The Destruction Was Mutual

An excellent article at Counterpunch by William Blum. Here's what he has to say about the US and Afghanistan:

In their need to defend the US occupation of Afghanistan, many Americans have cited the severe oppression of women in that desperate land and would have you believe that the United States is the last great hope of those poor ladies. However, in the 1980s the United States played an indispensable role in the overthrow of a secular and relatively progressive Afghan government, one which endeavored to grant women much more freedom than they'll ever have under the current government, more perhaps than ever again. Here are some excerpts from a 1986 US Army manual on Afghanistan discussing the policies of this government concerning women: “provisions of complete freedom of choice of marriage partner, and fixation of the minimum age at marriage at 16 for women and 18 for men”; “abolished forced marriages”; “bring [women] out of seclusion, and initiate social programs”; “extensive literacy programs, especially for women”; “putting girls and boys in the same classroom”; “concerned with changing gender roles and giving women a more active role in politics”.

The overthrow of this government paved the way for the coming to power of an Islamic fundamentalist regime, followed by the awful Taliban. And why did the United States in its infinite wisdom choose to do such a thing? Mainly because the Afghan government was allied with the Soviet Union and Washington wanted to draw the Russians into a hopeless military quagmire -- "We now have the opportunity of giving to the Soviet Union its Vietnam War”, said Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter’s National Security Adviser.

The women of Afghanistan will never know how the campaign to raise them to the status of full human beings would have turned out, but this, some might argue, is but a small price to pay for a marvelous Cold War victory.

Brzezinski has denied this allegation, but it's certain that the US sided with the Islamists against the modernizers in Afghanistan.

The whole article is worth your attention -- see especially the section on Cuba.

Obamamania Crapaganda Bites the Dust

William Blum's article at Counterpunch yesterday summed it up nicely:

Okay, at least some things are settled. When George W. Bush said "The United States does not torture", everyone now knows it was crapaganda. And when Barack Obama, a month into his presidency, said "The United States does not torture", it likewise had all the credibility of a 19th century treaty between the US government and the American Indians. ...

And when Obama says, as he does repeatedly, "We need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards", why is it that no one in the media asks him what he thinks of the Nuremberg Tribunal looking backwards in 1946? Or the Church Committee of the US Senate doing the same in 1975 and producing numerous revelations about the criminality of the CIA, FBI, and other government agencies that shocked and opened the eyes of the American people and the world?

On the same day there was another article by Fidel Castro, and again I was struck by Castro's intelligence and good writing, compared to the flabby and evasive chatter of American politicians. (Maybe he didn't write these pieces; but if so, he chooses better, smarter ghostwriters than American politicians do.) I know very well that being a good writer doesn't make one a good person, and Castro is a dictator, though if he were only a dictator the US would have no objection to him. We usually get along well with dictators, including those far more brutal than Castro, as long as they spend the money we give them on pleasure palaces, shoes, and Swiss bank accounts instead of literacy campaigns and training doctors. It doesn't say much, but I'd much rather have a beer with Castro than with Obama.