On the Fourth of July
July 5, 2008
July 4th, 2008, U.S. Independence Day. Last night we watched Charlie Wilson’s War. It is the remarkable account of how Congressman Charlie Wilson and a maverick CIA agent managed to secure arms for Afghan freedom fighters. It is the story of how they helped a rag-tag army of peasants destroy the mighty army of the Soviet Union and eventually the entire Soviet Empire.
Ronald Reagan’s major contribution to the destruction of the “Evil Empire” was embodied in a speech in Germany, “Tear this wall down.” Jimmy Carter’s major contribution: planning to and arming the Afghans and bankrupting the Soviets. This is probably the last time our Conservatives and Liberals actually were forced to work together because we needed them to. [1]
It was all about the money! Ten years in Afghanistan, that poor little mountainous patch of dirt, and the mightiest empire of all time had spent its last breath with its last ruble. Now, perhaps, the noblest and most overlooked “Democrat” of all, Mikail Gorbichev, the man who had waited his whole life for the opportunity, could dissolve that dictatorship and end the tyranny- and then fade into oblivion.
The world looked so good to us that Fourth of July. Little did we know that Mr. Reagan, afflicted with Alzheimer’s disease, would sell out the Russians, the Poles, and all of those poor Soviet Satellite countries, to the International Monetary Fund and its Commie buddies. Little did we know that the IMF would give all that loan money to the very same guys that had bankrupted their economies just months before, so they could rape and pillage their own people yet again, so they could send all that wealth to Swiss banks.
Mr. Reagan, a true “conservative,” would lobby for “Star Wars,” to continue Orson Wells’ brave battle against the Martian invasion of the 1930s. (So far the only documented invasion thwarted by this ingenious concept.) He would cut back our armed forces and substitute multiple billion-dollar space toys, a tradition continued by the brilliant Donald Rumsfeld, Mattel and the Tooth Fairy.
Allen Finkelstein, D.O.
[1] Carter advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski stated "According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the mujahideen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise." Brzezinski himself played a fundamental role in crafting U.S. policy, which, unbeknownst even to the mujahideen, was part of a larger strategy "to induce a Soviet military intervention." In a 1998 interview with Le Nouvel Observateur, Brzezinski recalled:
We didn't push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would...That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Soviets into the Afghan trap...The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter. We now have the opportunity of giving to the Soviet Union its Vietnam War. [19]
Additionally, on July 3, 1979, U.S. President Carter signed a presidential finding authorizing funding for anticommunist guerrillas in Afghanistan. [20] As a part of the Central Intelligence Agency program Operation Cyclone , the massive arming of Afghanistan's mujahideen was started. [21]