Reagan funded terrorists: Prof. Juan Cole

[ginnyinWI]

Here is a great primer on how Reagan first began to interfere in the Middle East, and how Bush I continued it, and how that led to where we are today. Cole is a professor of Middle East and South Asian History, but don't let that scare you away. This is easy to read and very helpful to those who don't know the backstory:

http://www.juancole.com/2005/08/fisking-war-on-terror-once-upon-time.html

Once upon a time, a dangerous radical gained control of the US Republican Party.

Reagan increased the budget for support of the radical Muslim Mujahidin conducting terrorism against the Afghanistan government to half a billion dollars a year.

One fifth of the money, which the CIA mostly turned over to Pakistani military intelligence to distribute, went to Gulbuddin Hikmatyar, a violent extremist who as a youth used to throw acid on the faces of unveiled girls in Afghanistan.

Not content with creating a vast terrorist network to harass the Soviets, Reagan then pressured the late King Fahd of Saudi Arabia to match US contributions. He had earlier imposed on Fahd to give money to the Contras in Nicaragua, some of which was used to create rightwing death squads. (Reagan liked to sidestep Congress in creating private terrorist organizations for his foreign policy purposes, which he branded "freedom fighters," giving terrorists the idea that it was all right to inflict vast damage on civilians in order to achieve their goals)...

[BlueEyedSon]

1. kick

[Vickers]

2. Yup, any time some RW freak starts having a Reaganasm around me

I bring up his funding of terrorism, his lying, his whole chickenhawk thing that snowballed to ALL THIS.

[carnie_sf]

3. Exactly

no Reagan, no Osama. Not to mention his best friend in the mideast was Saddam, or the Salvadorean death squads.

[blm]

4. I suspect Reagan knew little of the Mideast deals because Poppy was in

charge of that entire region.

I believe that Reagan saw himself as the man making decisions on the USSR, but Poppy handled South America and all the oil countries because of his longtime CIA dealings.

If you look at the whole picture, you see MOST of the taint of the Reagan years were in areas of Poppy's "expertise" and could also be the reason why the Bushes were so hated by the Reagans.

I also believe Reagan had early Alzheimers at the time and that enabled Poppy and his cronies to reign freely.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

5. It used to make me sick when Reagan talked about "freedom fighters"

in Afghanistan.

In March 1978, there was a Marxist coup mostly aimed at bringing the country into the 20th century. One of the things they proposed was compulsory primary education for both boys and girls, preferably coeducational.

The motivating force of the earliest rebels was, "No daughter of mine is ever going to school, especially not with boys!"

The CIA began funding the rebels in the summer of 1979, seeing at as a way to harass a Marxist government. This was BEFORE the Soviets came in.

Late in 1979, the Afghan government invited the Soviets to come in, because it was overwhelmed with the Afghan equivalent of freepers taking up arms.

Were the Soviets brutal in their attempts to suppress the rebels? Oh, yes, no denying that, and the Mujahadeen gained more recruits who fought the Soviets out of nationalism rather than religious fanaticism.

After the Soviets left, the CIA actually supported the Taliban, considering them to be the best organized of the Mujahadeen factions.

But we didn't learn this from the U.S. liberal press. According to the U.S. liberal press, the Soviets just "invaded" Afghanistan out of the blue because that's what nasty Communists do. The Taliban just sprang up out of the mountains for no reason, but they weren't worth paying attention to until 2001.