As normal your analysis is more parisan hot air than in depth. Arab terror started in the late 60 at it's latests, when the palestinians started terrorising the world. I know for sure there were hijackings in the seventies. The Soviet invasion of afghanistan was in late 70's, 1979 if I remember right. So the Afgan Arab mujahedeen, financed by the CIA were a late bloomer. Apart from that the Soviet Union was a strategic threat to the US. They were so strong. They could've won the cold war. Never forget that. They could've won and we could've lived under their totalitarian, communist slave state. In a war of such dimensions, you have to go all out. The Afghan mudjeheddin were a tool.

"They could've won the cold war"

The video store called. They want their copy of Red Dawn back. Please wipe off all the sticky stains first.

Ricky the Vandal:

So Newman's analysis is more "par[t]isan hot air than in depth."

Then how do you describe your responses? Where is the depth in "for sure there were hijackings in the seventies." And how about "They were so strong." Not to mention " In a war of such dimensions, you have to go all out."

So little depth. So much hot air.

Ricky- The Palestinian hijackings in the 1970s were by SECULAR Palestinian groups. The first known suicide bombing by an Islamicist group was in 1983 in the Lebanon deployment, long after the US had begun supporting various conservative Islamic groups.

A good example is Pakistan-- in 2000, BEFORE 911, Tariq Ali noted the US support for Islamic groups in Pakistan-- see here.

Dance around, but Islamic terrorism was a product of US support globally.

What is this story doing in the Arts section?

To Blake--

It's in the Saturday Arts and Ideas section and it's the kind of story the NYT might allow in its pages once every six months or so, if that. So they bury it, rather than having, for instance, a regular columnist on the Op Ed pages who would often write about how the US has supported terrorists and thugs in the name of moral clarity. Moral clarity is normally reserved for the sins of Muslims.

So what? Life is full of unexpected consequences. Churchill said in 46 "we fought the wrong side!" Much of US policy during the cold war was short sided: I can think of lots of dumb things we did that I thought were dumb at the time:
1. overthrow Diem
2. overthrow Allende
3. generally support fascists instead of starting our own wars of "nationalist liberation"

On the other hand, we did enough right to survive the cold war. You can bitch all you want about what other people did in the past (including earlier incarnations of our currently all-wise selves. But other than indulging in some rather pathetic Schadenfreude, what do you accomplish?

Oscar,

The US paid an enormous price during the Cold War -- approximately $13 trillion in military expenditures. That doesn't count the environmental destruction, the cost of raising generations in fear of nuclear war, the continued erosion of democratic society for the sake of the national security state...And of course ordinary people in Asia, Africa, and the Americas from Mexico south paid an even bigger price as we vied for supremacy with the USSR. The left pointed out all of this at the time, and fought (with some successes) to limit the outrages of the US Cold War effort. Read what Ike said in his April 1953 "Chance for Peace" speech to see a Republican's view of what the Cold War really meant to our country and the world.

And, in the end, are we really going to be safer? Would a world of continued glasnost and perestroika have been worse and less secure than the world we're in today? The Reagan military build up, along with Reagan's support of the mujaheddin, led directly to the collapse of the USSR as an institution, but certainly didn't lead to democracy or anything like freedom or prosperity for the overwhelming majority of citizens in the USSR.

Lastly, we're not talking about "unexpected consequences." What did we think, that the mujaheddin would repel the Soviets, disarm, join hands in a circle and sing kumbaya? Those in power just didn't really care about further problems down the road, because in the end it would just become an excuse for continuing the national security structure of our country.

Nick - explain to me again why it was OUR responsibility to improve the lot of the citizens of the former USSR? As to the mujaheddin, we gave them arms to help get rid of an invader, were we supposed to fix them when we got done? If so, I would blame the left who had been more than happy to cut and run every chance they could just as much as the right who had other fish to fry as well. Neither side was blameless, and both jockied for position internally as well. The old military joke "Wars may change, but the enemy is always the same" was as active then as it is now.

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