Whistleblown Follies

Thank God for the Whistle-Blowers. By Robert Scheer. "What WikiLeaks did was brilliant journalism, and the bleating critics from the president on down are revealing just how low a regard they have for the truth. As with Richard Nixon’s rage against the publication of the Pentagon Papers, our leaders are troubled not by the prospect of these revelations endangering troops but rather endangering their own political careers. It is our president who unnecessarily sacrifices the lives of our soldiers and not those in the press who let the public in on the folly of the mission itself."

--- Scheer's an old leftish liberal journalist from way back. Does he know the Wikileaks documents allegedly come from a low-level analyst who would not have access to high level classified information? Or does he just like hyperbole... The scheers of the world can make all the grand pronouncements of brilliance and revelations they want - fact is Manning did not have the security clearance such info requires. Sitting in Iraq, Manning most definitely did not have access to the systems which store the real "revelations." And, just because something is "classified" does not mean it is fact - at Manning's clearance level there is a lot of low-grade classified junk.

Scheer admits that the 9/11 attacks were launched from Afghanistan "That is, in fact, just how their nation came to be the launching pad for the 9/11 attacks, which is the ostensible purpose of our occupation. We meddled in their history in a grand Cold War adventure to humble the Soviets by attacking the secular government in Kabul with which Moscow sided."

Secular. Is that the word for nonreligious (communist) progressive government? Lets look see:

1973: Mohammed Daoud Khan, Afghan prince and politician, in a bloodless coup overthrew the monarchy of his cousin, Mohammed Zahir Shah, and became the first President of Afghanistan. (The longest period of stability (1933-1973) in Afghanistan was under the Zahir Shah monarchy. ) Daoud Khan was assassinated in 1978 as a result of the Saur Revolution led by the Communist People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA). Khan was known for his progressive policies, especially in relation to the rights of women, but even he established a one-party rule.
1978: Nur Muhammad Taraki became president after Khan and his family assassinated. Taraki also belonged to the PDPA.
1978: Nur Muhammad Taraki overthrown and murdered shortly afterwards. The new president was Hafizullah Amin. Also of the PDPA.
1979: Hafizullah Amin held office about 100 days and was either assassinated or died of an "undisclosed illness." General story is he was executed by the USSR who came at the request of the newly installed president and more pro-Soviet, Babrak Karmal. Karmal too a PDPA party member.
1979-1986: Karmal president. He is the best known of the Marxist leadership. In 1986 he left Afghanistan for Moscow, where he died in 1996. Also PDPA.
1986: Karmal is replaced by Dr. Mohammad Najibullah, also PDPA. After the Soviets pulled out, and two hard winters, the Najibullah government collapsed in 1992. Najibullah's career ended with him dangling from a lamp post, at the hands of the Taliban.

What's wrong with the picture Scheer paints... "We meddled .... by attacking the secular government in Kabul with which Moscow sided." Shouldn't that read - we meddled as the USSR meddled and installed the Communist PDPA? If you look closely the only difference between the PDPA and Taliban is the purse strings. Some seem to think the US is always and the only instigating bad guys.

And yes, it was the world renown humanitarian Jimmy Carter who initiated the program to fund, train, and equip the Mujahideen. The b.s. that the US intentionally drew the USSR into Afghanistan, "their Vietnam," is bogus. Moscow had been meddling years before and propping up one puppet after another; their invasion was foreseeable, or at least predictable. But the idea of tricking the Soviets made US intel and Grampa Reagan look like wise men.

As I've asked before - do you really think we "won" the Cold War? Why? Because the USSR "broke up" with itself?

If "meddling" is the meme the "left" and progressives (sometimes posing as libertarianistas) like to use for the 9/11 attacks - it would make just as much sense, if not more, for Islamic fundamentalists to target the godless Kremlin which also fueled a decade of civil war. Not so long ago the Mujahideen's "holy war" fighters were shouting death to Soviet infidels.

Still, we believe 4 planes were simultaneously hijacked by Al-Qaeda cave men acting alone, or if they had any inside help, why ... it was BushCo and/or Israel ... couldn't be any other old nemesis ... wonder who funds this multinational, stateless jihad army now.

Oh, yes, funding is via the "drug trade," which also funds the Taliban, international drug cartels, the CIA, global ruling elites, warlords and/or freedom fighters in Asia, Africa, Mexico, Colombia, international bankers, worldwide organized crime families, the Sandinistas, the Contras, the Illuminati, Freemasonry, The New World Order, Rothchilds, Russian Jews, Queen Elizabeth, heavy metal music, the ghettos of L.A., the Bush family dynasty and Governor Clinton's cocaine drops in the Ozark Mountains.

So lets say hand-offs Afghanistan - no US meddling - since it seems, according to anti-meddling folks, that the US has no strategic rationale for being there. Let some other world power assume the folly of dealing with the brutality, corruption, ineffective state institutions, thousands of miles of unguarded borders, illiteracy, poverty, and dysfunction in Afghanistan. We have plenty of all that right here at home to deal with.