>
>My overarching point is that Brzezinski, Bill Casey, and so on have a good
>deal to do with the flourishing of the muhajidin into a serious political
>force. I would not be so stupid as to declare that U.S. imperialism is
>directly responsible in
>umediated fashion for what happened on 9-11. To argue thus would be to
indulge
>in a form of "ethnocentrism" (for lack of a better term) that the knee-jerk
>anti-imperialist left in the U.S. is often ironically guilty of. After all,
>class forces, political alignments, etc. in time/places like 1970's and
>1980's Afghanistan were not the mere result of U.S./big power maneuvering.
>But I do think the U.S. role in aiding and abetting the likes of Bin Laden
>was important enought to warrant the use of the term "blowback". "Blowback"
>does not imply "just desserts".
I think we are on the same page, if not on the same line.
Two minor points - while the CIA involbvement was a factor in the rise of islamic fundamentalism, making that point salient in the aftermath of 9-11 is not the best of judgments. There is a proper time for addressing different kinds of grivances, and now is not the time to bitch about the spooks from the 1980s.
The second point is your opinion about the Oslo accords plus (or otherwise) - I think it was a recipe for disaster, an equivalent of South Africa's bantustans if not US "separate but equal" policy in the South. Ghettoization of a grooup of people seldom works - itr breeds poverty, exclusion, and subculturss conducive to violent, self destructive acts. A much better solution, in my humble opinion, would be a full integration of the so-called occupied territories and its population into the Israel proper, coupled with the creation of a modern, secular, multi-ethnic Israeli state (such as the US) and, at the same time, eradication through law enforcement (as opposed to military) means the radical militant elements.
wojtek