The Unz Review • An Alternative Media Selection$A Collection of Interesting, Important, and Controversial Perspectives Largely Excluded from the American Mainstream Media Max Parry Archive A New Memoir Reveals How Brzezinski’s Chessboard Led to U.S. Checkmate in Afghanistan Email This Page to Someone Remember My Information => • B Next New CommentNext New ReplyRead More These buttons register your public Agreement, Disagreement, Thanks, LOL, or Troll with the selected comment. They are ONLY available to recent, frequent commenters who have saved their Name+Email using the 'Remember My Information' checkbox, and may also ONLY be used three times during any eight hour period. Search Text Case Sensitive Exact Words Include Comments List of Bookmarks Nearly as suspenseful as the Taliban’s meteoric return to power after the final withdrawal of American armed forces from Afghanistan is the uncertainty over what will come next amid the fallout. Many have predicted that Russia and China will step in to fill the power vacuum and convince the facelift Taliban to negotiate a power-sharing agreement in exchange for political and economic support, while others fear a descent into civil war is inevitable. Although Moscow and Beijing potentially stand to gain from the humiliating U.S. retreat by pushing for an inclusive government in Kabul, the rebranded Pashtun-based group must first be removed as a designated terrorist organization. Neither wants to see Afghanistan worsen as a hotbed of jihad, as Islamist separatism already previously plagued Russia in the Caucasus and China is still in the midst of an ongoing ethnic conflict in Xinjiang with Uyghur Muslim secessionists and the Al Qaeda-linked Turkestan Islamic Party. At this point everyone recognizes the more serious extremist threat lies not with the Taliban but the emergence of ISIS Khorasan or ISIS-K, the Islamic State affiliate blamed for several recent terror attacks including the August 26th bombings at Hamid Karzai International Airport in the Afghan capital which killed 13 American service members and more than a 100 Afghans during the U.S. drawdown. Three days later, American commanders ordered a retaliatory drone strike targeting a vehicle which they claimed was en route to detonate a suicide bomb at the same Kabul airport. For several days, the Pentagon falsely maintained that the aerial assault successfully took out two ISIS-K militants and a servile corporate media parroted these assertions unquestioningly, including concocting a totally fictitious report that the blast consisted of “secondary explosions” from devices already inside the car intended for use in an act of terror. Two weeks later, U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) was forced to apologize and admit the strike was indeed a “tragic mistake” which errantly killed ten innocent civilians — all of whom were members of a single family including seven children — while no Daesh members were among the dead. This distortion circulated in collusion between the endless war machine and the media is perhaps only eclipsed by the alleged Russian-Taliban bounty program story in its deceitfulness. If any Americans were aware of ISIS-K prior to the botched Kabul airstrike, they likely recall when former U.S. President Donald Trump authorized the unprecedented use of a Massive Ordnance Air Blast bomb, informally referred to as the “Mother Of All Bombs”, on Islamic State militants in Nangarhar Province back in 2017. Reportedly, Biden’s predecessor had to be shown photos from the 1970s of Afghan girls wearing miniskirts by his National Security Advisor, H.R. McMaster, to renege on his campaign pledge of ending the longest war in U.S. history. As it happens, the ISIS Khorasan fighters extinguished by the MOAB were sheltered at an underground tunnel complex near the Pakistani border that was built by the C.I.A. back in the 1980s during the Afghan-Soviet war. Alas, the irony of this detail was completely lost on mainstream media whose proclivity to treat Pentagon newspeak as gospel has been characteristic of not only the last twenty years of U.S. occupation but four decades of American involvement in Afghanistan since Operation Cyclone, the covert Central Intelligence Agency plan to arm and fund the mujahideen, was launched in 1979. Frank Wisner, the C.I.A. official who established Operation Mockingbird, the agency’s extensive clandestine program to infiltrate the news media for propaganda purposes during the the Cold War, referred to the press as it’s “Mighty Wurlitzer”, or a musical instrument played to manipulate public opinion. Langley’s recruitment of assets within the fourth estate was one of many illicit activities by the national security apparatus divulged in the limited hangout of the Church Committee during the 1970s, along with C.I.A. complicity in coups, assassinations, illegal surveillance, and drug-induced brainwashing of unwitting citizens. At bottom, it wasn’t just the minds of human guinea pigs that ‘The Company’ sought to control but the news coverage consumed by Americans as well. In his testimony before a congressional select committee, Director of Central Intelligence William Colby openly acknowledged the use of spooks in journalism, as seen in the award-winning documentary Inside the C.I.A.: On Company Business (1980). Unfortunately, the breadth of the secret project and its vetting of journalists wasn’t fully revealed until an article by Carl Bernstein of Watergate fame appeared in Rolling Stone magazine, whereas the series of official investigations only ended up salvaging the deep state by presenting such wrongdoings as rogue “abuses” rather than an intrinsic part of espionage in carrying out U.S. foreign policy. Clip from Inside the CIA: On Company Business (1980) CIA Funding and Manipulation of the U.S. News MediaOperation Mockingbird was a secret Central Intelligence Agency campaign to influence domestic and foreign… The corrupt institution of Western media also punishes anyone within its ranks who dares to swim against the current. The husband and wife duo of Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould, authors of a new memoir which illuminates the real story of Afghanistan, were two such journalists who learned just how the sausage is made in the nation’s capital with the connivance of the yellow press. Both veterans of the peace movement, Paul and Liz were initially among those who naively believed that America’s humiliation in Vietnam and the well-publicized hearings which discredited the intelligence community might lead to a sea change in Washington with the election of Jimmy Carter in 1976. In hindsight, there was actually good reason for optimism regarding the prospect for world peace in light of the arms reduction treaties and talks between the U.S. and Moscow during the Nixon and Ford administrations, a silver lining to Henry Kissinger’s ‘realist’ doctrine of statecraft. However, any glimmer of hope in easing strained relations between the West and the Soviet Union was short-lived, as the few voices of reason inside the Beltway presuming good faith on the part of Moscow toward détente and nuclear proliferation were soon challenged by a new bellicose faction of D.C. think tank ghouls who argued that diplomacy jeopardized America’s strategic position and that the USSR sought global dominion. ORDER IT NOW Since intelligence assessments inconveniently contradicted the claims of Soviet aspirations for strategic superiority, C.I.A. Director George H.W. Bush consulted the purported expertise of a competitive group of intellectual warmongers known as ‘Team B’ which featured many of the same names later synonymous with the neoconservative movement, including Richard Pipes, Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle. Bush, Sr. had replaced the aforementioned Bill Colby following the notorious “Halloween Massacre” firings in the Gerald Ford White House, a political shakeup which also included Kissinger’s ouster as National Security Advisor and the promotion of a young Donald Rumsfeld to Secretary of Defense with his pupil, one Richard B. Cheney, named Chief of Staff. This proto-neocon soft coup allowed Team B and its manipulated estimates of the Soviet nuclear arsenal to undermine the ongoing Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) between Washington and the Kremlin until Jimmy Carter and Leonid Brezhnev finally signed a second comprehensive non-proliferation treaty in June 1979. The behind-the-scenes split within the foreign policy establishment over which dogma would set external policymaking continued wrestling for power before the unipolarity of Team B prevailed thanks to the machinations of Carter’s National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski. If intel appraisals of Moscow’s intentions and military capabilities didn’t match the Team B thesis, the Polish-American strategist devised a scheme to lure the USSR into a trap in Afghanistan to give the appearance of Soviet expansionism in order to convince Carter to withdraw from SALT II the following year and sabotage rapprochement. By the time it surfaced that the C.I.A. was supplying weapons to Islamist insurgents in the Central Asian country, the official narrative dispensed by Washington was that it was aiding the Afghan people fight back against an “invasion” by the Red Army. Ironically, this was the justification for a proxy conflict which resulted in the deaths of at least 2 million civilians and eventually collapsed the socialist government in Kabul, setting off a bloody civil war and the emergence of the Taliban. Even so, it was the media which helped manage the perception that the C.I.A.’s covert war began only after the Soviets had intervened. Meanwhile, the few honest reporters who tried to unveil the truth about what was happening were silenced and relegated to the periphery. Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould were the first two American journalists permitted entry into the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan in 1981 by the Moscow-friendly government since Western correspondents had been barred from the country. What they witnessed firsthand on the ground could not have contrasted more sharply from the accepted tale of freedom fighters resisting a communist “occupation” disseminated by propaganda rags. Instead, what they discovered was an army of feudal tribesman and fanatical jihadists who blew up schools and doused women with acid as they waged a holy war against an autonomous, albeit flawed, progressive government in Kabul enacting land reforms and providing education for girls. In addition, they learned the Soviet military presence was being deliberately exaggerated by major outlets who either outright censored or selectively edited their exclusive accounts, beginning with CBS Evening News and later ABC’s Nightline. Not long after the Taliban established an Islamic emirate for the first time in the late 1990s, Brzezinski himself would shamelessly boast that Operation Cyclone had actually started in mid-1979 nearly six months prior to the deployment of Soviet troops later that year. Fresh off the publication of his book The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives, the Russophobic Warsaw-native told the French newspaper Le Nouvel Observateur in 1998: “Question: The former director of the CIA, Robert Gates, stated in his memoirs that the American intelligence services began to aid the Mujaheddin in Afghanistan six months before the Soviet intervention. Is this period, you were the National Security Advisor to President Carter. You therefore played a key role in this affair. Is this correct? Brzezinski: Yes. According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujaheddin began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan on December 24, 1979. But the reality, closely guarded until now, is completely otherwise: Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, 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. Q: Despite this risk, you were an advocate of this covert action. But perhaps you yourself desired this Soviet entry into the war and looked for a way to provoke it? B: It wasn’t quite like that. We didn’t push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would. Q : When the Soviets justified their intervention by asserting that they intended to fight against secret US involvement in Afghanistan , nobody believed them . However, there was an element of truth in this. You don’t regret any of this today? B: Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter, essentially: “We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war.” Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war that was unsustainable for the regime , a conflict that bought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire. Q: And neither do you regret having supported Islamic fundamentalism, which has given arms and advice to future terrorists? B : What is more important in world history? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some agitated Muslims or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the Cold War?” If this stunning admission straight from the horse’s mouth is too candid to believe, Fitzgerald and Gould obtain confirmation of Brzezinski’s Machiavellian confession from one of their own skeptics. Never mind that Moscow’s help had been requested by the legitimate Afghan government to defend itself against the U.S. dirty war, a harbinger of the Syrian conflict more than three decades later when Damascus appealed to Russia in 2015 for military aid to combat Western-backed “rebel” groups. Paul and Liz also uncover C.I.A. fingerprints all over the suspicious February 1979 assassination of Adolph Dubs, the American Ambassador to Afghanistan, whose negotiation attempts may have inadvertently thrown a wrench into Brzezinski’s ploy to draw the USSR into a quagmire. Spurring Carter to give his foreign policy tutor the green light to finance the Islamist proxies, the timely kidnapping and murder of the U.S. diplomat at a Kabul hotel would be pinned on the KGB and the rest was history. The journo couple even go as far as to imply the branch of Western intelligence likely responsible for his murder was an agent from the Safari Club, an unofficial network between the security services of a select group of European and Middle Eastern countries which carried out covert operations during the Cold War across several continents with ties to the worldwide drug trade and Brzezinski. Although he was considered to be of the ‘realist’ school of international relations like Kissinger, Brzezinski’s plot to engineer a Russian equivalent of Vietnam in Afghanistan increased the clout of neoconservatism in Washington, a persuasion that would later reach its peak of influence in the George W. Bush administration. In retrospect, the need for a massive military buildup to achieve Pax Americana promoted by the war hawks in Team B was a precursor to the influential “Rebuilding America’s Defenses manifesto by the Project for the New American Century cabal preceding 9/11 and the ensuing U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. Fitzgerald and Gould also historically trace the ideological roots of neoconservatism to its intellectual foundations in the American Trotskyist movement during the 1930s. If a deviated branch of Marxism seems like an unlikely origin source for the right-wing interventionist foreign policy of the Bush administration, its basis is not as unexpected as it may appear. In fact, one of the main reasons behind the division between the Fourth International and the Comintern was over the national question, since Trotsky’s theory of “permanent revolution” called for expansion to impose global revolution unlike Stalin’s “socialism in one country” position which respected the sovereignty and self-determination of nation states while still giving support to national liberation movements. The authors conclude by highlighting how the military overhaul successfully championed by the neoconservatives marked the beginning of the end for U.S. infrastructure maintenance as well. With public attention currently focused on the pending Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act to repair decaying industry at home just as the disastrous Afghan pullout has put President Joe Biden’s favorability at an all-time low, Fitzgerald and Gould truly connect all the dots between the decline of America as a superpower with Brzezinski and Team B. Even recent statements by Jimmy Carter himself were tantamount when he spoke with Trump about China’s economic success which he attributed to Beijing’s lack of wasteful spending on military adventures, an incredible irony given the groundwork for the defense budget escalation begun under Ronald Reagan was laid by Carter’s own foreign policy. Looking back, the spousal team note that the ex-Georgia governor did not need much coaxing after all to betray his promises as a candidate, considering his rise to the presidency was facilitated by his membership alongside Brzezinski in the Trilateral Commission, an elite Rockefeller-funded think tank. What is certain is that Paul and Liz have written an indispensable book that gives a level of insight into the Afghan story only attainable from their four decades of scholarly work on the subject. The Valediction: Three Nights of Desmond is now available from Trine Day Press and the timing of its release could not offer better context to recent world events. Max Parry is an independent journalist and geopolitical analyst. His writing has appeared widely in alternative media. Max may be reached at [email protected] Trim Comments? [] 1. The Khorasan group is a myth, a bogeyman. The US trots them out whenever it needs an excuse to arm and fund the terrorists in whatever country they just left. They’ve been around for 14 years and done absolutely nothing. 2. Notsofast says: thank you max, for this insightful look into the birth of the demon neocon baby. the biggest mistake carter ever made was listening to brzezinski and no amount of habitat for humanity charity work can make up for shaking hands with this polish devil. he is the father of the mujahideen and grandfather of the taliban and al qaeda and great grandfather of isil. for the neocons to be dumb enough to walk knowingly into the same bear trap that they set for the russians speaks volumes of both their arrogance and stupidity • Replies: , , , 3. anonymous[139] • Disclaimer says: collusion between the endless war machine and the media Nobody knows what’s really taken place there since the flow of information is tightly controlled. One would have to cover the ground themselves to find out and that’s not feasible. All major media are complete lie and spin machines 24/7. A person has to seek out information that’s not part of the spin and be aware enough to be able to evaluate it. After 20 years of occupation we’re to believe that ISIS-K just sprang out of the ground and are now blowing places up. Where’d they come from, what ethnic group are their adherents from, who is supplying them? It seems at the moment something out of the Iraq playbook of provoking conflict between the groups within a country. Mosque bombings set off Shia-Sunni conflict in Iraq and this seems to be getting repeated in Afghanistan, attacks to provoke ethnic and sectarian strife. If the leadership want war they’ll create the pretext to do it and carry the mass of deluded Americans with them. • Replies: 4. Endless jewing. It never ends. Dead goys….the bodies pile up……the nose rejoices. 5. For several days, the Pentagon falsely maintained that the aerial assault successfully took out two ISIS-K militants and a servile corporate media parroted these assertions unquestioningly, including concocting a totally fictitious report that the blast consisted of “secondary explosions” from devices already inside the car intended for use in an act of terror. The quote above reminded me of a German guy who wrote a book about the CIA owning most of the world’s journalists. The fellow is now dead of “heart failure”, and the english version of the book is not available anywhere at any price. “They” can do anything at all, and the Corporate/Zionist media will back them to the hilt. By the way, everywhere I looked Ulfkotte’s work has been scrubbed from the Internet. A footnote looked hopeful: [6] “Top German Journalist Admits Mainstream Media Is Completely Fake: We All Lie For The CIA,” Tyler Durden, ZeroHedge, 3/28/2016. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-03-28/top-german-journalist-admits-mainstream-media-completely-fake-we-all-lie-cia Dead Link. The man died 3 days short of his 57th birthday. • Replies: , 6. RobinG says: yes, and don’t forget the Carter Doctrine, that has ensnared US in ME oil intrigue 7. Franz says: Just more evidence: Even a sham republic cannot function when it’s run by a Secret State. The real scandal is the country went off the rails and much of it irretrievably during these years. 8. Z-man says: Well, I have to say it Carter made a big mistake in elevating ‘Zbig’ to international prominence. I hate to say it but he was the personification of the term ‘Dumb Pollack’. We’re still paying the price for this mistake as his stupid daughter Mika is on TV subjecting the viewers to this continued family trait. (Grin) • Agree: Derer 9. chris says: If a deviated branch of Marxism seems like an unlikely origin source for the right-wing interventionist foreign policy of the Bush administration, its basis is not as unexpected as it may appear. In fact, one of the main reasons behind the division between the Fourth International and the Comintern was over the national question, since Trotsky’s theory of “permanent revolution” called for expansion to impose global revolution unlike Stalin’s “socialism in one country” position which respected the sovereignty and self-determination of nation states while still giving support to national liberation movements. Sorry but had to interrupt my reading in order to burst out laughing at this point. To speak of Stalin’s respect for “sovereignty and self-determination of nation states“ is just too funny. To then attribute the neocon “right-wing interventionist foreign policy” on their Trotskyite founder, is of course to ignore the much closer to home explanation offered by, I think Charles Krauthammer, that the US military build-up which he and his neocon minions peddled is necessary in order to help Israel. That someone tries to shamelessly peddle this obfuscation is in some ways even funnier than discussing Stalin’s “respect” for sovereignty; in any case these assertions are like parodies of each other. 10. PingPong says: ” ongoing ethnic conflict in Xinjiang with Uyghur Muslim secessionists ” ?? Totally misinformed… mr researcher journalist 11. That Jimmy Carter is a war criminal is hardly a secret, but, being still alive at this date, he has a moral duty to apologise to all the people he murdered, from 1979 to this day. 12. Frank Wisner … referred to the press as it’s “Mighty Wurlitzer”, or a musical instrument played to manipulate public opinion. An apt analogy, because Wurlitzer made a number of instruments that could be programmed to play standard tunes. 13. “U.S. President Donald Trump authorized the unprecedented use of a Massive Ordnance Air Blast bomb, informally referred to as the “Mother Of All Bombs” Is it the same kind of MOAB that’s loaded on to a bomber to take out the threegorgeousdames? I surely hope no harm comes to the cuddly pandas! 14. chris m says: might add recent article in US machinations in Afghanistan prior to Soviet invasion https://covertactionmagazine.com/2021/10/29/1979-assassination-of-u-s-ambassador-to-afghanistan-adolph-dubs-set-groundwork-for-americas-longest-war/ 1979 Assassination of U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Adolph Dubs Set Groundwork for America’s Longest War “New evidence links Zbigniew Brzezinski, the CIA and European fascists who formed the Safari Club to the crime. Dubs had sought to prevent Soviet and U.S. intervention in Afghanistan, which made him a target of neoconservatives.” was Adolph Dubs the 1979 equivalent to Hapsburg emperor Franz-Joseph (both were sort of fall-guys) 15. chris m says: sorry about my prev comment seems i was already to make comment befor reading above article (which states the same thing) still,looking at that picture of Brzezinski playing Chess, you gotta credit him with being one of those Great Deep Thinkers of our age • Replies: 16. It’s unfortunate the publisher doen’t offer an ebook version of “The Valediction: Three Nights of Desmond”. Same issue with the latest book from Michael Hudson. Anyway I was pretty much aware of all the facts already. 17. Yee says: I’ve come to believe that ALL organized terrorist groups are US created and commanded. The US ruling class should all rot in hell… • Replies: 18. Yee says: Chinaman’s Nightmare, Why are you Indians so obsessed with the Three Gorges Dam? • Replies: 19. Beckow says: Soviet Union transformed into smaller aspirational states and Russia due to internal economic developments and social exhaustion. The influence of Afghanistan, oil prices and Reagan was marginal, a small catalyst, a throw-away talking point. Soviet Union by the early 80’s was unsustainable: elites wanted to be Western, to send kids to London and to Florida tennis camps, masses had the basics and wanted more stuff. The not-too-ambitious commie socialist plans succeeded and there was no place to go given the constrained planned economy and the self-mythologies of the ageing elite. They didn’t handle it well, but it was also not a catastrophe: Russia, Ukraine, Poland, etc… are doing well, the suffering during transition was bearable (other than for the old), and those countries are among the most promising parts of the world today. This is not to defend Brzezinski, Carter and the neo-cons. They are a symptom of what usually destroys successful countries: meddling abroad triggered by frustrated out-of-touch exiles who make-up narratives for gullible under-educated locals like Carter or Bushes. Brzezinski was a nobody without stirring up the sh..t in the ME and Poland, so he stirred. Don’t blame him, were Carter and Co. so stupid that they didn’t know who Brzezinski was and what was driving him? Today there is economic shakiness in the West and social exhaustion. The symptoms are all there: exploding debt, gender madness, polarisation, etc…There is the same obsessive attempt to look for scapegoats externally. It is not out there, it is at home. • Replies: , 20. They will not stop until every white of Nordic/Germanic bloodline is extinguished from the face of the earth. Humanity have become like frogs slowly boiling to death and all they notice is it must be global warming.. Until a collective consciousness unites for a global pushback, the wrath of GlobalHomoZioBIGsRxMIC3 will be our doom. 21. The US supports terror on the orders of others. They do what they get paid to do. Media get paid to lie about it all. Everyone has plausible deniability except the patsy. 22. Mikhail says: • Website A New Memoir Reveals How Brzezinski’s Chessboard Led to U.S. Checkmate in Afghanistan thank you max, for this insightful look into the birth of the demon neocon baby. the biggest mistake carter ever made was listening to brzezinski and no amount of habitat for humanity charity work can make up for shaking hands with this polish devil. he is the father of the mujahideen and grandfather of the taliban and al qaeda and great grandfather of isil. for the neocons to be dumb enough to walk knowingly into the same bear trap that they set for the russians speaks volumes of both their arrogance and stupidity Has been revealed and known alredy for quite some time. 23. Max Parry says: I should note his opponent on the left in that picture taken at Camp David is Menachem Begin, Israeli Prime Minister and former Zio-terrorist in the Irgun. 24. I think anyone with even a “Cliff notes” view of world history could have known that a military adventure into Afghanistan was likely to end poorly. It’s not in my nature to find much in the Biden Regency that is praise worthy, but I will give it credit for getting us out of Afghanistan, although perhaps not in the best way possible. 25. Notsofast says: ….. russia,ukraine,poland etc… russia is doing well because they freed themselves from the financial burden of their former satellites, poland is doing well because they live on the e.u. dole, ukraine however is a total basket case due to the neocon obama administration’s coup and imo will either be split up or absorbed by nato or russia after a civil war. • Replies: 26. Sean says: Afghanistan is between China and Pakistan, which is the sponsor of the Taliban and an ally of China. https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/going-global-zbigniew-brzezinski-and-chinas-rise Our long-term objective is to include China in the international framework of cooperation which we are attempting to build among the key nations of the world. The global dispersal of power precludes the possibility of either a Pax Americana or a world ordered through a Soviet-American condominium. But we believe we can attain national security in a world of diversity in part by cultivating good relations with the newly emerging countries, none of which is more important than China. Brzezinski thought that all that would be needed was Russian Communism to be defeated and by a natural process of globalizing, the world would meld into mutual economic interdependence ( similar to Walt Rostow who was behind escalation in Vietnam). It is a mindset that still characterizes contemporary America-China relations. The policy elite cannot see that when it comes to China the ideologues are those who believe individual and commercial freedom must triumph in the struggle for wealth, and so China cannot supplant the the US and the worlds economic superpower. But China is a place where the individual is not what everything revolves around. • Replies: , 27. Beckow says: ….ukraine however is a total basket case due to the neocon obama administration’s coup You are right about Ukraine, not so good. Ukraine was a basket case pre-Obama coup, but as with so many other things, the hired mulatto moron took a bad situation and made it worse. That’s what they do. I am not sure they will end up in a full-blown civil war, an economic collapse and a sudden departure of the guys who have private planes could happen (ala Kabul). Or an evolution into a larger emasculated Georgia. But it could also go boom. The US Navy ships next to Crimea act as hostages to assure restraint. Or they could pick up the Maidanistas without private planes. Poland’s dole is also ending, Knowing the Poles and their propensity to betray, once the dole is gone, they could (again) surprise. 28. RobinG says: “Afghanistan is between China and Pakistan” OMG, please find a map. • LOL: Notsofast 29. Agent76 says: 25 August 2021 The Great Game of Smashing Countries American people and Congress, Carter authorised a \$500 million “covert action” programme to overthrow Afghanistan’s first secular, progressive government. This was code-named by the CIA Operation Cyclone.

https://www.globalresearch.ca/great-game-smashing-countries/5753936

Zbigniew Brzezinski Taliban Pakistan Afghanistan pep talk 1979

In 1979 Carters National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski went into Pakistans border regions with Afghanistan to give a little pep talk to some prospective majehadeen (Holy Warriors).

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30. Sean says:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karakoram_Highway The highway, connecting the Gilgit–Baltistan region to the ancient Silk Road, runs approximately 1,300 km (810 mi) from Kashgar, a city in the Xinjiang region of China, to Abbottabad, of Pakistan. An extension of the highway southwest from Abbottabad, in the form of the N-35 highway, meets the Grand Trunk Road, N-5, at Hasan Abdal, Pakistan.

The highway cuts through the collision zone between the Eurasian and Indian plates, where China, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, and Pakistan come within 250 km (160 mi) of each other. Owing largely to the extremely sensitive state of the Kashmir conflict between India and Pakistan, the Karakoram Highway has strategic and military importance to these nations, but particularly Pakistan and China.

Pakistan has more glaciers (glacial ice) that anywhere outside the polar regions.

When the world’s most wanted man, Bin Laden was living a rifle shot away from the Pakistani West Point. Pakistan is known to have received missile parts from China. As for the Pakistani development of nuclear weapons, draw your own conclusions. Now do you think the Pakistani Secret Service is going to allow the Taliban to annoy China, which is Pakistan’s protector (against India)?

• Thanks: Johnny Rico
31. Derer says:

Beckov Castle…You forgot to mentioned the major contributing factors of the Soviet collapse i.e. it was the worldwide communication industry explosion by the internet. Communists could not prevent their lies to be exposed anymore. This coupled with the Gorbachev, a first postwar educated pacifist as General Secretary, has been elevated to power. In other words, a new Brezhnev could have kept the status quo for few more years.

On the other hand, the process of USA inevitable collapse is enhanced primarily by the globe-corporate militarists, bloodsucking leaches of the destruction, holding on to power. These are unelected backroom sinister schemers.

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32. Notsofast says:

they found themselves in operation crossfire cyclone.

33. Anonymous[275] • Disclaimer says:

It’s not quite accurate to say that the Taliban is sponsored by Afghanistan. The Talibs run Afghanistan, and were founded in and sponsored by …. wait for it… Pakistan.

34. Beckow says:

…the major contributing factors of the Soviet collapse i.e. it was the worldwide communication industry explosion by the internet.

The internet was introduced roughly in 1993-94. How it could have contributed to Soviet collapse a few years earlier is anyone’s guess. I am sure you will tell us. Or not, since that was literally impossible.

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35. Miro23 says:

Brzezinski thought that all that would be needed was Russian Communism to be defeated and by a natural process of globalizing, the world would meld into mutual economic interdependence ( similar to Walt Rostow who was behind escalation in Vietnam). It is a mindset that still characterizes contemporary America-China relations. The policy elite cannot see that when it comes to China the ideologues are those who believe individual and commercial freedom must triumph in the struggle for wealth, and so China cannot supplant the the US and the worlds economic superpower. But China is a place where the individual is not what everything revolves around.

Except that individual freedom doesn’t feature in the WEF Davos Weltanschauung.

It’s pure commercial freedom – liberated from national control and forming world spanning cartels and monopolies. It owns politicians and the media and is a new version of Stalinism where they (rather than the state) own everything and the public owns nothing – in other words a modern revival of serfdom.

America’s oligarchs want entry to China (in order to loot it) and are angry that they are blocked. Hence all the trouble.

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36. anon[230] • Disclaimer says:

Ask Malla.Where did Malla disapperar to ?

For comment @33

You see a general backlash against society and religion denigrating leftist across the west . Taliban was a reaction to the corruption and dishonesty engulfing Afghanistan .

37. ”Both veterans of the peace movement, Paul and Liz were initially among those who naively believed that America’s humiliation in Vietnam and the well-publicized hearings which discredited the intelligence community might lead to a sea change in Washington with the election of Jimmy Carter in 1976. ”

well the humiliation is more emotional than real. unfortunately, we still have a long way to go before we come to grips with the liberal media and incorrect assessments by educators and government weak minds before we heal from the falsehoods.

and if your acclaimed writers note the embassy evacuation as the withdrawal – then it challenges their depth of their critical skills.

38. RobinG says:

“America’s oligarchs want entry to China (in order to loot it) and are angry that they are blocked. Hence all the trouble.”

Amen. (in order to loot it) like the Harvard Boys did Russia in the ’90’s

“WEF Davos Weltanschauung …..a modern revival of serfdom.”

Quite.

39. Derer says:

History: “Thus, by 1985, Internet was already well established as a technology supporting a broad community of researchers and developers, and was beginning to be used by other communities for daily computer communications. Electronic mail was being used broadly across several communities, often with different systems, but interconnection between different mail systems was demonstrating the utility of broad based electronic communications between people.”

When Gorbachev became head of Politburo? Try something else!

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40. Beckow says:

Sure, you are reaching in desperation. 1985? there were several universities and institutions connected by sending text-based messages, I doubt there were any in the Soviet Union. To call that “communication” that brought down the system is pure idiocy.

One more time: public communication internet was introduced in 1993-94. By then Soviet Union was gone and Gorbachev retired. You made up the original claim because you live in an ideological scheme, in a way you live in a made-up world, a lie. Try to get out more.

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41. Erzberger says:

“ The man died 3 days short of his 57th birthday.”

How unusual. Never happened to anyone else before or since. Convincing proof the CIA must have been involved.

(satire )

42. Erzberger says:

From Chris Floyd, Empire Burlesque:

“Carter and Brzezinski decided to empower the extremist militias attacking the regime, hoping to induce so much chaos that the Soviets would intervene militarily to help their client state. Again, as Brzezinski himself put it, they wanted to give the USSR “its own Vietnam.”

Think about this for a moment. What Carter and Brzezinski wanted was to subject the Afghan people to the years of suffering and death that the Vietnamese had experienced. They WANTED Afghanistan to suffer this fate, and they ACTED to make sure it happened. And it did. If you like, it was one of the great successes of US foreign policy in the post-war period. They deliberately plunged Afghanistan into blood-soaked chaos; and the Soviets – after fierce debate in the Politburo – did send in troops to try to stabilize the country. What followed was year after year after year of horror and death. Again, please note: this was the stated INTENTION of US policy: mass death, terrorism and suffering.”

Pure evil. This wasn’t the first time, and won’t be the last.

Zbig’s main objective was to destroy the Soviet Union, and to liberate his native Poland. He also was pushing for Nato enlargement, and the removal of Ukraine from Russia. Why is he never accused of dual loyalty?

Too bad he didn’t live to see how his schemes backfired on the very country he wanted to protect and strengthen. Poland is now struggling with massive migrations from both Ukraine and Belarus, entirely dependent on whether Germany and Russia can or even want to save their asses.

43. Derer says:

“Soviet Union by the early 80’s was unsustainable: elites wanted to be Western,”

What a load of crap. Is Russia elite Western now? You are completely illiterate about this topic and do not understand the working of the Soviets communists. Who won the cold war? Nobody, because it is keep escalating even to the higher level than before.

Communists could not keep their lies pleasing masses anymore because the advancement in communication which allowed them to get the alternative information.

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44. Bubba says:

This Wendy’s commercial is from 1985 and I used to say that it brought down the Soviet Union without firing a shot.

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45. the biggest mistake carter ever made was listening to brzezinski

John Helmer was a witness:

If not for Carter, Brzezinski would have remained the marginal voice he was before and after the four-year Carter term. From the start of that term, in the first six months of 1977, Carter was also warned explicitly by his own staff, inside the White House and working on his confidential instruction, not to allow Brzezinski to dominate his policy-making to the exclusion of all other advice, and the erasure of the evidence on which the advice was based.

I know this because I was a member of the staff in those days. I know because I drafted the terms of a series of staff investigations which Carter requested and then authorized of how the advice he was receiving at his desk was influencing the choices and policy options he had to decide – memoranda from the cabinet departments, briefs from the intelligence agencies, and commentaries from different elements of the White House organization itself.

Also Helmer’s review of this book:

http://johnhelmer.net/the-two-satans-of-afghanistan-and-jimmy-carters-lips-are-sealed/

Very sinister stuff:

The assassination of Dubs, Fitzgerald and Gould argue, “led to the Soviet invasion nine months later….Who would kill an ambassador? Not a rival superpower trying to get the American Congress to sign a nuclear arms deal they’d desperately needed. And certainly not a third-world backwater desperate for U.S. aid and recognition. Only someone trying to provoke retribution. And who would want that retribution? Zbigniew Brzezinski. Brzezinski blamed the Russians, but then Brzezinski always blamed the Russians… If it hadn’t been for the Dubs murder there would never have been a Soviet invasion.”

• Thanks: Notsofast
46. Beckow says:

I see that you replaced internet with “advancement in communication”, I will take that as you conceding the point. Thanks.

And yes the commie-elites seem to be all in the West, they wanted to be accepted so they dismantled the Soviet system. Who do you think did it?

We agree on the cold war: it was not a “war”, so nobody could win it. And it is going on and on. Claiming that the West won “Cold war” is akin to claiming that Britain beat France when the Bourbons were overthrown – it is mixing apples and oranges.

47. Derer says:

Beckow hallucination: “And yes the commie-elites seem to be all in the West,”

You are confusing Yeltsin oligarchs (mostly in London and Israel) with “commie-elites”. The only excuse for your illiteracy is relying on American MSM.

48. If they need to be hired, it would denote a degree of freedom and free will.

They are just parrots in cages of their choosing. all speaking the same thing.

49. Erzberger says:

Excellent, and you were probably right.

Along similar lines, this will bring down the US empire and exceptionalism

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