--On Thursday, September 27, 2001 12:45 PM -0400 Dennis <dperrin13 at mediaone.net> wrote:
>
>
> Luke posted Peter Beinart's latest:
>
> "So the doves are wrong: There was no blowback. America's involvement in
> Afghanistan in the 1980s didn't help create Osama bin Laden; Saudi
> Arabia's involvement in Afghanistan in the 1980s helped create Osama bin
> Laden, in large part because the United States was too timid to direct
> the war itself. Similarly, it wasn't America's intervention in
> Afghanistan in the 1990s that created the Taliban; it was Pakistan's
> intervention and America's non-intervention. Doves might consider this as
> they counsel the U.S. to respond to September 11 by leaving the rest of
> the world to its own devices. After all, it was leaving the rest of the
> world to its own devices that got us into this in the first place."
>
> Beinart may wish to talk with TNR vet Charles Krauthammer, who coined the
> term "Reagan Doctrine," and who urged military support of the mujahedeen,
> which now, in Beinart's view, was minor if it happened at all. And of
> course the Saudis operated solo, not caring what Washington thought
> (which, according to one of Beinart's sources, was the "fear" of creating
> another Guatemala, the first time I've ever heard that sentiment
> expressed). Indeed, it seems the US doesn't intervene enough. And is not
> an empire. And doesn't reward aggression. And . . . well, you know how
> this song goes.
>
> DP
I think there is one valid point well-hidden here: some of the regimes that the US has aided varying degrees have turned out to be quite atrocious, and I see no reason why the left should deter efforts to rectify past wrongs unless it truly is inevitable that past wrongs will be repeated. I think a true US (or Soviet) puppet government in Afghanistan would be preferable to the Taliban.
-- Luke