Rat Lines Into Iraq

[richlevy]

Originally Posted by deadbeater

Er, Merc, you kind of proved my point.

Don't worry, he'll figure it out eventually.

The US has a problem in defining 'government involvement'. It can be difficult to prove when governments are involved.

Cases in point.

The US did not support IRA terrorists. Terrorists did receive funding from private US citizens. If any of those citizens were wealthy or influential enough, they may have had ties to the government.

The US has supplied weapons and financial aid to insurgent groups, notably in Afghanistan in the 1980's

Like many other anti-communist movements at that time, the rebels quickly garnered support from the United States. As stated by the former director of the CIA and current Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, in his memoirs From the Shadows, the American intelligence services began to aid the rebel factions in Afghanistan 6 months before the Soviet deployment. On July 3, 1979, US President Jimmy Carter signed an executive order authorizing the CIA to conduct covert propaganda operations against the communist regime.
Carter advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski stated "According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahadeen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise." Brzezinski himself played a fundamental role in crafting U.S. policy, which, unbeknownst even to the Mujahideen, was part of a larger strategy "to induce a Soviet military intervention." In a 1998 interview with Le Nouvel Observateur, Brzezinski recalled:
We didn't push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would...That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Soviets into the Afghan trap...The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter. We now have the opportunity of giving to the Soviet Union its Vietnam War.[18]

Of course, if we apply the reasoning behind our branding the Iranian Guard 'terrorists' to our actions in Afghanistan, where does that leave us with the CIA in Afghanistan?

And let's not forget our covert support to the Contras. The point is that every accusation we throw at Iran can be tied to our past actions. If we've cleaned up our act, then fine, but if we do anything like it again in the future, our criticism will bite us in the ass.

We've lost a lot of the moral high ground in the past few years, and we are entering a very competitive future in international politics and finance. Cold War thinking can draw us into the same traps that bankrupted the Soviets and are bleeding us in Afghanistan and Iraq. If there is no turnaround, we may find ourselves like the Soviets, a very large second-world country. At least the Soviets have large oil reserves left.

In the 80's the Soviets were sucked into the 'Afghan trap', which gave them 9 years of war and a huge loss of money and prestige.

We're fighting a two-front war that may end up costing trillions of dollars, with no defined purpose or even a concrete definition of 'victory'. We are committing resources at a time of internal financial upheaval and depending on countries that at best are our rivals to prop up our economy.

My biggest worry is that in 10 years our only strategic leverage will be our nuclear arsenal. At that point UG and Merc may get to live out their Dr. Strangelove fantasies.