Blowback and Bhutto

Jimmy Carter, champion of human rights, led the charge way back in 1979 to pour billions through the CIA into the hands of all sorts of Pakistani reactionaries, the ancestors of the suicide bombers who blew a hole into the country’s yearning for a modern, democratic state on Thursday.

But back then in the 1970s world communism led by the USSR was the principal bugaboo driving American policy, and Carter faithfully fell into line behind that campaign—not that it did him any good. He wasn’t nearly far enough on board for the organized military-industrial complex, which mobilized through things like the Committee on the Present Danger to pave the way for a more enthusiastic shifting of national priorities into war preparation and warmaking under Saint Ronald of Malibu.

It’s certainly ironic to learn decades later that Carter’s Condi Rice, Zbigniew Brzezinski, worked hard to provoke the Soviet invasion in the first place, hoping to snooker the Russians into a Vietnam-like quagmire. As ZB himself put it (Le Nouvel Observateur, 1998) ‘We didn’t push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.’

They got their wish, and it only took a million Afghan deaths to provide Zbig with his Cold War triumph. Cheap at half the price.

There were moderate forces involved in the resistance to Soviet occupation of Afghanistan way back then, but they attracted little interest from the CIA handlers who were much more excited by people like Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and other Islamic fundamentalists from the Seven Party Mujahideen Alliance and their eager volunteers like one Osama bin Laden.

Why is it that the ‘moderate’ types we supposedly need and want to be in charge, like the late Mrs Bhutto, only get a hand from Washington when their true favorites, military dictators who can deliver on demand with a flick of the baton, begin to stumble?

The body-blow taken to Bush’s schemes in Pakistan reveals yet again why a policy led by the intelligence services and based on secret dungeons around the world is doomed to implosion sooner or later. Bush and Cheney were delighted with Musharraf because he could deliver key targets to the CIA interrogators, and the regime in Washington could then beat interesting facts out of the prisoners and trumpet their successes, thus justifying the eclipse of the rule of law once and for all.

No matter that Musharraf simultaneously cut deals with the fundamentalists, which allowed them to regroup and carry on their war in Afghanistan. Now Bush & Perv are stuck with each other, and the Taliban are laughing all the way to Tora Bora.