Trying to tame a monster we created
December 16th, 2009 at 08:32am Pat Cunningham
 .
 
.Â
  Ordinarily, I have little use for the writings of Maureen Dowd.
.
  Her COLUMN today is an exception.
.
  An excerpt:
.
  In a bit of unpoetic justice, Bob Gates helped create the mess in Afghanistan decades ago and now has to try to clean it up.
.
  At the C.I.A. in the ’80s, Gates conspired with Charlie Wilson and the Saudis to help the insurgents in Afghanistan turn back the occupation of a superpower. Now he’s guiding the attempt of the occupying superpower to turn back the insurgents, some of whom are the same ones he armed to defeat the Soviet Union.
.
  Trying to do a good thing that also seemed like a strategically brilliant thing — help the Afghan Davids repel the raw aggression of the Soviet Goliaths — we created the monsters that have come back to haunt us, and we learned how little control we have over history.
.
  We trained a whole generation of jihadists and armed them. We paved the way for the Taliban takeover and the rise of Osama bin Laden. We created the Islamist power in the northwest frontier of Pakistan, swelled by millions of Afghan refugees. We enabled the conditions for bin Laden’s safe haven. We contributed to the instability of Pakistan.
.
Entry Filed under: War in Afghanistan
4 Comments Add your own
1. Quentink | December 16th, 2009 at 9:16 am
Every reasonable person knows this to be true. If we deny these simple facts we will be right back here in another decade or two. The right denies that this is what led to the rise of the Taliban and they are wrong. The left by insisting we leave immediately would be leaving the same vacuum behind and they are wrong. We must stay long enough for the people to have a chance to control their own destiny, we can not abandon them again.
2. Neftali | December 16th, 2009 at 10:19 am
Qk - Who from the right denies this?
3. echo4charlie | December 16th, 2009 at 11:44 am
We didn’t create this. This existed thousands of years before the United States even existed. Yes, we did play a role in modernizing technologies that they currently use, but, we did not create the eschatology that fuels their jihad. This would be happening either and any way with or without the US.
But, since we are there, we need to see this through. Otherwise, genocide is inevitable.
4. Milton Waddams | December 16th, 2009 at 1:11 pm
This is similar to the administration knowing that Saddam had WMDs, they were sure he did because they still had the invoice from when they sold them to him.
Leave a Comment
Some HTML allowed:
<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong>
Trackback this post | Subscribe to the comments via RSS Feed