Robert Parry: How US Hubris Baited Afghan Trap

[marmar]

from Consortium News:



How US Hubris Baited Afghan Trap
May 3, 2012

Exclusive: Despite what Official Washington thinks it knows, the real error on Afghan policy after the Soviets left in 1989 was not the abrupt cutoff of U.S. aid but nearly the opposite, continued CIA support for the Islamist mujahedeen and rejection of peace overtures from Moscow, writes Robert Parry.

By Robert Parry


President Barack Obama’s decision to extend the U.S.-Afghan strategic relationship through 2024 was driven, in part, by one of Official Washington’s most cherished myths – that the United States abruptly abandoned Afghanistan in 1989 and must not make that mistake again.

This myth is repeated by policymakers and pundits alike. On Tuesday, for instance, MSNBC’s Chris Matthews asked if his guests had seen the movie, “Charlie Wilson’s War.” He apparently viewed the Tom Hanks film as a documentary when it was really a fictional account, both on the innocence of the Afghan mujahedeen and the callowness of Congress in supposedly pulling the plug once the Soviet Army withdrew.

But Matthews is far from alone in believing this mythology. The New York Times’ lead editorial on Wednesday criticized Obama for not explaining how he would prevent Afghanistan from imploding after the scheduled U.S. troop withdrawal in 2014, though the Times added that the plan’s “longer-term commitment [of aid] sends an important message to Afghans that Washington will not abandon them as it did after the Soviets were driven out.”

The abandonment myth also has been cited by senior Obama administration officials, including the current Ambassador Ryan Crocker and former Defense Secretary Robert Gates, as a way to explain the rise of the Taliban in the mid-1990s and al-Qaeda’s use of Afghanistan for plotting the 9/11 attacks on the United States in 2001. .................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://consortiumnews.com/2012/05/03/how-us-hubris-baited-afghan-trap/