The Other American Dream
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Sunday, 1 September, 2002
(wow, one year ago today...creepy)
http://truthout.com/docs_02/09.01A.wrp.am.drm.htm(snip)
This other American Dream is not solely a creation of Bush administration officials, nor has it just recently come to fruition, nor is it fixated solely upon the Middle East. The bloody history of Afghanistan represents a clear example of the kind of geopolitical gamesmanship that characterizes the plans these people have for America. Afghanistan in 1978 was ruled by a Communist puppet regime called the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA). To foster a destabilization of that regime, so as to counter the growing Soviet influence in that strategically vital region, America began arming and training Afghan mujeheddin warriors, with Pakistan's assistance, in an effort to undermine the PDPA.
This effort, however, had more in mind than the overthrow of the PDPA. Elie Krakowski, in a study written for the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies in April of 2000, described Afghanistan's importance as going far beyond the dictates of the Cold War:
"(Afghanistan) owes its importance to its location at the confluence of major routes. A boundary between land power and sea power, it is the meeting point between opposing forces larger than itself. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, it has become an important potential opening to the sea for the landlocked new states of Central Asia. The presence of large oil and gas deposits in that area has attracted countries and multinational corporations. Because Afghanistan is a major strategic pivot, what happens there affects the world."
This places American aid to the mujeheddin in 1978 in a broader perspective. Our actions were not simply about attacking communism. In attempting to destabilize the PDPA, we were hoping to tempt the wrath of the Soviet Union. It worked: The USSR invaded and eventually destroyed its ability to extend influence into the region against the unyielding rock of Afghanistan, eliminating a strategic enemy and opening the region to broadening American hegemony.
Zbignew Brzezinski, National Security Advisor for President Carter during this period, bluntly confirmed this in 1998. "We did not push the Russians into invading," said Brzezinski, "but we knowingly increased the probability that they would. The secret operation was an excellent idea. The effect was to draw the Russians into the Afghan trap."
Brzezinski's brag is revelatory, for it describes the lengths to which the proponents of this other American Dream will go to achieve this goal. Afghanistan was utterly destroyed by the Soviet invasion in 1979, by the ten-year war fought by Afghan warriors to remove them, and by the ravaging civil war that descended in the aftermath of the Soviet withdrawal. In that span was born the Taliban, trained to fight, and to propound their deadly interpretation of Islam, in Pakistani religious schools funded and supported by the American CIA.
Brzezinski's "Afghan trap" gave birth, as well, to Osama bin Laden, whose reputation as a heroic anti-Soviet mujeheddin warrior made him a demigod within Afghanistan. None of this - the Soviet invasion, the Taliban, Osama bin Laden, the wretchedness of life in Afghanistan - would have come into existence without the forces behind the other American Dream playing out geopolitical strategies designed to augment American control in the world.
This other American Dream was codified by Brzezinski in 1998, who authored in 1998 a study for the Council on Foreign Relations entitled, "The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives." The study describes in detail the importance of Afghanistan and the entire Central Asian region, which is described in its entirety as "Eurasia." According to the study, America must gain military and economic control of the region to stave off competition from China, Russia and Europe. The guts of the study are quoted below:
"But the Eurasian Balkans are infinitely more important as a potential economic prize: an enormous concentration of natural gas and oil reserves is located in the region, in addition to important minerals including gold...It is imperative that no Eurasian challenger emerges, capable of dominating Eurasia and thus of also challenging America...A power that dominates Eurasia would control two of the world's three most advanced and economically productive regions.
"To put it in terminology that harkens back to the more brutal age of ancient empires, the three grand imperatives of imperial geostrategy are to prevent collusion and maintain security dependence among the vassals, to keep tributaries pliant and protected, and to keep the barbarians from coming together."
Profoundly disquieting are the conclusions reached by Brzezinski regarding the means by which the American populace could be directed into supporting the actions required to achieve control in that region. "As America becomes an increasingly multicultural society, it may find it more difficult to fashion a consensus on foreign policy issues, except in the circumstance of a truly massive and widely perceived direct external threat."
The danger is clear. This geopolitical strategy of dominion in Central Asia, begun in 1978 with the "Afghan trap," put in motion a series of events that ultimately led to the creation of the Taliban, the empowerment of Osama bin Laden, and the attacks of September 11th. The plans described to Richard Perle's Defense Policy Board that target not only Iraq, but Egypt, Saudi Arabia and indeed the entire Middle East, were born from the same strategic imperatives.
...more...
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