More Michael Parenti Re: Deserving Americans

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>Michael Parenti:
>
>>  U.S. forces went into Afghanistan, destroying much
>>  of that already battered country-all supposedly to catch Osama bin
>>  Laden. They never caught him, and now they say, "Oh that's not very
>>  important anyway, we don't really have to catch him." The White House
>>  is now predicting that al Qaeda is planning some other terrorist
>>  strikes of major magnitude, coming soon. So what exactly was
>>  accomplished by waging war upon a weak impoverished battered country?
>>  People say, "Well what would you do?" I would go out and hunt the
>>  terrorist cells, specifically. I wouldn't go out and bomb whole
>>  cities and villages.
>
>In the mid-80s, in a Dupont Circle restaurant in DC at a small luncheon
>honoring Chomsky, I was seated next to Parenti who, apart from being loud
>and obnoxious (and conspicuous wearing a Panama hat indoors), told me how
>the Soviets should wipe out the mujahideen and their collaborators in
>Afghanistan. When I said that the Soviets were killing untold numbers of
>civilians in their effort, Parenti bellowed that his beloved Red Army was
>fighting CIA-backed fascists and had to win.
>
>Well, Parenti was right, but he showed zero concern for the lives of Afghan
>civilians, and the cities and villages they occupied. It was bombs away, all
>the way. Now he sheds tears on behalf of those whose relatives he once
>condemned to a swift, violent death. And had the Taliban stayed in power and
>the millions who were expected to starve last winter did, would we see such
>anguished words from Parenti's keyboard?
>
>Spare me.
>
>DP

What could Americans have done to show concern for the lives of 
Afghan civilians in the period 1979-1989?  Since US activists, by and 
large, could support neither the Soviets and Afghan socialists nor 
CIA-backed mujahideen, was there anything they could and did do?  Any 
organized social force independent of both the Soviets and the 
CIA/mujahideen that you could and did practically support back then?
-- 
Yoshie

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