Pissing It All Away- American Military Hubris
That is what Obama is doing. Instead of doing the smart thing and getting out of Iraq he is listening to the next generation of Neocons. The Brzezinski crew that works in tandem with the Kissinger gang to end the Soviet Union were successful in their global war games. They got the Soviet Union embroiled in Afghanistan, bled it and then used Saudi Oil to depress the world price of oil to dry up funding for the Soviet War machine. It broke their backs and when they couldn’t get loans to feed their people in the late 1980’s the game was up and the Soviet Union pulled out of eastern Europe and Transoxiana.
The blow back was the Muslim fundamentalism. This is from the Wikepedia site on Brzezinski
“Brzezinski, known for his hard line policies on the Soviet Union, initiated in 1979 a campaign supporting mujaheddin in Pakistan and Afghanistan, which were run by Pakistani security services with financial support from the CIA and Britain’s MI6. This policy had the explicit aim of promoting radical Islamist and anti-Communist forces to overthrow the secular communist People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan government in Afghanistan, which had been destabilized by coup attempts against Hafizullah Amin, the power struggle within the Soviet-supported Parcham faction of the PDPA and a subsequent Soviet military intervention.
Years later, in a 1997 CNN/National Security Archive interview, Brzezinski detailed the strategy taken by the Carter administration against the Soviets in 1979:
We immediately launched a twofold process when we heard that the Soviets had entered Afghanistan. The first involved direct reactions and sanctions focused on the Soviet Union, and both the State Department and the National Security Council prepared long lists of sanctions to be adopted, of steps to be taken to increase the international costs to the Soviet Union of their actions. And the second course of action led to my going to Pakistan a month or so after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, for the purpose of coordinating with the Pakistanis a joint response, the purpose of which would be to make the Soviets bleed for as much and as long as is possible; and we engaged in that effort in a collaborative sense with the Saudis, the Egyptians, the British, the Chinese, and we started providing weapons to the Mujaheddin, from various sources again—for example, some Soviet arms from the Egyptians and the Chinese. We even got Soviet arms from the Czechoslovak communist government, since it was obviously susceptible to material incentives; and at some point we started buying arms for the Mujaheddin from the Soviet army in Afghanistan, because that army was increasingly corrupt.
Milt Bearden wrote in The Main Enemy that Brzezinski, in 1980, secured an agreement from King Khalid of Saudi Arabia to match US contributions to the Afghan effort dollar for dollar and that Bill Casey would keep that agreement going through the Reagan administration.
In 1998, Brzezinski was interviewed by the French newspaper Nouvel Observateur on the topic of Afghanistan. He revealed that CIA support for the mujaheddin had started before the 1979 Soviet invasion. Brzezinski saw the invasion as an opportunity to embroil the Soviet Union in a bloody conflict comparable to the US experience in Vietnam. He referred to this as the “Afghan Trap” and viewed the end of the Soviet empire as worth the cost of strengthening militant Islamic groups.
He went on to say in that interview, “What is most important to the history of the world? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?” When the interviewer questioned him about Islamic fundamentalism representing a world menace, Brzezinski said, “Nonsense!”
In his 1997 book The Grand Chessboard, Brzezinski says that assistance to the Afghan resistance was a tactic designed to bog down the Soviet army while the United States built up a deterrent military force in the Persian Gulf to prevent Soviet political or military penetration farther south (see the Carter Doctrine).”
This makes it pretty obvious that the same case can be made that there are forces in the world that would like to see the USA weaker. The Europeans are not putting nearly the manpower in country in Afghanistan and the Muslim fundamentalists only grow stronger with the continued presence of American and allied Crusader troops. Who benefits the most? China. With the USA embroiled China gets to go around the world offering financial aid with no strings attached. All they ask for is economic relations.
Here is Brzezinski again on the current state of affairs in Afghanistan from the New York Times.
A Somber Warning on Afghanistan Sign in to Recommend
By ALISON SMALE
Published: September 13, 2009
GENEVA — Western powers now in Afghanistan run the risk of suffering the fate of the Soviet Union there if they cannot halt the growing insurgency and an Afghan perception that they are foreign invaders, according to Zbigniew Brzezinski, the former U.S. national security adviser to President Jimmy Carter.
In a speech opening a weekend gathering of military and foreign policy experts, Mr. Brzezinski, who was national security adviser when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in late 1979, endorsed a British and German call, backed by France, for a new international conference on the country. He also set the tone for a weekend of somber assessments of the situation.
He noted that it took about 300 U.S. Special Forces — fighting with Northern Alliance troops — to overthrow Taliban rule after the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001.
Now, however, with about 100,000 U.S. and allied troops in Afghanistan, those forces are increasingly perceived as foreign invaders, much as the Soviet troops were from the start, Mr. Brzezinski said.
For President Barack Obama, Afghanistan is the foreign policy issue that has “perhaps the greatest need for strategic review,” said Mr. Brzezinski, who met with Mr. Obama during the presidential campaign last year, and endorsed his candidacy but was not a formal adviser.
“We are running the risk of replicating — obviously unintentionally — the fate of the Soviets,” Mr. Brzezinski said in his speech Friday night.
The presence of so many foreign troops underpins an Afghan perception that the Americans and their allies are hostile invaders and “suggests transformation of the conflict is taking place,” he added.
A new international conference would help devise a more refined strategy, Mr. Brzezinski said in a brief interview Sunday. Using the military to support a development strategy would help prolong the European presence, he suggested — “our European friends are less likely to leave us in the lurch.”
If the United States is left alone in Afghanistan, Mr. Brzezinski said Friday night, “that would probably spell the end of the Alliance.”
Why did NATO go into Afghanistan in the first place? It was a case of finding a job for an outdated military alliance. Bush did it and now Obama seems to be caught up in the same policies as the Bush administration. Gates is the same Secretary of Defence and Obama does not seem to be ready to listen to Brzezinski’s words of wisdom. But he is an old cold warrior. In his mind it was always about freeing Poland and eastern Europe from the Soviet Union. The rest of it, especially the traditional concern for Israel is to him small potatoes.
And he is right on that score. Israel is an outpost of western European cultural imperialism in the Caliphate. The Muslim world sees the Jews, formerly neutral in the conflicts between Islam and Christianity now taking sides with Christianity for reasons that seem to be more of a Faustian bargain than anything else. Western guilt over Nazi Germany’s attempt to exterminate the Jews converted into a British inspired attempt to maintain second hand control over the Middle East using European Jewish bodies and American military and financial might and British guile to keep control of the sea lanes and access to oil in Arab hands.
Brzezinski wanted to see his people set free from the Russian Bear. The Polish people had been dominated by Russia for two centuries. He finessed that one and in the process set off a chain of events that led to 9-11.
Regan with his obsession to bring about the end of history by destroying the Soviet Union and the American labor movement at home, making the world safe for capitalist domination led him to continue the Brzezinski policies in Afghanistan and add his own dimension the oil deal with the Saudis.
In this CIA Chief Casey made the deals alright. This is from a book review by Jim Blair, from Big Issue Ground.
“Victory : The Reagan Administration’s Secret Strategy That Hastened the Collapse of the Soviet Union
By Peter Schweizer, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution.
Atlantic Monthly Press, 1994.
William Casey had developed his skills in economic warfare during WW II when he was promoted from a junior officer to direct the OSS economic campaign against Nazi Germany.
He was appointed Director of the CIA by Reagan and was given support find the weak points in the Soviet economy and to take action to cripple the USSR.
Casey decided that the sale of energy was critical to the USSR. Oil provided half of the hard currency they needed to buy technology from the West. And they needed Western technology both to develop their energy reserves and to keep their military current in the face of new technology developed by the USA.
The USSR also faced unrest in Eastern Europe, especially Poland, and from Muslim minorities in many of the central Asian republics.
Casey immediately started taking action to exploit these weaknesses. In April 1981 he took a 3 week trip in a specially outfitted black C-141 Starlifter. First to Cairo to meet with Anwar Sadat about using Egypt to supply the Afghani mujahedin with more and better quality Soviet made weapons.
Next stop was Saudi Arabia to talk with members of the Royal family about the price of oil. He wanted the Saudis to pump more and thus lower the price. They were concerned about the protection of their air force. They knew from the 1967 Six Day War that a surprise air attack can destroy an air force in minutes, and wanted an airborne radar protection system. The US had what the Saudis wanted in AWACS. For Saudi Arabia, AWACS for more oil production was a win-win situation, since they also got more revenue from the greater volume, even at the lower price.
While a Saudi AWACS was more for protection against Iran than Israel, Casey knew Israel would voice strong objection to the US giving it to Saudi Arabia. And Casey also wanted a favor from Israel. The previous CIA director, Admiral Stansfield Turner, had stressed satellite and electronic intelligence and had permitted the US “on the ground” spy network to dry up. Casey wanted to tap into Israel’s “ratline” network of spies that operated in Poland and Russia, because he didn’t have the time to recreate a US spy network.
So how to get help from the Mossad ratline and sell Saudi Arabia the AWACS? He had to give Israel something that they valued enough to offset AWACS.
So his next stop was Israel, where he provided Mossad with something they wanted very much: detailed satellite photos of the exact location and state of development the nuclear facility under construction in Iraq. Israel was very concerned about the prospect of a Iraqi nuclear bomb, and soon sent an F-16 Falcon to bomb the Iraqi nuclear plant.
The US issued a formal protest of the bombing, but we were clearly not very unhappy about it.
Meanwhile, Casey was off to Rome to meet with Vatican officials. He wanted the Catholic Church to provide information on events in Poland, and now he had two sources of information: Catholic priests and the Jewish ratline. Casey knew that the government in Poland was going to crack down on Solidarity, and that communications would be critical to the survival of the movement. So he provided Solidarity with small portable radio and communication equipment, which proved very useful when the government declared martial law and tried to wipe the labor movement out.
This short trip indicated the general plan. Cut off the source of currency the USSR needed to buy technology by lowering oil prices (which also aided the US economic recovery), and also try to restrict the sale of US technology to the USSR. Meanwhile aid rebel groups within the Soviet block, like Solidarity and Muslims, and shift the Cold War to high technology, where the Soviets could not keep pace without the ability to buy US technology. This was the game plan but the book includes information on many of the details.”
Bringing down the Soviet Union and the labor movement around the world was a big deal. Capitalism had almost convinced the world that it had ended history as we know it. But it didn’t. And now we can see the repercussions of allowing a unipolar world. The USA has pissed away its advantages by a classic case of over reach. Hubris. Instead of learning from the lessons of history and working with the world we formed under President Bush fortress America. The increased military against what are really minor threats are the modern equivalents of the Roman Empire increasing its military under Diocletian to confront the threat of the Germanic tribes. They were not serious threats but they were irritants. But the Romans militarized their state, decreased the autonomy of the provinces, eliminated the civic pride of the cities and created a massive bureaucracy focused on feeding the military. They even encouraged a new state religion to replace the old pluralism of paganism with a militant Christianity. It did work for a while but then the strain of the system brought down the western empire and the people found that rule by easy going German tribes was preferable to the strain of taxes under the Romans.
Our barbarian invasions were the 9-11 attacks, we responded with the Homeland Security Department and a military invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq. We have gone into debt to the Chinese and our wealth has been drained to the east just as Roman silver and gold was drained to the east for luxury goods from the orient. We have done more, we have outsourced our entire economy all in the name of maximizing profits. Capital has destroyed its base because it could not stand to alow the american serfs, I mean workers a few honest dollars. So for the sake of a quick buck the economic engine was sent to China. Not even as smart as the Romans who with proper disdain kept merchants in their place, as did the ancient Chinese. They knew that unbridled capitalism, or mercantilism would lead to social instability. Their civilizations lasted for millennia. Will modern capitalism see 300 years? I doubt it. We have devised a complex system that does not take into account the needs of the majority of the people. It is designed to serve the needs of an elite that is based around a military industrial complex that has a very small base of interested parties. The only way to keep the masses willing to put up with it is through repression mixed with bread and circuses. We have TV the biggest circus ever and food stamps for bread. But is it enough?
My own thoughts are that the Chinese and Indians are utilizing more of their human potential than we are and will soon dominate the world especialy the Chinese who have traditionally been the central power. Europe if it unites can form a powerful counterweight and America will drop in importance as a source of cheap grains but we have too small of a population base to ultimately compete with a united Europe or East Asia and if the Moslem world ever restores the caliphate then they will be able to take their place as the middle man between China and Europe again.