In Defense of United States Covert Action
A common theme among Far Left and Far right is since the United States was involved in Covert Acts of Regime Change in the Cold War that the Russian Hacking of the 2016 Election was “Karma” or “Payback”. For supposed American “Imperialism” in the Cold War.
Lets look at the list, shall we?
The United States overthrew the Islamist/Anti Israel leader Shukri al-Quwatli who waged war against our ally Israel. The CIA attempted to police the July 1947 Syrian national elections, which were marred by fraud, sectarianism, and interference by neighboring Iraq and Transjordan. When these elections produced a weak, minority government under Quwatli the stability of which was called into question by Syria’s defeat in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War Keeley and other U.S. officials became concerned that Syria was on the verge of complete collapse, which could have empowered the Syrian Communist Party or other “radicals” (such as the Ba’ath Party and the Muslim Brotherhood). As a result, Keeley became amenable to a military coup as a way of safeguarding the long-term prospects of democracy in the country. Za’im outlined his progressive political program for Syria (including land reform) as well as the communist threat, concluding “there is only way to start the Syrian people along the road to progress and democracy: With the whip.” The US backed Leader was secular and had proposals for the emancipation of women through granting them the vote and suggesting they should give up the Islamic practice of veiling. He also signed a Cease-Fire Deal with Israel. He seeked to abolish wearing the fez, claiming that it was outdated headwear taken from the days of the Ottoman Empire. He is credited for giving support to women’s the right to vote and run for public office in Syria. The law had been debated at the Syrian Parliament since 1920 and no leader dared to support it, except Zaim. Was this US backed Coup D’teat necessary? Yes. Had the US supported the “Democratic Government” of Syria in 1949 the Government would have collapsed and either an Islamist Regime or Communist Regime would take place. Especially with the Leader the CIA backed being a Liberal Progressive and Secular.
The Albanian Subversion was one of the earliest and most notable failures of the Western covert paramilitary operations in the Eastern Bloc. The reason behind the operation in Albania was that Albania was separated from the Eastern Bloc by Yugoslavia, which had split with the Soviet Union in June 1948. Albania was also the poorest European nation, and was home to about one million people, many still divided along semi-feudal lines. There were three major religious groups and two distinct classes: those people who owned land and claimed feudal privileges and those who did not. The landowners, only about 1% of the population, held 95% of the cultivated land as well as the principal ruling posts in the country’s central and southern regions. In this post-war chaos of 1949 the allies decided to launch their operation. The plan called for parachute drops of royalists into the Mati region in Central Albania. The region was traditionally known as a bastion of Albanian traditionalism and moreover praised for their loyalty to King Zog, himself an offspring of one of the regional clans. The original plan was that, if Britain could parachute in enough well-trained agents, they could organize a massive popular revolt, which the allies would supply by air drops. In time, this revolt would spill out a civil war. The trouble that this would cause the Soviet politics was worth the risk, and if it did succeed, then it could be the starting point of a chain reaction of popular revolutions throughout the Eastern Bloc. This however failed and the people of Eastern Europe suffered Tyranny up until 1989.
The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) Tibetan program was a covert operation consisting of political plots, propaganda distribution, as well as paramilitary support and intelligence gathering based on U.S. commitments made to the Dalai Lama in 1951 and 1956. The CIA tried to do whatever it could to ensure Tibetan Independence after the Communist Chinese invasion. This however ended with Nixon’s. rapprochement with China in the early 1970s. As a result, each of the 1,500 CIA-trained rebels received 10,000 rupees to buy land in India or to open a business, instead of fighting the People’s Liberation Army of China. In addition, the White House decided that the training of Tibetan guerrillas by the CIA would have to cease, because the risk of damaging Sino-American relations would be too high and costly. This is 100% Justified.
In 1953, the United States restored the power of the Shah who in turn re-instated the Majlis after it was dismissed by the dictator (typically referred to as the “democratically elected” prime minister ovethrown by the CIA). Much of the reason is typically given as Iran nationalized its oil so the US ovethrew the government. The facts don’t back this up…The notion of nationalizing the oil industry in Iran first came up in 1951. The then Prime Minister (who had been appointed by the Shah in June of 1950), General Haj-Ali Razmara, went before the Majlis (the Iranian parliament) and said, “look, we don’t have the technicians or capacity to do this on our own. If you piss off the Brits, this is not going to go well for us.”Four days later, Gen Razmara was assassinated by a group “allegedly” aligned with Mosaddegh, a militant fundamentalist group called Fadayan-e Islam. So a new prime minister was appointed and then the Parliament voted to nationalize the British-owned and operated oil industry. After pressure from both the fundamentalists and from the Iranian communist party, this new prime minister resigned after just a month in office. So the Shah appointed Mossadegh after he was nominated by the Majlis by a vote of 79–12. This was pretty touchy considering the fact that Mossadegh himself was from the Qajar dynasty and considered the Pahlavi kings (of which the Shah was one) to be usurpers of their throne. Immediately, Mossadegh inacts huge, sweeping reforms. Mossadegh demanded the power to appoint the Minister of War and the Chief of Staff, which had always been done by the Shah. When the Shah refused, Mossadegh resigned. A new PM was appointed but after five days of massive unrest, Mosaddegh was re-appointed and granted full control of the military as he had demanded. Now Mossadegh had the power to convince parliament to grant him emergency powers for six months to add any law he felt was necessary to get Iran economically successful but also to reform the electoral, judicial, and educational processes. His power was a balance of alignment with both the Communist party and the Islamists. Mossadegh cut the Shah’s personal budget, forbid him from communicating directly with foreign diplomats and transferred royal lands back to the state. He also expelled the Shah’s politically active sister. In Jan 1952, parliamentary elections were held but Mosadegh suspended them declaring concerns of foreign intervention. Of concern, he allowed the elections to proceed only long enough for his own supporters to gain power and then stopped any elections that may have put opposition parties into place. This gave him the majority in the Majlis to declare him PM again. In 1953, he pressed parliament to extend his emergency powers for another 12 months. He implemented wide ranging land reform which essentially cut the legs out from under the Communist power since that had always been their key platform. As the Iranian people became poorer (because now they couldn’t export any oil), Mossadegh began to lose the support of his other alliances, including the Islamists. Losing power and expecting a coup (staged by the Brits and theUS), Mossadeghpresented a referendum to the general public to dissolve parliament and give all their powers to make law to himself. This voting occurred at different polling stations for “yes” votes and”no” votes, so it was clear who would be voting which way. The measure passed the public vote with 99 percent. So on August 16, the parliament was suspended indefinitely and Mosaddeq’s emergency powers were extended indefinitely. Three days later, a coup (supported and planned by the UK and US intelligence services) overthrew Mosaddeq, placing him under house arrest, and re-instated the Shah as the full and rightful ruler of Iran. The Shah then reinstated the Majlis. Granted, things kind of went downhill, but gradually so, particularly after the Shah realized he was dying. He feared that appearing physically weak would make him a target for a coup himself, and so he ramped up the internal oppression of his country. That, of course, made things much worse and his days were numbered at that point.
But he wasn’t a despot to begin with and the oppression that is often cited is all from a few years at the very end of his reign.
A U.S. Army colonel working for the CIA was sent to Iran in September 1953 to work with General Teymur Bakhtiar , who was appointed military governor of Tehran in December 1953 and immediately began to assemble the nucleus of a new intelligence organization. The U.S. Army colonel worked closely with Bakhtīār and his subordinates, commanding the new intelligence organization and training its members in basic intelligence techniques, such as surveillance and interrogation methods, the use of intelligence networks, and organizational security. This organization was the first modern, effective intelligence service to operate in Iran. Its main achievement occurred in September 1954, when it discovered and destroyed a large communist Tudeh Party network that had been established in the Iranian armed forces.
In March 1955, the Army colonel was “replaced with a more permanent team of five career CIA officers, including specialists in covert operations, intelligence analysis, and counterintelligence, including Major General Herbert Norman Schwarzkopf who “trained virtually all of the first generation of SAVAK personnel.” In 1956 this agency was reorganized and given the name *Sazeman-e Ettela’atva Amniyat-e Keshvar* (SAVAK). These in turn were replaced by SAVAK’s own instructors in 1965.
General Hassan Pakravan , director of SAVAK from 1961 to 1966, had an almost benevolent reputation, for example dining with the Ayatollah Khomeini while Khomeini was under house arrest on a weekly basis, and later intervened to prevent Khomeini’s execution on the grounds it would “anger the common people of Iran”. After the Iranian Revolution, however, Pakravan was among the first of the Shah’sofficials to be executed by the Khomeini regime.
Pakravan was replaced in 1966 by General Nematollah Nassiri , a close associate of the Shah, and the service was reorganized and became increasingly active in the face of rising Shia and communist militancy and political unrest.
A turning point in SAVAK’s reputation for ruthless brutality was reportedly an attack on a gendarmerie post in the Caspian village of Siahkal by a small band of armed Marxists in February 1971, although it is also reported to have tortured to death a Shia cleric, Ayatollah Muhammad Reza Sa’idi, in 1970. According to Iranian political historian Ervand Abrahamian , after this attack SAVAK interrogators were sent abroad for “scientific training to prevent unwanted deaths from ‘brute force.’
Abrahamian estimates that SAVAK (and other police and military) killed 368 guerrillas including the leadership of the major urban guerrilla organizations (Organization of Iranian People’s Fedai Guerrillas, People’s Mujahedin of Iran) such as Hamid Ashraf between 1971–1977 and executed something less than 100 political prisoners between 1971 and 1979 — the most violent era of the SAVAK’s existence.
By 1976, this repression was softened considerably thanks to publicity and scrutiny by “numerous international organizations and foreign newspapers.” In 1976, Jimmy Carter was elected President of the United States and he “raised the issue of human rights in Iran as well as in the Soviet Union. Overnight prison conditions changed. Inmates dubbed this the dawn of `jimmykrasy.’ (SAVAK)
So yes, at the end of his reign, the Shah was a despot. And it is likely this drastic change in the use of oppression stemmed at least in part from his diagnosis with cancer.
To summarize…
In the end, Mossadegh introduced social security, land reform, and rent control. (Aside from suspending the Majlis and halting elections.)
The Shah gave women the right to vote, gave workers shares in their companies, free meals to children in school, boosted education throughout the country which saw a tremendous rise in literacy, sent college students abroad to study on the Iranian dime, and significantly increased Iran’s technological capabilities in several areas.
Lastly, Iran’s economy grew significantly under the Shah. (Oh, and Iran’s oil companies remained nationalized with foreign partners. So if the coup was to eliminate the nationalization of the oil, it did not follow through on it. Odd, don’t you think?)
So 1951, Iran nationalizes its oil industry. The US and the UK do nothing.
1953, Mossadegh suspends the Majlis. Takes over all power in Iran. Makes democratic voting impossible (using the different voting locations).
3 days later the US/UK support the overthrow of Mossadegh (a defacto dictator for life).
Not sure the whole “overthrow of democracy” argument (or the typically associated, counter to Iranian oil nationalization) holds water.
In 1979, the US allowed the Shah (who was living in Mexico in exile) to enter the US to receive medical treatment for his cancer. (See how horrible the US is? Providing medical treatment to a cancer patient!)
Disgusted by the fact that the Shah was allowed to live (though really, not for much longer), a group of “students” took over the US Embassy and took 55 Americans hostage. As negotiations continued to fail and the hostages were regularly paraded out before the press, the President (Jimmy Carter) opted to launch a rescue mission. The mission failed before it reached Tehran. Though a busload of Iranians were temporarily detained (because they accidentally drove through the landing site), none were harmed. In the end 8 American service members were killed in a crash. Unable to launch another rescue (because the hostages were moved and scattered throughout the city), they remained in Iranian custody until Reagan was sworn in. That day, the hostages were released, 444 days after their seizure.
On May 23, 1997 the CIA released several hundred formerly classified documents pertaining to the United States involvement in the 1954 coup in Guatemala. Although representing only a fraction of the existing government files, these records nonetheless revealed the determination of the CIA to prohibit the spread of communism to the nations of Latin America during the Cold War. Planning for American intervention in Guatemala began in 1952 when the president of Nicaragua, Anastasio Somoza, solicited U.S. assistance to overthrow the democratically elected (1950) Guatemalan leader, Jacobo Arbenz Guzman. Apprehensive of Arbenz’s land reform efforts and the freedom afforded to the communist party under the current regime, President Truman authorized the shipment of weapons and money to anti-Arbenz groups. Within five weeks the operation to topple Arbenz quickly fizzled when representatives loyal to the president uncovered the plot and took steps to solidify their power. Touting his New Look Doctrine, Eisenhower, hoping to differentiate his foreign policy from the plan to contain communism promoted by Truman, sought to defend American interests abroad with an increase in funds for nuclear weapons and covert operations. Convinced that Arbenz threatened U.S. national security because of his alleged Communist sympathies, Eisenhower approved the first-ever clandestine military action in Latin America. Codenamed PBSUCCESS, the program aimed at not only deposing Arbenz in favor of a U.S.-selected leader, but also looked to send a clear warning to the Soviets that the American government would not tolerate the spread of communism in the Western Hemisphere. In 1954, the United States Department of State labeled the Guzman regime as Communist; as such, the United States began equipping and training the Guatemalan military. After Guzman fled to Cuba, Colonel Castillo Armas rose to the presidency. Castillo was presented a list of radical opponents to be dealt with by the American Ambassador; as a result, thousands of Guatemalans were arrested, tortured, and even killed. Castillo disenfranchised illiterate voters, outlawed all political parties, peasant organizations, labor unions, and even burned materials that he deemed “subversive.” A lot has been made of assertion that Jocobo Arbenz was “democratically elected” in 1951 — often overlooking the fact that his opponent was assassinated shortly before the election by a man driving a car belonging to Arbenz’s wife (the late E. Howard Hunt, the CIA spymaster who oversaw the Agency’s operation in Guatemala, said of the relation between Arbenz and his wife that “his wife was by far the smarter of the two and sort of told him what to do. She was a convinced communist.”). The assassin himself latter became Arbenz’s private secretary and then head of agrarian reform until the 1954 uprising.The nature of the Arbenz regime was later exposed by some of the reds themselves. Historian Piero Gleijeses interviewed Arbenz’s widow and high-ranking members of the Guatemalan Communist Party who admitted that Communists influence reached the Guatemalan government at all levels. Carlos Manuel Pellecer, a former top official of the Arbenz government and a former leader of the Guatemalan Communist Party, detailed this relationship further in his memoir Arbenz y Yo. And in 2010,Granma, the official newspaper of Communist Cuba, published an interview with Rodolfo Romero, a Nicaraguan and founding member of the Stalinist Sandinista National Liberation Front who were among the many Communists who “came knocking on the door of this Central American country [Guatemala]“.
If I had to guess, I’d say the United States was more concerned with what was just described than it was with fruit companies (in fact, the United Fruit Company’s monopoly was broken up with new anti-trust laws shortly after the 1954 uprising). It’s sad that the academic well was so poisoned that we could be brought to believe the opposite.
The CIA made plans to overthrow the Syrian government because it would not cooperate with US anti-communism and the Liberal World Order. DCI Allen Dulles continued to file reports about the dangers of Communism in Syria. This coup however failed and Syria became a Soviet Sattelite State. And remains one to this day. Between 1956 and 1985, Syria received $16.3 billion in Soviet military equipment, more than any other country in that time period. There is not much information on this however. The main source of Information is a Marxist/Communist who wrote the Anti-American book “Killing Hope”.A Man who supported the Soviet Union in the Cold War.
Lumumba had originally desired technical assistance from Belgium and the West, but wanted to avoid taking sides with either the United States or the Soviet Union in the Cold War. By maintaining a policy of “positive neutralism”, he hoped to create a unique and independent country. Since the United Nations refused to help subdue Katanga, Lumumba sought Soviet aid in the form of arms, food, medical supplies, trucks, and planes to help move troops to Katanga. His decision to turn to the Soviet Union alarmed the West, particularly the United States.
Declassified transcripts of communications between Lincoln Gordon and the US government show that, predicting an all-out civil war, and with the opportunity to get rid of a left wing communist government in Brazil, Johnson authorized logistical materials to be in place and a US Navy fleet led by an aircraft carrier to support the coup against Goulart.
In the telegraphs, Gordon also acknowledges US involvement in “covert support for pro-democracy street rallies…and encouragement of democratic and anti-communist sentiment in Congress, armed forces, friendly labor and student groups, church, and business” and that he “may be requesting modest supplementary funds for other covert action programs in the near future.
There is allegations of US Involvement however it cannot be confirmed nor denied.
Another case in which the US overthrew a Marxist who barely won his presidency. And was deemed “illegitimate” by his own Congressional Majority.
There is no hard evidence of direct U.S. assistance to the coup, despite frequent allegations of such aid. Rather the United States by its previous actions during Track II, its existing general posture of opposition to Allende, and the nature of its contacts with the Chilean military- probably gave the impression that it would not look with disfavor on a military coup. And U.S. officials in the years before 1973 may not always have succeeded in walking the thin line between monitoring indigenous coup plotting and actually stimulating it. Cuba and the Soviet Union supplied several hundred thousand dollars to the socialist and Marxist factions in the government.
http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/news/20000919/01-13.htm
You can Read the MEMORANDUM FOR THE PRESIDENT here:http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB437/docs/Doc%204%20-%20Kissinger%20to%20Nixon%20re%20Nov%206%20NSC%20meeting.pdf
Even if it can be verified that the United States was behind the Coup. It was completely justified.That fact alone earned Pinochet the Left’s undying scorn. Less forgivable still was that, even as he brutally crushed the Marxist vision, he set Chile on the road to economic prosperity through the free market. No economic light himself, Pinochet had the wisdom to heed the counsel of a young coterie of Chilean economists. Trained by no less than Milton Friedman at the University of Chicago, they simplified the tax code, freed the entrepreneurial class from an excessive tax burden, successfully trimmed inflation, and restored property rights undermined by Allende. By the 1980s, the Chilean “economic miracle” was well underway.
It continues today. In recent years Chile has posted rates of economic growth more than double its regional neighbors; just this year the country boasted the highest nominal GDP per capita in all of Latin America. Little wonder that the neo-socialist demagoguery of Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales has gained so little traction in post-Pinochet Chile. Popular faith in the justice of the free market, then, is another achievement for which the Left blames Pinochet. In this respect, Pinochet’s greatest crime may be that, as John O’Sullivan has put it, he “first defeated Marxism and then disproved it.”
In a just world, Pinochet would be remembered as an unjust man who spared his country from an infinitely worse fate. That he will instead go down as a dictator of unrivalled malignity is more of a testament to the petty prejudices of the political Left than an accurate reflection of the historical record.
The main reason Pinochet is demonized is that he symbolizes the destruction of the Far Left’s myths and dreams, as manifested in the person Salvador Allende, the Marxist president toppled by a military coup on September 11, 1973. But while leftists choose to remember Allende as a beneficent democrat, history provides little support for this view.
On the contrary, Allende’s regime was so radically Marxist that its most “moderate” element was the Communist Party. Although he never received a popular mandate — Allende came to power in 1970 with only a third of the electoral vote and a congressional minority, and on the condition that he would respect Chile’s democratic institutions — Allende rapidly ruined the economy, confiscated foreign property, impoverished the population and consistently violated the Constitution he had promised to uphold.
He also transformed Chile into an appendage of Cuba. During the Allende years Chile became a major refuge for international terrorists, including the Argentine Montoneros and ERP, Brazilians, Uruguayan Tupamaros, Bolivian and Peruvian MIR-istas, Sandinistas, ETArras, and others.
Not surprisingly, in August of 1973, the democratic majority of Chile’s Congress declared Allende’s regime anti-constitutional and asked for its removal. The military intervened, supported by a large majority of the population and political parties. Here one may add that the planning for the coup was mostly done by the Chilean Navy and virtually finished by the time when, less than three weeks before September 11, 1973, Allende had appointed Pinochet army chief.
Once in power, Pinochet did what few military rulers have ever done. Recognizing that he knew little about the economy, he delegated its management to a group of former University of Chicago students of Nobel Prize-winner Milton Friedman, all young civilians. As a result, private property was returned to the rightful owners, most of the state economic sectors ruined by Allende’s Marxist inanities were privatized, and trade-union radicalism was brought under control. This process was, to be sure, painful and lasted more than a decade. But it is unlikely that a querulous and chaotic democracy undermined by violent Marxist Leninist groups would have allowed these reforms to take their course.
By contrast, former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher struck the appropriate note when, recalling the historic significance of the 1973 coup and the extraordinary success of his government’s free-market economic policy, she said that she was “greatly saddened” by Pinochet’s passing. Chileans, too, know that the late dictator’s legacy was more complex than the imaginations of protestors and editorialists seem able to allow.
llende wanted to install a regime modeled on Castro’s Communist gulag. Fortunately the United States supported his opponents. After a successful coup, the new dictator, Augustin Pinochet, introduced free market policies and eventually (if reluctantly) transformed Chile into a multi-party democracy. Since 1975, Chile has shown the most sustained and highest rate of economic growth of any Latin American country and is a free country run by “democratic socialists.”
So yes. The 1973 US coup was “Justified”
The pretext for the coup was to put an end to the social conflicts of the 1970s, as well as the parliamentary instability. The American support of this coup was acknowledged by the CIA Ankara station chief Paul Henze. After the government was overthrown, Henze cabled Washington, saying, “our boys [in Ankara] did it. Henze denied American involvement in the coup during a June 2003 interview on CNN Türk’s Manşet, but two days later Birand presented an interview with Henze recorded in 1997 which confirmed Mehmet Ali Birand’s account.
Its fair to say this was coup supported by the United States to end the violence in NATO member Turkey and restore democracy and freedom in the country. Completely justified.
1979–89 Afghanistan, Operation Cyclone
This is a very big myth that most certainly needs debunking.
For some reason, people get upset when someone suggests that all Muslims are terrorists but nobody bats an eye when it is suggested all Afghan anti-Soviet fighters became al Qaeda or Taliban. Yet it is no more accurate than the first statement.
The US did not for the most part directly support the anti-Soviet mujahedeen in Afghanistan. Instead, the US funneled weapons and money through the Pakistan ISI. Both the US and Pakistan have admitted this extensively. On the few occasions when the US did send advisors forward, such as to train them to use Stinger missiles, they supported those ethnic groups who would eventually become the Northern Alliance (predominantly the Uzbek and Tajik groups).
Pakistan retained a tight control over the Pashtun people because they expected them to be more loyal to their cause. Pakistan has a large ethnic Pashtunpopulation and they need Afghanistan to provide them “strategic depth” against the Indians and a buffer against the Soviet empire which include Tajikistan and Uzbekistan (which of course would call into question the loyalties of the non-Pashtun tribes the US was supporting).
The “Arabs” who would eventually become al Qaeda did not require outside assistance. Even bin Ladin himself was adamant he didn’t ask for or take US assistance. And given this was before he pissed off Saudi Arabia and they froze his accounts he had sufficient money and contacts to support his own people without needing to pull from the US or even Pakistan.
Al Qaeda was not made up of Afghans. It was made up of “foreign fighters” from throughout the Muslim world. Even the Afghan Mujahedeen pointed out that bin Ladin and his band didn’t make camp with the Afghans during the war. The “Arabs” as they referred to him stayed separate and tended to be more about suicide missions and glorifying death. For the average Afghan Mujahedeen, there was no glory in death. There was no desire to die through a suicide bombing. They wanted to kill the occupiers of their country and defend their homes. That’s hard to do when you throw yourself in front of the nearest Soviet tank.
The Taliban are almost exclusively Pashtun. There are quite a few other ethnic groups in Afghanistan who both fought in the anti-Soviet war and then in the civil war versus the Taliban. The Taliban didn’t even come into existence until the mid-1990s with the vast majority of their forces having been students in Pakistan madrassas (“Talib” is the Pashtun word for “student”). So they were not the ones fighting the Soviets to begin with and would not have been in Afghanistan at the same time as when we were funneling weapons to the Pakistani ISI and the groups which would eventually become the Northern Alliance.
The Northern Alliance (which was made up of pretty much every ethnic group but Pashtuns, though that’s not entirely true either) fought the Taliban. They just wanted their country back. They did not launch terrorist attacks into other countries and have not become members of ISIL or al Qaeda.
Again, not every Afghan is Taliban or al Qaeda. And not everyone who fought in the anti-Soviet war became Taliban (because most of those dudes didn’t even fight in the war) or al Qaeda (because those were mostly Arabs who looked down on the Afghans). We shouldn’t paint every Muslim with the “terrorist” paint brush and we shouldn’t paint every Afghan with the “Taliban/al Qaeda” paint brush.
Ahmad Shah Masood would be very disappointed in that categorization.
Sources:
Marc Sageman, a Foreign Service Officer who was based in Islamabad from 1987–1989, and worked closely with Afghanistan’s Mujahideen:
Contemporaneous accounts of the war do not even mention [the Afghan Arabs]. Many were not serious about the war. … Very few were involved in actual fighting. For most of the war, they were scattered among the Afghan groups associated with the four Afghan fundamentalist parties.
No U.S. official ever came in contact with the foreign volunteers. They simply traveled in different circles and never crossed U.S. radar screens. They had their own sources of money and their own contacts with the Pakistanis, official Saudis, and other Muslim supporters, and they made their own deals with the various Afghan resistance leaders.”
Vincent Cannistraro, who led the Reagan administration’s Afghan Working Group from 1985 to 1987:
The CIA was very reluctant to be involved at all. They thought it would end up with them being blamed, like in Guatemala.” So the Agency tried to avoid direct involvement in the war, … the skittish CIA had less than ten operatives acting as America’s eyes and ears in the region.
Cannistraro says that when he coordinated Afghan policy from Washington, he never once heard bin Laden’s name…the CIA did not recruit Arabs because there were hundreds of thousands of Afghans all too willing to fight. The Arab Afghans were not only superfluous but “disruptive,” angering local Afghans with their more-Muslim-than-thou attitude.”
Bill Peikney — CIA station chief in Islamabad from 1984 to 1986 — and Milt Bearden — CIA station chief from 1986 to 1989 — spoke, ON RECORD, to reporter Richard Miniter:
Both flatly denied that any CIA funds ever went to bin Laden. They felt so strongly about this point that they agreed to go on the record, an unusual move by normally reticent intelligence officers. Mr. Peikney added in an e-mail to me: “I don’t even recall UBL [bin Laden] coming across my screen when I was there.
Milton Bearden, the Agency’s Chief field operative in the war effort:
“Contrary to what people have come to imagine, the CIA never recruited, trained, or otherwise used Arab volunteers. The Afghans were more than happy to do their own fighting — we saw no reason not to satisfy them on this point…the CIA had nothing to do with” bin Laden.
But, hey those are all American government officials who obviously lie for a living so we can’t accept their ON THE RECORD by NAME statements.
How ‘bout if we task the Pakistanis? Would they count as a good source?
Brigadier Mohammad Yousaf, who ran the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Afghan operation between 1983 and 1987:
It was always galling to the Americans, and I can understand their point of view, that although they paid the piper they could not call the tune. The CIA supported the mujahideen by spending the taxpayers’ money, billions of dollars of it over the years, on buying arms, ammunition, and equipment. It was their secret arms procurement branch that was kept busy.It was, however, a cardinal rule of Pakistan’s policy that no Americans ever become involved with the distribution of funds or arms once they arrived in the country. No Americans ever trained or had direct contact with the mujahideen, and no American official ever went inside Afghanistan.
Still, their “our guys” so maybe we can’t trust the Pakistanis either.
How ‘bout the leadership of al Qaeda. If they were willing to go on the record, would they count as viable sources?
Usama Bin Laden (founder and leader of al Qaeda):”the collapse of the Soviet Union … goes to God and the mujahideen in Afghanistan … the US had no mentionable role…collapse made the US more haughty and arrogant.”
Al Qaeda’s number two leader, Ayman al-Zawahir (Knights Under the Prophet’s Banner, which was serialized in December 2001 in Al-Sharq al-Awsat):
“Afghan Arabs” did not receive any U.S. funding during the war in Afghanistan…While the United States backed Pakistan and the mujahidin factions with money and equipment, the young Arab mujahidin’s relationship with the United States was totally different…The financing of the activities of the Arab mujahidin in Afghanistan came from aid sent to Afghanistan by popular organizations. It was substantial aid…The Arab mujahidin did not confine themselves to financing their own jihad but also carried Muslim donations to the Afghan mujahidin themselves. Usama Bin Ladin has apprised me of the size of the popular Arab support for the Afghan mujahidin that amounted, according to his sources, to $200 million in the form of military aid alone in 10 years. Imagine how much aid was sent by popular Arab organizations in the non-military fields such as medicine and health, education and vocational training, food, and social assistance ….Through the unofficial popular support, the Arab mujahidin established training centers and centers for the call to the faith. They formed fronts that trained and equipped thousands of Arab mujahidin and provided them with living expenses, housing, travel and organization.”
Abdullah Anas, an Algerian who was one of the foremost Afghan Arab organizers and the son-in-law of Abdullah Azzam, has also confirmed that the CIA had no relationship with the Afghan Arabs. Speaking on the French television program Zone Interdit on September 12, 2004, Anas stated:
“If you say there was a relationship in the sense that the CIA used to meet with Arabs, discuss with them, prepare plans with them, and to fight with them — it never happened.”
CNN journalist Peter Bergen, known for conducting the first television interview with Osama bin Laden in 1997 summed it up like this:
The story about bin Laden and the CIA — that the CIA funded bin Laden or trained bin Laden — is simply a folk myth. There’s no evidence of this. In fact, there are very few things that bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri and the U.S. government agree on. They all agree that they didn’t have a relationship in the 1980s. And they wouldn’t have needed to. Bin Laden had his own money, he was anti-American and he was operating secretly and independently.
Much like us supporting Stalin in defeating Hitler, we were aligned with people whom we didn’t see eye-to-eye with in order to beat the USSR during the Cold War (WWIII)… a war that was fought from 1947–1991.
You can read more on this here:
From my conclusions this is 100% Justified.
Upon capturing power in Nicaragua in July, 1979, the Sandinistas immediately Stalinized the country and aligned themselves with Castro and the Soviet Empire, making their country a base for the export of Marxist revolution throughout Central America.
Like all of its communist role models, the new regime constructed a fascistic apparatus to maintain rigid control. Following in the footsteps of Castro’s Cuba, it set up neighborhood associations as local spy networks for the government. Each neighborhood had a Comité de Defensa Sandinista (CDS — Sandinista Defense Committee) that served the same totalitarian purpose as the Cuban CDR and the Nazi regime’s block overseers — although the power of the CDS extended far beyond the Nazis’ model. [1]
In emulating Castro and their other communist heroes such as Stalin and Mao, the Sandinistas took control of everything in the country: mass organizations, the army, police, labor unions, and the media. They censored all freedom of speech, suspended the right of association and ruthlessly crushed the freedom of trade unions. Faithful to their Marxist ideology, the new tyrants seized the means of production. State controls and nationalization spread, aid to the private sector and incentives for foreign investment disappeared. To put it plainly, another 20th-century experiment with socialism annihilated a nation’s economy along with a peoples’ prospects for a better life.
Thousands of Nicaraguans who attempted to protect their property — or who simply committed the crime of owning private property — were imprisoned, tortured, or executed by the new despots.
Unlike the previous regime of Anastasio Somoza, the Sandinistas did not leave the native populations on the Atlantic coast of Nicaragua in peace. In Khmer Rouge style, they inflicted a ruthless, forcible relocation of thousands of Indians from their land. Like Stalin and Mao, the new regime used state-created famine as a weapon against these “enemies of the people.” [2] The Sandinista army committed myriad atrocities against the Indian population, killing and imprisoning approximately 15,000 innocent people. The Sandinista crimes included not only mass murders of innocent natives themselves, but a calculated liquidation of their entire leadership — as the Soviets had perpetrated against the Poles in the Katyn Forest Massacre, when the Soviet secret police executed approximately 15,000 Polish officers in the spring of 1940.
As most Marxist regimes, the Sandinista despotism accompanied its internal repression with external aggression. With Soviet and Cuban aid, Sandinista Nicaragua became the biggest and best armed force in Central America. In attempting to export its Marxist revolution, it posed a serious threat to the U.S. and to stability and democracy in the whole region. It was in response to this threat that the Reagan administration backed rebels in Nicaragua, the “contras,” who sought to bring democracy to their homeland. The Contras were mostly peasants led primarily by former Sandinistas who felt betrayed by the totalitarian turn of the revolution.
In the end, the contras played a vital role in helping Nicaraguans oust their oppressors. On February 25, 1990, under massive pressure, and intoxicated by their own propaganda in regards to their popularity, the Sandinistas staged an election in an attempt to prove their “democratic” stripes. But the dictators fundamentally misjudged the mindset of the Nicaraguan people, revealing a pathetic inability to gauge what the people were really feeling. As a result, the Ortega-led Sandinistas were embarrassingly ousted from power by the victory of the Coalition of Nicaraguan Opposition Parties, headed by Violeta Chamorro.
While Nicaragua obviously did not heal overnight, the Sandinistas could no longer torture their own people with the vicious power made available by a monstrous regime. They made sure, of course, to fulfill their Marxist legacy by swiftly “privatizing” the huge property holdings they had confiscated in the revolution and making themselves the sole recipients. As the Sandinistas clamoured to ensure that they remained multi-millionaires with swollen bank accounts, their reign of terror was cut short; democratization spread within the nation and the lives of Nicaraguans became freer and more prosperous.
It was no surprise, of course, that the Sandinistas served as models of veneration for the Western Left throughout their tyranny. Their despotic policies and adversarial disposition toward the U.S. won them high marks among leftists, for whom adversarial regimes are always the symbols that merit unadulterated worship and adulation. Just as previous fellow travelers had journeyed to the Soviet Union, communist China, North Vietnam and Cuba to pay homage to their totalitarian idols, leftists of all stripes flocked to Sandinista Nicaragua to pay homage to their new totalitarian deities. The Hollywood likes of Ed Asner, Michael Douglas and Susan Anspach served as the perfect examples of these new political pilgrimages
Despite the Left’s lies about the Sandinistas and its attempt to impose historical amnesia on their crimes, their unholy alliances, and the dire threat that they posed, the historical record stands for all to see.
As the former despot now grabs power through elections that U.S. policies helped create, the ball lies in his court in terms of what kind of Nicaragua he hopes to build: the anti-American and despotic Nicaragua of the past — or a new and improved Nicaragua that seeks to be a member of the community of free and civilized nations.
To overthrow the mass murderer Saddam? Completely justified. If we had overthrew Saddam in 1996 the Iraq War of 2003 would never had been nesseacary. In fact I supported taking out Saddam during the Gulf War.
Overthrow of the Taliban Government. You know, the same government that aided to these attacks.
Overthrow of another Undemocratic Dictator. Completely justified.
The overthrow of a Mass Murdering Dictator who used Chemical Weapons on its own people? Completely justified
Conclusion: While Americas Foreign Policy since 1945 hasn’t been perfect. It has been flawed in many ways. However those who try to make a moral equivalence to Americas actions in the Cold War in defeating Communism and ensuring the Long Term survival of democracy and Capitalism and Russia’s hacking of the 2016 Presidential Election which attempts to destroy that Liberal World Capitalist Order is completely flawed.
