Blog PostsGod Is On Their Side: No Regrets for America's Jihad Wars
By Jim Kavanagh at Jan 18, 2013 |
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It’s a daisy chain of horrific violence, all of which can be traced directly back to a decision made by a Democratic president and his National Security Advisor to arm, train, and send out into the world a new army of radical jihadis, in order to entice the godless communists into an historic trap in Afghanistan. The actors from that drama were hired again last year by another Democratic president in Libya, and are being remobilized today in Syria – even as the blowback from their comrades in Mali becomes virtually instantaneous.
No force in the world has done more than the government of the United States to create a radical global jihad army.
It’s a blowback world.
Some excerpts:
Today:
“Algeria’s interior minister, Daho Ould Kablia, said that the seizure of the gas field had been overseen by Mokhtar Belmokhtar, an Algerian who fought Soviet forces in Afghanistan in the 1980s and has reportedly established his own group in the Sahara after falling out with other local Qaeda leaders.”1
Yesterday
“But this intervention is itself the consequence of another. The Libyan war is frequently touted as a success story for liberal interventionism. Yet the toppling of Muammar Gaddafi’s dictatorship had consequences that Western intelligence services probably never even bothered to imagine. Tuaregs – who traditionally hailed from northern Mali – made up a large portion of his army. When Gaddafi was ejected from power, they returned to their homeland: sometimes forcibly so as black Africans came under attack in post-Gaddafi Libya, an uncomfortable fact largely ignored by the Western media.
“But the Libyan war was seen as a success, too; and here we are now engaging with its catastrophic blowback. … The price of Western interventions may often be ignored by our media, but it is still paid nonetheless.
“It is the responsibility of all of us to scrutinise what our governments do in our name; if we cannot learn that from Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, then it is hopeless.”2 (The Independent)
The Day Before Yesterday
“Abdel-Hakim al-Hasidi, the Libyan rebel leader, has said jihadists who fought against allied troops in Iraq are on the front lines of the battle against Muammar Gaddafi's regime. Mr al-Hasidi admitted he had earlier fought against ‘the foreign invasion’ in Afghanistan …
“He was later handed over to the US, and then held in Libya before being released in 2008.”3 (The Telegraph)
The Day of Creation
“It should by now be generally accepted that the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan on Christmas Eve 1979 was deliberately provoked by the United States. In his memoir published in 1996, the former CIA director Robert Gates made it clear that the American intelligence services began to aid the mujahidin guerrillas not after the Soviet invasion, but six months before it. In an interview two years later with Le Nouvel Observateur, President Carter's national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski proudly confirmed Gates' assertion. ‘According to the official version of history,’ Brzezinski said, ‘CIA aid to the mujahidin began during 1980, that's to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan. But the reality, kept secret until now, is completely different: on 3 July 1979 President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And on the same day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained that in my opinion this aid would lead to a Soviet military intervention.’
“Asked whether he in any way regretted these actions, Brzezinski replied: ‘Regret what? The secret operation was an excellent idea. It drew the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? On the day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter, saying, in essence: 'We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam War.’
Nouvel Observateur: "And neither do you regret having supported Islamic fundamentalism, which has given arms and advice to future terrorists?"
Brzezinski: "What is more important in world history? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some agitated Muslims or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the Cold War?"4
(Chalmers Johnaon)
Before the Big Bang
“By then [1954], the group's [Muslim Brotherhood] chief international organizer and best-known official was Said Ramadan, the son-in-law of Hassan al-Banna [founder of the Muslim Brotherhood]. Ramadan had come to the attention of both the CIA and MI-6, the British intelligence service. In researching my book ... I came across an unusual photograph that showed Ramadan with President Eisenhower in the Oval Office. By then, or soon after, Ramadan had likely been recruited as a CIA agent. Wall Street Journal reporter Ian Johnson has since documented the close ties between Ramadan and various Western intelligence services ... Johnson writes: ‘By the end of the decade, the CIA was overtly backing Ramadan.'"5 (Robert Dreyfuss)
President Dwight D. Eisenhower in the Oval Office with a group of Muslim delegates, 1953. Said Ramadan is second from the right.
And as Brendan O’Neill, in “Today’s ‘Islamic Fascists’ Were Yesterday’s Friends,” cites former CIA agent Robert Baer: “the ‘logic of the Cold War’ meant that the U.S. was willing to support radical Islamists even if they carried out activities such as assassinations or political agitation designed to foment conflict. …If Allah agreed to fight on our side, fine. If Allah decided that political assassination was permissible, that was fine too, as long as no one talked about it in polite company.”6
Today and Yesterday are getting closer and closer.
Links and Notes
1“Some Hostages Killed, but Raid Rescues Many, Algeria Says”
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/18/world/africa/algeria-militants-hostages.html?hp&pagewanted=all
2“The war in Libya was seen as a success, now here we are engaging with the blowback in Mali”
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/the-war-in-libya-was-seen-as-a-success-now-here-we-are-engaging-with-the-blowback-in-mali-8449588.html
3“Libyan rebel commander admits his fighters have al-Qaeda links “ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/libya/8407047/Libyan-rebel-commander-admits-his-fighters-have-al-Qaeda-links.html
4“Chalmers Johnson, The CIA and a Blowback World” http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175578/best_of_tomdispatch%253A_chalmers_johnson%252C_the_cia_and_a_blowback_world/?utm_source=TomDispatch&utm_campaign=db3e64c238-TD_Johnson8_5_2012&utm_medium=email#more
5“What Is the Muslim Brotherhood, and Will It Take Over Egypt?” http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/02/what-is-the-muslim-brotherhood
And see Rpbert Dreyfuss’s excellent book, Devil's Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam (American Empire Project). for a full story of how the US collaborated with conservative Islamic fundamentalists for thirty years, setting up for the fateful step of arming and training a global radical jihadi movement in Afghanistan.
