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Usual suspects
by John A. Jackson
This is from an article in Le Monde by Jean-Marie Colombani (by way of the Los Angeles Times):"If Osama bin Laden really is, as American authorities seem to think, the commander of the 11th of September, how can we not recall that Bin Laden was himself created by the CIA, that he was one of the elements of an anti-Soviet politics that the Americans believed was wise? Is it not then the United States that has given birth to this devil?"
Those crazy foreigners.
But Colombani, unfortunately, is largely right.
On Christmas Day, 1979, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. Many, many Afghans opposed the invaders.
To its credit, the Central Intelligence Agency saw almost at once that the Soviets had committed a terrible error, much the same like the one the U.S. made in Vietnam. They had ignored the entrenched nationalism of an invincible people.
But the CIA overreached. Instead of supporting partisans fighting for a conservative cause such as the restoration of Afghanistan's king-probably a plurality of all Afghans-the CIA directed American money and arms disproportionately to religious zealots.
The CIA's obvious hope was that an Islamic revolt, a jihad, would extend from Afghanistan to largely Muslim Soviet Central Asia.
American aid to the zealots was funneled through and in a large part directed by Bin Laden, who also used the Afghan refugee camps in Pakistan as recruiting bases and training grounds, as he still uses them.
In 1989, the Soviets left Afghanistan, leaving behind a million Afghan dead and a nation in ruins. Then the Soviet Union collapsed and the Cold War ended. So did U.S interest in the Afghans. Indeed, many Afghans reportedly say they hate Americans because we used and then abandoned them.
Bin Laden did not abandon them. Now, after a bloody and still unfinished civil war among the partisans, Muslim zealots friendly to Bin Laden rule most of the country.
Did the United States create Osama bin Laden? Not exactly. But he sure came in handy once upon a time.
Several points need to be made here.
First, whatever the faults of prior U.S. policy, the people killed on September 11 were innocent. They did not deserve to be murdered.
Second, the United States is not at war with a billion Muslims. In fact, the success of our efforts against the terrorists and their protectors may in the end depend on how the American majority treats the millions of loyal Islamic Americans. Religious intolerance has no place in American life. Nor can we afford it.
Third, if America decides to wage war on terrorism, as I believe we have decided, then we need to come clean now about ways in which the United States encouraged terrorists.
I do not expect former or present American officials to be hauled before international courts on war crimes charges.
But I do expect, and I believe the world expects, simple honesty about the past from our present leaders -- honesty and possibly even an attempt to make amends.
We were wrong to hire thugs to kill schoolteachers in Nicaragua. We were wrong to train and support uniformed terrorists in Chile, Honduras and Guatemala. We were wrong to underwrite whole armies of killers in southern Africa. We were wrong to empower religious fanatics in Afghanistan.
And we will not do such things again.
We must say that and mean it.
America's tasks now are relatively simple: we must trace back the September 11 terrorists and eliminate their organization, and we must destroy any government that continues to shelter them.
Those tasks are forced upon us. Vengeance has very little to do with them. Our security does. But accomplishing them will, I predict, require ground troops as well as air strikes, blood as well as money, the most precise diplomacy as well as an iron will.
And we must be ruthlessly honest, ourselves with our leaders and our leaders with us.
John A. Jackson may be reached at TomShadwell@cs.com. ER