lied and cheated in the name of anti-communism

[Friend]

Salaam Alycum all


It will be odd for Iraqis to watch TV tonight (power cuts permitting) and hear the eulogies to freedom-loving Ronald Reagan at his state funeral. The motives behind US policy towards their country have always been a mystery, and if Iraqis sometimes explain to westerners that Saddam Hussein was a CIA agent whose appointed task was to provoke an American invasion of Iraq, it is largely thanks to Reagan's legacy.

Although Saddam was a junior figure, it is a matter of record that the CIA station in Baghdad aided the coup which first brought the Ba'athists to power in 1963. But it was Reagan who, two decades later, turned US-Iraqi relations into a decisive wartime alliance.
He sent a personal letter to Saddam Hussein in December 1983 offering help against Iran. The letter was hand-carried to Baghdad by Reagan's special envoy, Donald Rumsfeld.
Reagan liked several things about Saddam. A firm anti-communist, he had banned the party and executed or imprisoned thousands of its members. The Iraqi leader was also a bulwark against the mullahs in Tehran and a promising point of pressure against Syria and its Hizbullah clients in Lebanon who had just destroyed the US Marine compound in Beirut, killing over 200 Americans.

It is not surprising that the current international manoeuvring over Iraq is treated with suspicion grounded in that history. Iraqis regard their newly appointed government with scepticism. They see the difficulty France had at the United Nations in trying to persuade the Americans to allow Iraqis a veto over US offensives in places like Falluja. They note that Prime Minister Ayad Allawi did not even ask for a major Iraqi role until the French made it an issue. Iraqis remember that Allawi and his exile organisation, the Iraqi National Accord, were paid by the CIA.

Not just in Iraq but around the world, the hallmark of Reagan's presidency was anti-communist cynicism, masked by phoney rhetoric about freedom. In his first press conference as president he used quasi-biblical language to claim that Soviet leaders "reserve unto themselves the right to commit any crime, to lie, to cheat". It was one of the most extraordinary cases of the pot calling the kettle black. What could Saddam, let alone other Iraqis, have thought when it became known two years after Rumsfeld's first visit to Baghdad that Washington had secretly sold arms to the mullahs Iraq was fighting. Who had been lying and cheating?

In the name of anti-communism everything was possible . Reagan invaded Grenada on the false premise that US students who had been there safely for months were suddenly in danger. Reagan armed thugs to overthrow the government of Nicaragua, even after it won internationally certified free elections in 1984. He made the US an outlaw by rejecting the world court judgments against its blockade of Nicaragua's coast.

Reagan armed and trained Osama bin Laden and his followers in their Afghan jihad, and authorised the CIA to help to pay for the construction of the very tunnels in Tora Bora in which his one-time ally later successfully hid from US planes. On the grounds that Nelson Mandela's African National Congress was pro-communist, Reagan vetoed US congress bills putting sanctions on the apartheid regime the ANC was fighting.

His policies towards the Soviet Union were hysterical and counter-productive. He put detente into deep freeze for several years with his insulting label "the evil empire". It led to overblown outrage over the downing by Soviet aircraft of a South Korean airliner that intruded into Russian air space. Moscow's action was inept, but if Reagan had not put the superpowers in collision, the Kremlin might have treated the wayward plane more calmly.

Moscow's policies in the developing world were no less cynical than Reagan's. In Iran and Iraq they played both sides, tilting towards Saddam Hussein, in spite of his execution of communists. They feared Iran's Islamic fundamentalism as much as Washington did. But the cold war was not mainly about ideology, and certainly not freedom. It was a contest for power. By the time Reagan took office, some independent analysts and reporters with experience in the Soviet Union were arguing Moscow's power had peaked.

The CIA was exaggerating the strength of the Soviet economy and the amount being spent on defence (shades of the recent fiasco over Iraq's WMD). The issue was hotly debated, and it was hard to reach the truth of events in a closed society. Those like myself who detected Soviet weakness had to struggle against the Kremlinological establishment, where traditional views were in a majority.

But the record of Soviet behaviour suggested that, behind Brezhnev's rhetoric, Moscow had become disillusioned with its international achievements. Its Warsaw Pact allies were unreliable and had to be periodically invaded or threatened.
In the Middle East, Moscow had few allies in spite of decades of trying to win friends through the supply of arms. Egypt had moved west, Syria saw that Russia had no clout on the central issue of Israel and Palestine, the Gulf states were suspicious, and only Yemen and Iraq seemed to offer a little hope.
The Kremlin was losing heart, but its elderly leaders were too ill to draw the consequences. It took a younger leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, to start the process of international withdrawal. High oil prices after 1973 had given Moscow a decade of easy money to finance its part in the US-Soviet arms race while also developing its industrial infrastructure.

By the early 1980s the weakness of the consumer goods sector, the failure to reform agriculture, and the pressure for liberalisation coming from a policy elite which had travelled abroad as diplomats, engineers and journalists was about to break the surface.

Reagan's Star Wars project did not bankrupt the Soviet Union into reform, as his admirers claim. In repeated statements as well as his budget allocations Gorbachev made it clear Moscow would not bother to match a dubious weapons system which could not give Washington "first-strike capability" for at least another 15 years, if ever.

The Soviet Union imploded for internal reasons, not least the erratic way Gorbachev reacted to the contradictory processes set in motion by his own reforms. Reagan was merely an uncomprehending bystander. His acceptance in his second term of detente was a u-turn which millions of peace activists in Europe had been demanding.

It was detente that made the end of the cold war possible, and without Reagan's blind anti-communism it could have come at least four years earlier.

· Jonathan Steele' s book The Limits of Soviet Power was published in 1984

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Do you think this is right ? I think the new mean now is Every thing is possible against terrorism .Which is hasn't defined until now

Thanks

[Kaspar]

Alycum Salaam friend
Very wise words indeed

I agree that now anything is justified against terrorism a term which is very vague.

Your historical timeline about Iraq matches with what I have learned quite correctly

peace

[Faithfulservant]

Wow someone wasnt blaming everything on Bush.. Now its Reagans fault! Wonder who is next.. *yawn*

[bananabrain]

friend - this is a board for *discussion*, not for you to express opinions and sit back while everyone else discusses. you've said some pretty contentious and opinionated things, but you don't seem that happy to actually back them up with reasoned argument. of course you will be able to provide qur'anic quotes to support your opinions, but you will surely appreciate that this is not the same as actually justifying your views - otherwise, all you are really saying is "here is a journalist i agree with" or "here is a historian i agree with". what about actually asking a question? and an open question, one that you actually don't know the answer to yet and explore. otherwise you're getting rather close to being preachy and sententious.

b'shalom

bananabrain

[Kaspar]

I think the comment for discussion was...

Do you think this is right ? I think the new mean now is Every thing is possible against terrorism .Which is hasn't defined until now

bananabrain, say what you think is "contentious and opinionated"
Friend may like to hear it.

[Friend]

Originally Posted by Kaspar

I think the comment for discussion was...
bananabrain, say what you think is "contentious and opinionated"
Friend may like to hear it.

Al Salaamu Alyckum
I respect bananabrain opinion ,but I wrote what I believe in it. my final target to reach to the truth not to contentious and opinionated. I think all people included American have a mind to think and to know the truth .Political leaders always have their secret objectives to act and react with local and International events .for democratic purposes and as citizens we must know what is the truth around us .

Thanks to you Kaspar

[aquaris]

I would see that in a broader prespective...
the Rise of American Civilization...
There has been and are Other civilization in this world... Indian and Chinese being the Oldest still surviving continues one...and they are as old as at least 6000BC ...
then there WERE Egyptian,Roman, Greek, Persian, ..etc..etc...etc....etc.... Not in that particualar order... But none of them still in their orignal or anyway near their orignal form....
the lastest we are witnessing is the rise of American Civilization.....
And the Irony of FATE is..... they have started it from.... Iraq....( all previous US interventions.... whether in South Asia or South America or any where else...were for short term or medium term goals... ) ...this One has a definate Agenda...whether any one agrees or not... it has an identifiable enemy in the Name of terrorism....which not only has a shadow like physical presense but also has a presense on more intellectual philospical grounds......)
coming back to the Irony i was mentioning..... Its Iraq .... the Land of Babylon...from where.... it is assumed ....and what is called the Land of Civilizations.... of the land from where many civilizations can trace their roots.....

..... Just 2 cents of random .....irrelevant.... ramblings.....

[aquaris]

Now I am not accusing or blaming ....Its the Natural Laws...where in Act here....
A growing civilizaiton Like ...any other Needs.... outlets..... Every Other previous...civilzation....when in the process of expantions needed that....some of it were.....relatively peacefull ....but most of them were voilent......similiar is the case here.......all that we are witnessing is nothing but the act of Natural forces....of a growing expanding New Civilization and it will try to influence and change Other previous civilzation.....where ever it can....Untill a New....One is born....
Then that new One will take over....and follow nearly the same process...or expansion.

...Just a few More irrelevant...ideas........another irony......some how....the onus of blame has befallen on Muslims..... so the other irony is.... the biggest....ally in this so called war on terrorism ( read muslim fundamentalists ) is a muslim country
Pakistan......
....

[bananabrain]

kaspar - i'm not just talking about this thread, but other things where he's repeated things that a lot of people happen to believe not only in the muslim world but elsewhere.

I respect bananabrain's opinion, but I wrote what I believe in it. my final target to reach to the truth not to be contentious and opinionated. I think all people included Americans have a mind to think and to know the truth.

i would agree with you if i thought you were genuinely concerned with asking questions, rather than telling us answers. in the cases i am complaining about there are things that are often considered "the truth" by those who believe them, but are considered "opinions" (and not very friendly ones either) by others. in particular, there is the repeated accusation that what i call the "conspiracy theory" approach to US foreign policy - in other words, the US is plotting to take over the world, especially the muslim world. again, this is by no means established, provable or even credible. in such cases a lack of proof (apart from what is meant to be 'self-evident') is usually taken as evidence that there is a 'secret plan' that is being hidden from us. and, look, here's this exact accusation:

Political leaders always have their secret objectives to act and react with local and International events.

allied to this is the use of democratic mechanisms such as freedom of speech, freedom of the press and so on to demand "openness" which is incompatible with security:

for democratic purposes and as citizens we must know what is the truth around us

it was this point of view that was quoted when people try to say that we have "a right to know" what evidence the intelligence services are acting on and it's completely spurious. you won't know the "truth" then - all that you will know is what intelligence services believe to be the truth at the time they wrote the document. the implication is that there is a "truth" we can understand and know without it putting the people who gather intelligence in danger and, more insidiously, that this "real" truth must also back up what we believe.

with all that said, i don't think it's unreasonable to argue about the so-called "war on terror". unfortunately, friend has also made other remarks about judaism and the state of israel that a lot of people in the muslim world (and elsewhere) happen to believe - indeed, they sincerely believe them to be "true", not least because they are convenient and self-serving - but which i (and most jews) consider not only untrue but maliciously constructed for the purposes of attacking people they consider to be their enemies. i don't wish to dignify this, or enter into discussions about it. i'm not here to distribute propaganda. i'm here for genuine, open discussion about inter-religious issues, not to agitate and attack. i'm here to talk with muslims (among others) to try and find common ground, not to "prove" i'm "right" and that i'm a bigger victim than anyone else and that they're all out to get me.

b'shalom

bananabrain