A letter written to The New York Times in 1998:
To the Editor:
The most striking characteristic of the network financed and organized by Osama bin Laden is that it is made up almost entirely of Ronald Reagan's "freedom fighters," the Islamic fundamentalists armed and trained by the Central Intelligence Agency in the 1980's in an effort to drive Soviet forces out of Afghanistan (front page, Aug. 24). This network received $6 billion in United States- and Saudi-financed arms shipments in the 1980's.
Perhaps the Clinton national security team should devote some time to the overarching question of how to make it harder for networks like Mr. bin Laden's to operate. At a minimum that would mean eliminating the kind of covert arms operations we ran with such abandon in the 1980's.
William D. Hartung
New York, Aug. 24, 1998
The writer is a senior research fellow at the World Policy Institute at the New School.
1 comment:
Yeah, and then we funded thugs in Afghanistan to get at the Taliban. We're always funding thugs. Sometimes to take out other bad guys and sometimes to take out the good guys who don't benefit US interests.
It would be nice if we could support some good guys occassionally, eh?
Post a Comment