In the film "Charlie Wilson's War," the nitwit and deeply corrupt congressman elevated to heroic status through Tom Hanks' ever-charming performance has a meeting with Pakistan's then-dictator Zia ul-Haq, in which they broker a deal for a joint effort to "save" Afghanistan from the Soviets. It's all great fun; the United States is, as always, on the side of the good guys, in this case the Afghan mujahedeen, who later morphed into the Taliban, hosts of al Qaeda.
The movie does not mention that the mujahedeen went to war against the Soviet-backed government then in power in Kabul after it committed the unpardonable crime of allowing female students to attend rural schools. The film casually notes that General Zia, the U.S. ally in this effort to bring "freedom" to Afghanistan, was, like so many of the movie's heroes, a hard case full of contradictions, as exemplified by his having murdered Pakistan's previous ruler, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.
I was in college when the Soviets intervened militarily in Afghanistan in 1980. I remember well the reaction that ensued--or, perhaps I should say, overreaction. In response to the events of the time, Jimmy Carter, who was gearing up for his re-election campaign, played a crucial role in the ramping up of the Cold War rhetoric that in turn set the stage for what followed when Reagan took office. For example, Carter instituted draft registration--something that I never forgave him for. Obviously, I opposed what the Soviets were doing--it was stupid and self-defeating, if nothing else. But it also was not, as it was portrayed in the media at the time, an act of territorial conquest or a land grab. I pointed out at the time to anyone who would listen that, first and foremost, there was already a pro-Soviet government in power in Afghanistan before the Soviets ever sent their troops there. It can hardly be an act of "conquest" to send troops to help an allied government on your nation's borders fight against an insurgency (imagine what the US would do if Mexico were embroiled in a civil war). And, as Scheer pointed out, and as I argued at the time, the reason the war started was that the religious fundamentalists who were fighting against the government in Kabul were, among other things, opposed to the fair treatment of women. These were people who were trying to keep Afghan society in the stone age. I further argued at the time that the Soviet war against a determined guerrilla insurgency was bound to fail anyway--that Afghanistan would be the USSR's Vietnam--and thus the fears that were raised in response to their military intervention were simply an overreaction.
History proved me right about the ultimate Soviet failure in Afghanistan, and history also proved me right when we saw just how barbaric the fundamentalism in Afghanistan turned out to be. In the light of the attacks of September 11, it is clear that the US, by supporting these fundamentalist fanatics, helped to create a monster that turned around and bit us. Much of the Cold War mentality at the time was really based on trumped up fears, and yet now, many look back on that time and act as if we don't know all that we have learned about the Taliban and Al-Qaeda.
Too often during the Cold War, our government was on the side of evil--such as in the support of terrorists and death squads in Latin America, or the support of the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile. Fear and hysteria were the tools of the trade used to justify these misdeeds. But you might think that, after what happened to the World Trade Center, Americans might be a little more circumspect about the long term consequences of US foreign policy.
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