Russian
expansionism. Whatever one thinks about the Soviet intervention in
Afghanistan, it was in fact conceived as a defensive action to preserve,
not alter, the world balance of power. It was the United States which
took covert action to 'encourage' Russian intervention, with the goal of
turning the conservative rural Afghan tribesmen into a force to drain
the Soviet Union. This is admitted by Zbigniew Brzezinski, the key
National Security chief at the time.

Consider the following excerpts from two newspaper reports.

First, from the 'N.Y. Times':

"The Afghan resistance was backed by the intelligence services of the
United States and Saudi Arabia with nearly $6 billion worth of weapons.
And the territory targeted last week [this was published after the
August, 1998 U.S. missile attack on Afghanistan], a set of six
encampments around Khost, where the Saudi exile Osama bin Laden has
financed a kind of 'terrorist university,' in the words of a senior
United States intelligence official, is well known to the Central
Intelligence Agency.

"... some of the same warriors who fought the Soviets with the C.I.A.'s
help are now fighting under Mr. bin Laden's banner.... ('NY Times,' 24
August 1998 pages A1 & A7 )

And this from the London 'Independent':

"The Afghan Civil War was under way, and America was in it from the
start -- or even before the start, if [former National Security Adviser,
and currently top foreign policy strategist Zbigniew] Brzezinski himself
is to be believed.

'"We didn't push the Russians to intervene,' he told an interviewer in
1998, 'but we consciously increased the probability that they would do
so. This secret operation was an excellent idea. Its effect was to draw
the Russians into the Afghan trap. You want me to regret that?' [said
Brzezinski]

"The long-term effect of the American intervention from cold-warrior
Brzezinski's perspective was 10 years later to bring the Soviet Union to
its knees. But there were other effects, too.

"To keep the war going, the CIA, in cahoots with Saudi Arabia and
Pakistan's military intelligence agency ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence
Directorate), funneled millions and millions of dollars to the
Mujahedeen. It was the remotest and the safest form of warfare: the US
(and Saudi Arabia) provided funds, and America also a very limited
amount of training. They also provided the Stinger missiles that
ultimately changed the face of the war.

"Pakistan's ISI did everything else: training, equipping, motivating,
and advising. And they did the job with panache: Pakistan's military
ruler at the time, General Zia ul Haq, who himself held strong
fundamentalist leanings, threw himself into the task with a passion."
('The Independent' (London) 17 September 2001. Our emphasis.)

Right up to the present, U.S. ally Saudi Arabia has been perhaps the key
force in financing the Taliban. But the U.S. itself has provided direct
support despite the Taliban's monstrous record of humanitarian abuse:

"The Bush administration has not been deterred. Last week it pledged
another $43 million in assistance to Afghanistan, raising total aid this
year to $124 million and making the United States the largest
humanitarian donor to the country." ('The Washington Post,' 25 May 2001)

Why have the US and its allies continued -- up to now -- to fund the
Taliban? And why nevertheless is the US now moving to attack its
monstrous creation?

It is our conviction, and that of many observers from the region in
question, that Washington ordered Saudi Arabia and Pakistan to fund the
Taliban so the Taliban could do a job: consolidate control over
Afghanistan and from there move to destabilize the former Soviet Central
Asian Republics on its borders.

But the Taliban has failed. It has not defeated the Russian-backed
Northern Alliance. Instead of subverting Central Asia in businesslike
fashion, it has indulged in blowing up statues of Buddha and terrorizing
people who deviate from the Taliban's super-repressive interpretation of
Islam.

At the same time, Russia has also been moving in the 'wrong' direction,
from Washington's perspective. The completely controllable Yeltsin has
been replaced with President Putin, who partially resists the U.S. --
for example, putting down the CIA-backed takeover of Chechnya by
Islamist terrorists linked to Afghanistan. Further, China and Russia
have signed a mutual defense pact. And despite immense European/U.S.
pressure, Russian President Putin refused to condemn Belarussian
President Lukashenko who, like the jailed but unbroken Yugoslav
President Milosevic, calls for standing up to NATO. (3a)

It is this unfavorable series of developments that has caused Washington
to increase its reliance on its all-time favorite tactic: extreme
brinkmanship.

An early sign of this brinkmanship appeared two weeks ago, just before
the Presidential elections in the former Soviet Republic of Belarus.
Belarus is in the Baltic region near Lithuania and Poland. Washington
and the European Union loathe Lukashenko because he has refused to turn
his small country over to the International Monetary Fund and dismantle
all the social guarantees of the Soviet era. Moreover he called for
defending Yugoslavia. He even wants Belarus, Ukraine and Russia to
reunite. This desire to have former Soviet Republics get back together
puts him square in the path of Washington's policy, which is to break
these Republics up into even smaller pieces.

For months, Washington and the Europeans have been meddling in the
Belarussian elections. Washington admits to funding some 300
'Non-Governmental Organizations' in Belarus. This in a country of some
10 million souls.

As if this wasn't sufficient, just before the elections, U.S. Ambassador
to Belarus Michael Kozak issued a truly startling statement:

"[Ambassador Kozak wrote to a British newspaper that] America's
'objective and to some degree methodology are the same' in Belarus as in
Nicaragua, where the US backed the Contras against the left-wing
Sandinista Government in a war that claimed at least 30,000 lives."
("The Times" (UK), 3 September 2001.) (4)

As you may recall, the Contras were a terrorist outfit that Washington
financed during the 1980s to destroy the Left-wing Nationalist
Sandinista government in Nicaragua. the Contras specialized in raiding
farming villages where they slaughtered the inhabitants; that is, when
they were not smuggling drugs. This all came out during the Iran-Contra
scandal.

Now Washington has cynically used the mass slaughter at the World Trade
Center and the lesser attack on the Pentagon to rally its NATO forces,
invoking Article Five of NATO's charter, under which all members of NATO
must respond to an attack on any one. This has the goal of a) putting
together a "peacekeeping force" for Afghanistan b) launching air and
possibly ground attacks c) eliminating the obstinate and incompetent
leadership of the Taliban and d) taking direct control through the
creation of a U.S.-dominated NATO military occupation.

Some argue that NATO would be crazy to try to pacify Afghanistan. They
say the British failed to do it in the 1800's, and the Russians failed
in the 1980's.

But Washington does not need or intend to pacify Afghanistan. It needs a
military presence sufficient to organize and direct indigenous forces to
penetrate the Central Asian republics and instigate armed conflict.

Rather than trying to defeat the Taliban, Washington will make the
Taliban an offer they cannot refuse: Work with the U.S.; get plenty of
money and guns plus a free hand to direct the drug trade, just as the
U.S. has permitted the KLA to make a fortune from drugs in the Balkans.
(5)

Or oppose the U.S., and die.

In this way, Washington hopes to duplicate what it did in Kosovo where
NATO took drug-dealing gangsters and violently anti-Serbian
secessionists and out of that raw material fashioned the terrorist
Kosovo Liberation Army.

In this case the raw material would mainly be members of the Taliban.
Reorganized and under strict direction, reborn as Liberation Fighters,
they would be directed against the Central Asian Republics of the former
Soviet Union. This would duplicate what NATO has done in the Balkans.
There it has sent the KLA, beefed up by Islamist reinforcements and
'advised' by U.S. specialists, against neighboring Macedonia.

As the Central Asian Republics battle the intruders, NATO could offer
them military assistance, thus penetrating the region on both sides by
means of a conflict instigated by Washington. This tactic of
simultaneously attacking and defending Central Asia =- has been employed
to great effect against Macedonia. The goal is to produce decimated,
NATO-dominated territories. No more Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and
Tajikistan. (6) Then on to Kazakhstan, and then Russia.

This strategy cannot be sold to the American people. We repeat: it
cannot be sold.

It is for that reason that the Bush administration is using the tragic
nightmare of murder in New York, which itself occurred under
circumstances suggesting the complicity of Washington's covert forces,
to create international hysteria sufficient to drag NATO into the
strategic occupation of Afghanistan and an intensified assault on the
former Soviet Union. (7)

Before anyone sighs with relief, thinking, "Thank God this is all that's
happening," consider that apart from the violation of national
sovereignty and many other very negative aspects of Washington's plans,
the attack on Afghanistan brings NATO to Russia's Central Asian
doorstep. This is a strategic escalation of conflict, moving us all much
closer -- nobody knows how much closer and nobody knows how fast things
will escalate -- to worldwide nuclear war.

Will Washington get away with it? Washington, and the giant capitalists
who control it, obviously think Russia will let itself be destroyed. But
then, as the Greeks say, "Pride is followed by self-destruction."

The Russians are very deceptive. They try to avoid a fight. But as Mr.
Hitler discovered, when they are pushed to the wall, they fight with the
ferocity of lions. And they have tens of thousands of nuclear weapons.

Thus Washington is playing with the possibility of a war which would
make the horror that occurred last Tuesday at the World Trade Center, or
even the much larger-scale horror of the U.S. terror-bombing of
Yugoslavia, look like previews of hell. (8) - Emperor's Clothes