NP: Al Qaeda/Allen Dulles

[ish mailian]

By Spy vs Spy I mean that neither, as Coll says, "fully understood the
other's calculus" (43), though both were ignoring the complex involvement
of other more significant and powerful sources of instability, chiefly Iran
but also Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and China.

The US, though donning he White Hat, blackened as it was by the Post-Nixon
exposures of CIA activity, had no presence, no reasoned or supported plan,
no calculus, nothing in Afghanistan, not much anywhere as Carter had sacked
the operators and the CIA, a demoralized staff, had its budget cut, its
covert activities dismantled, while the Soviets calculus was in crisis,
exploding in their faces.




On Sun, Dec 20, 2015 at 11:33 AM, john bove <malignd at gmx.com> wrote:

> Was about to write the same thing, although I don't think he describes spy
> v. spy stupidity, rather a situation with yoo many conflicting intererests
> for any coherent policy.
>
> *Sent:* Saturday, December 19, 2015 at 6:57 PM
> *From:* "ish mailian" <ishmailian at gmail.com>
> *To:* Pynchon-l at waste.org
> *Subject:* Re: NP: Al Qaeda/Allen Dulles
> Thomas,
>
> If you've not read it, get hold of Steve Coll's _Ghost Wars_
> The sad and pathetic fumbling and paranoid to Mad Magazine, Spy vs Spy
> stupidity of the Soviets and the CIA is described in the fist few chapters.
>
> On Sat, Dec 19, 2015 at 6:40 PM, ish mailian <ishmailian at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> The war did not "inevitably follow" US support of any group or leader or
>> revolt or whatever. Like other complex conflicts it has many causes. The
>> major cause was Soviet ignorance of the people it tried to control and
>> subjugate, and of Islam generally, and Iran, the revolution in Iran.
>>
>> On Sat, Dec 19, 2015 at 6:25 PM, ish mailian <ishmailian at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>>
>>> How do others read this paragraph?
>>> I read it as total bullshit.
>>> It hints, because there is no basis to argue the case, that the CIA
>>> support of Afghan rebels, during the Carter Presidency, is responsible for
>>> the Russian Invasion of Afghanistan, and the deaths, one million, of that
>>> war.
>>>
>>> Please. Very slick, but only a fool could believe this shit.
>>>
>>> In fact, the CIA had been backing Afghan Islamists well before the
>>> Russians invaded the country in December 1979. Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jimmy
>>> Carter’s national-security adviser, later boasted to *Le Nouvel
>>> Observateur* that the president had “signed the first directive for
>>> secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul” six months
>>> *prior* to the invasion. “And that very day,” Brzezinski recalled, “I
>>> wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my
>>> opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.” The
>>> war that inevitably followed killed a million Afghans.
>>>
>>> On Sat, Dec 19, 2015 at 4:02 PM, Thomas Eckhardt <
>>> thomas.eckhardt at uni-bonn.de> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> FYI:
>>>>
>>>> http://harpers.org/archive/2016/01/a-special-relationship/
>>>>
>>>> http://www.ctka.net/2015/TalbotDulles.html
>>>> -
>>>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>>>
>>> - Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
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