NP:rhetoric and belief

[no fun]

That and the "people" of the Soviet Union had absolutely no recourse, or
real information on what was actually going on.

----- Original Message -----
From: <kevin at limits.org>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Saturday, September 29, 2001 2:47 PM
Subject: Re: NP:rhetoric and belief


> On Sat, 29 Sep 2001, pynchon-l-digest wrote:
> > From: "rhaenda" <rhaenda at swbell.net>
> > Subject: NP:rhetoric and belief
> >
> > This is a multi-part message in MIME format.
> >
> > Two observations on recent postings:=20
> > 1) Much is made by some over U.S. responsibility for the plight of the =
> > Afghani people due to previous U.S. support for bin Laden, u.s.w.  Yet,
=
> > I have have not seen (or perhaps I have failed to notice) any =
> > attribution of responsibility for the same privatio boni given to the =
> > people of the former Soviet Union.
>
> [snip]
>
> Everyone knows the Soviets did terrible things in Afganistan.  It hasn't
> been that long since American news media would tell their
> readers/viewers/etc. what the Soviets were doing there.  Tom Clancy
> readers followed the glorious struggle of the Mujahadeem on side-stages of
> _Red Storm Rising_ and _Cardinal of the Kremlin_, and Bond fans saw them
> selling opium in that first Timothy Dalton flick.  It's fucking obvious
> that the Soviet Union, through its Red Army, invaded and for 10 years made
> war upon the Afgani people.
>
> The reason Americans, in general, don't blame the Soviet Union for
> bin-Laden is that Soviet war upon the people of Afganistan was a given, an
> unavoidable evil, a constant, if you will, from 1979 on.  The American
> foriegn policy to deal with that situation, however, _was_ controllable,
> as was and American Middle East policy in general.  In 1989, the USA
> turned its back on Afganistan, which has turned out to be a mistake,
> because it let a whole lot of Afganis down, ya know?  Bin-Laden's big
> gripe against the USA, its military presence in Saudi Arabia -- nope,
> that's not Brezhnev's doing, either.
>
> It's much the same reason Americans in the 60s didn't blame their mistakes
> in Vietnam on the French.