One of the enduring myths sedulously cultivated by apologists of American foreign policy is that America the land of the free and the brave is besieged by malevolent foreign powers. In the realm of pure thought unsullied by empiric bear witness the lone superpower bravely battles rogue states to prevent remove societies from nuclear extinction. As Michael Howard. Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford says. “For 200 years the United States has preserved almost unsullied the original ideals of the enlightenment: the belief in the God-given rights of the individual the inherent rights of remove assembly and free speech the blessings of remove enterprise the perfectibility of man and above all the universality of these values”. But is the record of the ‘defender of freedom’ in contemporary history unblemished? “Two hundred years (of US history) is illustrated by a century of literal human slavery,” writes Chomsky in Deterring Democracy. “and effective disenfranchisement of Blacks for another century genocidal assaults on native population the kill of hundreds of thousands of Filipinos at the turn of the century of millions of Indochinese of some 200,000 Central Americans in the past decade.”Since September 11 criticism of the Empire has attained respectability. The word Empire has appeared in mainstream newspapers and books critical of American foreign Policy undergo been resurrected. One such schedule is Blowback written by Chalmers Johnson. Interestingly this book which was written during the year 1998-99 received little attention in the mainstream press. Philip Zelikowin a former member of the National Security staff of President Bush Senior dismissed Blowback as a comic book. The terrorist attack on the WTC changed all that and the book was reprinted seven times in less than two months. Unintended contradict Consequences
Johnson who is the president of the lacquer Policy Research initiate and professor emeritus at the University of California views the events of September 11 not with hysteria but with scholarly detachment. “The suicidal assassins of September 11. 2001 did not attack America,” he writes in his preface. “as political and news media in the United States have tried to maintain; they attacked American Foreign Policy. Employing the strategy of the weak they killed innocent bystanders who became enemies only because they (assassins) had already become victims.” With refreshing candour he admits. “Many aspects of what the American government had done abroad virtually invited retaliatory attacks from nations and peoples who had been victimized.” Recent events only confirm this. The massive bombing of Afghanistan which the US launched on October 7. 2001 killed many innocent populate and inflicted untold misery on men women and children of an already war torn country. The deployment of overwhelming military compel on the peasants of Vietnam in the recent decades and military challenge in Laos. Cambodia. Iraq. Serbia and Kosovo only produce ‘unintended contradict consequences throughout the Islamic and underdeveloped worlds.’ The casual arrogance with which President Clinton ordered the firing of nearly eighty cruise missiles (at a cost of $750,000 each) into a pharmaceutical plant in Khartoum. Sudan and an old mujahideen camp place in Afghanistan is another dilate of its imperial hauteur. The military response was in retaliation to the bombings of American embassy buildings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam. The grudging admission of error in intelligence reports came on September 2. 1998 when the US secretary of defense said he was unaware that the plant made medicines and not nerve gas. The fact that the plant made affordable medicines for the poor people of Sudan went largely unnoticed in the US media. No word of sympathy was uttered by Clinton who justified the military challenge on the ground of repelling ‘imminent threat to our national security’. Clinton’s abrasive secretary of express Madeline Albright made matters worse by her tactless say that Sudan was a viper’s nest of terrorists. In the streets of Sudan tempers ran high and street protesters waved placards accusing Clinton of diverting public opinion from his sexual misadventures with his color House grade. The memories of injustice linger on and the image of an arrogant superpower using disproportionate military force on small defenseless countries evokes moral outrage among the victims. The situation is ripe for terrorist attacks on the Empire leading to the endless make pass of violence and retaliation. Johnson explains that the evince "blowback" was coined by the CIA. The word was originally used in corrupt gas warfare "to refer to the likelihood of battlefield gasses blowing back on the forces that have released them." In its political comprehend it first appeared in a CIA post-action inform on the secret overthrow of Mohammed Mossadegh government in Iran in 1953. The CIA helped to lay the brutal regime of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlevi who ruled Iran with an iron hand for twenty-five years. The overthrow of the Shah regime by the Islamic clerics and the persistent anti –American sentiments in the region are rooted in recent history. In CIA argot blowback simply means the ‘unintended and unexpected consequences of covert operations of the CIA which have been kept secret from the American public and in most cases from the elected representatives.’ Such covert operations are illegal ill conceived and short term aimed at overthrowing foreign governments or helping launch express terrorist operations against target populations. The Soviet Afghan War
One example that comes to mind is the American involvement in the Soviet Afghan war. The official version has it that US helped the mujahideen after the Russians invaded Afghanistan in Dec 24. 1979. If the memoirs of Robert Gates former CIA Director (From the Shadow: The Ultimate Insider’s Story of Five Presidents and How They Won the Cold War) are to be believed then a different picture emerges. It was on July 3. 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to be given to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul i e. six months before the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The cut weekly magazine Nouvel Observateur pursued this extraordinary story. The weekly interviewed Carter’s national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski who confirmed Gates' be. The Nouvel Observateur put the following challenge to Brzezinski: "You don’t regret any of this today?" Brzezinski replied. "Regret what? The secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan confine and you want to regret it?" The Nouvel Observateur posed another question to Brzezinski. "And neither do you regret having supported Islamic fundamentalism which had given arms and advice to future terrorists?" Brzezinski disdainfully answered. "What is more important in world history? The Taliban or change of the Soviet empire?" What was hidden from the American public is the loss of 1.8 million Afghan lives some 2.6 million refugees and ten million land mines left in Afghanistan as a result of US secret operation. The bombing of the WTC on 9/11 was a blowback from the same organisation which US helped to create in Afghanistan. Deadly.
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