http://www.conflictsforum.org/2015/obama-and-the-legacy-of-the-dark-side/
There are many problems with this article. I'll start with the first.
1. He refers to Brzezinski's 1998 interview but does not mention that Brzezinski clarified in 2006 interview that it was a sensationalized version of the interview.
http://en.people.cn/200603/20/eng20060320_251953.html
"I didn't say it was designed to prompt a Soviet invasion. That was a very sensationalized and abbreviated version of an interview."
USSR officially invaded Afghanistan in December 1979 but hundreds of Russian military advisors were already in Afghanistan since March 1979. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/7883532.stm)
On 6 April 1979, US had imposed sanctions on Pakistan due to Pakistan's nuclear program. However, CIA officials started meeting Afghan militants. All these meetings were arranged by ISI. Yes, throughout the war, ISI never let CIA directly contact any Afghan leader. All contacts were via ISI.
On 3 July 1979, Carter signed a presidential directive to fund Afghan militants via Pakistan, but no funding started yet because Pakistan was under sanctions.
In December 1979, Russia officially invades Afghanistan.
In January 1980, Carter offered $400 million aid to Pakistan which Zia rejected calling it "peanuts" (Zia expected a more generous package).
In June 1981, Reagan lifts sanctions and resumes aid to Pakistan.
In September 1981, Pakistan formally accepts aid and American money starts flowing in.
For details, see this:
http://www.iie.com/research/topics/sanctions/pakistan.cfm
This means:
No US aid reached Afghan militants before September 1981.
Pakistan had been supporting Hekmatyar and Ahmed Shah Masood since 1974 when Bhutto was in power. From 1974 to 1981, it was Pakistan running the show in Afghanistan.
In other words, it was not evil USA who "dragged" innocent Pakistan to fight war in Afghanistan. It was Pak establishment who had unleashed Afghan militants and was desperately looking for donors to invest in their Afghan adventure.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Cyclone
https://newrepublic.com/article/63866/back-front
As bizarre as it may sound to the antiwar left, the CIA was deeply wary of U.S. involvement in Afghanistan. The Agency didn't think the mujahedin rebels could beat Moscow, and it feared that if it ran the war, it would take the blame if things went awry. As Vincent Cannistraro, who led the Reagan administration's Afghan Working Group from 1985 to 1987, puts it, "The CIA was very reluctant to be involved at all. They thought it would end up with them being blamed, like in Guatemala." So the Agency tried to avoid direct involvement in the war, and to maintain plausible deniability. For the first six years following the 1979 Soviet invasion, the U.S. provided the mujahedin only Eastern-bloc weaponry, so the rebels could claim they had captured it from Soviet troops rather than received it from Washington. And while America funded the mujahedin, it played barely any role in their training. To insulate itself, the U.S. gave virtual carte blanche to its allies, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, to direct the rebel effort as they saw fit.
2. About Seymour Hersh. I have great respect for Hersh. He did amazing job exposing My Lai massacre and Abu Ghuraib torture, but increasingly he is sounding more like a conspiracy theorist rather than an investigative journalist, as his report on Bin Laden killing indicates. His earlier reports on My Lai and Abhu Ghuraib were confirmed by further investigation by independent sources, but may of his more recent reports have either been debunked or remain unconfirmed. Here is a detailed article about his reports.
http://www.vox.com/2015/5/11/8584473/seymour-hersh-osama-bin-laden
- He reported that there was planning for a false flag attack attributed to Iran to use a pretense for war in 2006 in the New Yorker
- In 2011 he claimed in a speech at a university in Qatar that top members of the special forces were members of Opus Dei and the Knights of Malta and that the US is on a crusade to convert the Middle East to Christianity.
- In 2012, he reported in the New Yorker that the Bush administration had armed an Iranian terrorist group MEK in 2005 and trained them in Nevada.
- In 2013 and 2014 he wrote two articles for the London Review of Books claiming that the Assad chemical weapons in Ghouta were faked. These stories weren't completely consistent with each other."
http://www.counterpunch.org/2007/03/05/seymour-hersh-and-iran/
"The Fatah al-Islam story is based entirely on a quote by one Alistair Crooke, a former MI6 agent, who, we learn, "was told" that weapons were offered to the group, "presumably to take on Hizbullah." The passage on Esbat al-Ansar is not even sourced."
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/Opinion/Commentary/2007/May-24/114832-destruction-and-deceit-in-north-lebanon.ashx
"Writing in The Independent on May 22, journalist Robert Fisk, who we might forget lives in Beirut, picked up on Hersh, citing him uncritically to again make the case that Hariri was financing Islamists. So we have Fisk quoting Hersh quoting Crooke quoting someone nameless in a throwaway comment making a serious charge. Yet not one of these somnolent luminaries has bothered to actually verify if the story is true.."
https://reason.com/archives/2007/03/01/a-muckraker-on-the-wane
And this from an Israeli newspaper:
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/thus-are-reports-about-the-mideast-generated-1.223615
"Hersh said he heard the story from Robert Fisk, the bureau chief of The Independent's Beirut office. But Hersh did not check out the story himself. For his part, Fisk said he heard the unconfirmed report from Alastair Crooke, a former British intelligence agent and the founding director and Middle East representative of the Conflicts Forum, a non-profit organization that aims to build a new relationship between the West and the Muslim world. Crooke, who gained his reputation through his involvement in the conflict in northern Ireland, does not know Arabic. When Lebanese journalists spoke to Crooke about the report, they said he told them only that he had heard it "from all kinds of people."
http://www.michaeltotten.com/archives/001449.html
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