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US and Pakistani Funding prior to the Soviet Invasion

In spite of it being neutrally stated and thoroughly sourced, TheTimesAreAChanging has removed my section on US and Pakistani aid to the insurgents in 1979 for a second time. In order to avoid Edit Warring, I submit it to the community for their approval. This is the position of my critic:

"You're not citing any historians save Gibbs, who should have checked with Zbig. You are misrepresenting Gates and the NSA, quoting these primary sources selectively to advance OR. The Soviets were concerned Amin was a CIA asset."


A brief survey of the section will reveal that there are in fact more secondary sources cited here then primary ones:


Shortly after the Herat uprising, United States National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski pushed a decision through the National Security Council (NSC) to provide non-lethal assistance to the insurgency.[1] During the meeting, the NSC contemplated "sucking the Soviets into a Vietnamese quagmire" [2] Brzezinski later recalled "that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention" [3] Soviet intelligence archives show that Moscow officials were genuinely concerned about growing US influence in Afghanistan.[1]
In May 1979, US officials secretly began meeting with rebel leaders through Pakistani government contacts. A former Pakistani military official claimed that he personally introduced a CIA official to Gulbuddin Hekmatyar that month (Freedom of Information Act requests for records describing these meetings have been denied).[1] Some scholars assert that the US began facilitating arms shipments at this time as well, although the CIA disputes this.[4] [5]

Several of your own sources actually show the opposite of what you would lead the reader to believe. To wit:

So, to review: GPRamirez5 invokes the "peer-reviewed work of professional historians," citing five sources—but three of those sources say the opposite of what he claims they do or do not address the matter at all, one is an editorial from the far-Left Guardian perpetuating a misrepresentation of Gates through the wonders of citogenesis, and there is one source that actually fits the bill: Gibbs. Yet Gibbs relied on misleading information and was writing in the year 2000; more recent scholarship has followed up on his caveat "One hopes that other persons who were involved in the Carter policy, notably President Carter, will offer their views regarding the veracity of the above statements." (In addition, many documents have been declassified since then, a point I shall return to.) As a case in point, Bruce Riedel's What We Won: America's Secret War in Afghanistan, 1979-89 (Brookings Institution Press, 2014) benefits from the author's direct access to Carter, Brzezinski, Gates, and other U.S. officials to deliver one of the best accounts to date of the U.S. role in the war. Here is an excerpt:

Throughout 1978 and 1979, the majority view in the U.S. intelligence community was that Russia would not intervene with large numbers of ground troops in what increasingly appeared to be a Vietnam-like quagmire in Afghanistan. ... When the Soviets did intervene dramatically on Christmas Eve 1979, the intelligence community could argue that it had correctly detected and reported the military preparations for the invasion in the weeks leading up to the invasion. It would later claim in a 1980 postmortem requested by the national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, that it had provided ten days's warning that Moscow was "prepared" to invade; however, a subsequent study by the CIA's own Center for the Study of Intelligence was more honest, noting that the warnings were far from explicit and that the "warnees" did not feel warned at all. The subsequent study highlighted that a community assessment issued on September 28, 1979, concluded that Moscow would not intervene in force even if it appeared likely that the Khalq government was about to collapse. A review of President Carter's diary, published in 2010, shows dramatically how the president was not warned. In the two months leading up to the invasion, his mind was focused on Iran and the hostages. There are only two very brief mentions of the Afghan issue, and neither suggests that the danger of invasion was high on his administration's agenda. ... When asked by ABC News on New Year's Eve whether he had been surprised by the invasion, a shaken Carter said "Yes."

Like Riedel, Steve Coll's Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 (Penguin, 2004) gives almost no consideration to the fringe conspiracy theory, but an examination of the footnotes reveals the following:

Contemporary memos—particularly those written in the first days after the Soviet invasion—make clear that while Brzezinski was determined to confront the Soviets in Afghanistan through covert action, he was also very worried the Soviets would prevail. ... Given this evidence and the enormous political and security costs that the invasion imposed on the Carter administration, any claim that Brzezinski lured the Soviets into Afghanistan warrants deep skepticism.

That brings us to back to the infamous 1998 "interview" with Brzezinski, in which he supposedly said: "The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter, essentially: 'We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam War.'" As a matter of fact, Brzezinski's memo from December 26, 1979 has since been declassified. How does it compare to the conspiracy theory? See for yourself:

We are now facing a regional crisis. Both Iran and Afghanistan are in turmoil, and Pakistan is both unstable internally and extremely apprehensive externally. If the Soviets succeed in Afghanistan, and if Pakistan acquiesces, the age-long dream of Moscow to have direct access to the Indian Ocean will have been fulfilled. ... The Soviet intervention in Afghanistan poses for us an extremely grave challenge, both internationally and domestically. While it could become a Soviet Vietnam, the initial effects of the intervention are likely to be adverse for us ... We should not be too sanguine about Afghanistan becoming a Soviet Vietnam: The guerrillas are badly organized and poorly led; They have no sanctuary, no organized army, and no central government—all of which North Vietnam had; They have limited foreign support, in contrast to the enormous amount of arms that flowed to the Vietnamese from both the Soviet Union and China; The Soviets are likely to act decisively, unlike the U.S., which pursued in Vietnam a policy of "inoculating" the enemy. As a consequence, the Soviets might be able to assert themselves effectively, and in world politics nothing succeeds like success, whatever the moral aspects.

In sum, why don't we follow the example of Riedel and Coll and leave this threadbare hoax behind us?TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 00:25, 1 October 2016 (UTC)

This seems like an argument from WP:TRUTH, correct me if I'm wrong. Your wall of text , while highly informative, skews the narrative to the opposite extreme, potentially constructing a straw man on the other side to confront. The truth of the matter is that those in power were not "too sanguine about the prospect of a South Vietnam (in Afghanistan)", which involved certain "risks." Those risk, as summarized by Zbig, being that the Soviets would win and do so quickly, not that there would be a bloody war. And indeed the question posed by the "smoking gun" (scare quotes intended) quote from Gates' memoir is really about the feasibility of a Vietnam-scenario, not desirability. After it became clear that the Soviets and their Afghan client got "their Vietnam", there was much glee in Washington, which continues to this day. One thing you can't get around what Zbig has actually said, just like you can't around the fact that the US and Pakistan were supplying cash and weapons (Gates' memoir) to the rebels before the Soviet invasion. It is also probably not true that the Soviets were solely concerned about Amin's nonexistent links to the West—the Amin regime was falling apart due to its inability to deal with rebellion or internal party opposition. I'd have to look through some literature to prove that the Soviets were concerned about the foreign-backed rebels gaining force, but it is strange to suppose that this was not a key factor in their decision. But getting back to what Zib said:
::::B: And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention [the explicit Vietnam comment came later]
Q: Despite this risk, you were an advocate of this covert action. But perhaps you yourself desired this Soviet entry into the war and looked for a way to provoke it?
B: It wasn’t quite like that. We didn’t push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.
Q : When the Soviets justified their intervention by asserting that they intended to fight against secret US involvement in Afghanistan , nobody believed them . However, there was an element of truth in this. You don’t regret any of this today?
B: Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter, essentially: “We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its ::::Vietnam war." Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war that was unsustainable for the regime , a conflict that bought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.
Q: And neither do you regret having supported Islamic fundamentalism, which has given arms and advice to future terrorists?
B : What is more important in world history? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some agitated Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?
That's a pretty clear blunt outline of his thinking on the issue. It includes the necessary caveat the Soviets were responsible for the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, not the US (duh). Gibbs commented:
Washington Post correspondent Steve Coll downplays the significance of the CIA operation. He presents declassified documents from Brzezinski that express deep concern about the Soviet invasion. According to Coll, the documents "show no hint of satisfaction" from Brzezinski, regarding the invasion. Note, however, that Brzezinski's 1983 memoirs clearly do imply some satisfaction regarding the Soviet invasion (Coll neglects to mention this).
Having said this, you are correct that the operation was not undertaken with the goal to draw the Soviet's into a "Vietnam", which was seen a risk with potentially more costs than benefits at the time (according to the documents you cite, not sure if there is more to consider). Zbig's quotes after the fact can only be indicative of self-aggrandizement after the fact, not as proof that he was an evil genius with perfect foresight. This is in fact the interpretation of that great conspiracist Noam Chomsky, as I recall. What is also true, is that a Vietnam scenario was seen as desirable if it could come to fruition in the full sense of the word. And it certainly was seen as an immensely positive development after Soviet Vietnam happened. Finally, the planning at the time is summarized in the following: "We didn’t push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would". The after the fact rationalization was: Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it?. This rationalization leaves us with the fact that a Vietnam scenario was considered desirable, IF feasible.
The above is an FWIW, to show the other view. I am not sure how the article should treat all this. Given the above sourcing, it should not say that that the US bagan covert support with the express aim of luring the Soviets to invade, to give them their Vietnam. That implies that Zbig was a latter day Nostradamus, which is simply untenable regardless of what he and others may wish to pretend. But It should also not sweep the operation and the thinking behind (and after it) it under the rug. Guccisamsclub (talk) 03:46, 1 October 2016 (UTC)
  • Also on wikiquote for Zbig, it says that he has denied having said: "I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention". This is sourced to the White thesis (correctly, although White should probably tell us where she got that info). But I question the refs to the Real News interview and to Coll's book. The interview has to do with the dating of the Vietnam comment (not the earlier comment), i.e. he denied Real News in that video and not Nouvel Observateur. The Coll book does not say that "no such memo exists"—all I get from it is that that Zbig did not view the immediate prospect of a Soviet invasion as a good thing at the time, on balance. So Coll gives just the context to that remark and nothing more, as far as I can tell. (Also I replaced the Pol Pot "denial" with a quote. Arguably it does not even belong there, since you are the only one I know who has called the quote a hoax or a lie. Numerous academic sources use the quote.)Guccisamsclub (talk) 05:19, 1 October 2016 (UTC)
My understanding is that the decision to finance the mujahideen starting on July 3, 1979 was undertaken in order to preserve U.S. options, rebuild the Carter administration's strained relationship with Pakistan's Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, and keep the rebellion alive so that the Soviets would meet with stiff resistance if they did invade—nothing more, nothing less. That is consistent with the recollections of Slocombe ("Well, the whole idea was that if (emphasis added) the Soviets decided to strike at this tar baby, we had every interest in making sure that they got stuck.") and Gates ("No one in the Carter Administration wanted the Soviets to invade Afghanistan and no one, as I can recall at least, ever advocated attempting to induce them to invade ... Only after the Soviet invasion did some advocate making the Soviets 'bleed' in their own Vietnam."), not to mention Cyrus Vance's aide Marshall Shulman, who told the far-Left Nation: "The State Department worked hard to dissuade the Soviets from invading and would never have undertaken a program to encourage it." According to Riedel, the most important motivation was a desire for U.S.-Pakistani rapprochement in light of the ongoing turmoil in Iran:
In early January (1979), at a summit of key Western leaders in Guadeloupe, Carter impressed on them "the importance of keeping Pakistan with the West." Later in the month he made the same argument about Pakistan's importance to Chinese leaders, who did not want to see the Soviets increase their range or power. ... After consultations with his national security team on July 3, 1979, Carter authorized a limited CIA covert action to start providing non-lethal assistance to the Afghan mujahideen, or as Carter calls them, "the freedom fighters." The project was to include propaganda and psychological warfare operations only; no weapons were to be provided. ... So, by the fall of 1979, in response to the Soviet threat in Afghanistan and the fall of the Shah, the U.S. ally in Iran, President Carter was trying to repair the fractured U.S. relationship with Pakistan and his own relationship with Zia.
Brzezinski has never suggested otherwise, with the exception of that one 1998 French interview; frankly, I don't know what deep insight you hope to acquire by quoting from it at length. At worst, the French interviewer planned a journalistic ambush; at best, the nuances of Brzezinski's semantics were lost in the translation: Either way, given that Brzezinski has denied the accuracy of the quotes Nouvel Obs attributed to him over and over and over again, it's basically worthless as a source. You seem to be entirely ignorant of Brzezinski's oeuvre, with the exception of two apocryphal quotes that confirm your far-Left worldview. From his 1983 memoir to his 1997 interview for CNN's Cold War, Brzezinski's stated view has been remarkably consistent, if a bit self-aggrandizing. He was the one lonely voice that predicted the invasion in an excessively dovish administration, but Carter refused to take decisive measures to deter the Soviets until it was too late:
Had we been tougher sooner, had we drawn the line more clearly, had we engaged in the kind of consultations that I had so many times advocated, maybe the Soviets would not have engaged in this act of miscalculation. As it is, American-Soviet relations will have been set back for a long time to come. What was done had to be done, but it would have been better if the Soviets had been deterred first through a better understanding of our determination.—Brzezinski, Power and Principle, 1983, p.432
I think we underreacted (to Soviet activity in Africa), and that's why they gradually escalated, and eventually, as I have said earlier, SALT was buried in the sands of Ogaden, the sands that divide Somalia from Ethiopia, and eventually led to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, which then precipitated a very strong, overtly so, American response. I would have preferred us to draw the line sooner, and perhaps some of the things that subsequently happened wouldn't have happened.—Brzezinski, interview for CNN's Cold War, Episode 17, "Good Guys, Bad Guys," June 13, 1997
Contra Gibbs's criticism of Coll, I don't detect any "satisfaction" in the former quote, nor even in the latter.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 05:44, 1 October 2016 (UTC)
I agree, that was good removal of highly questionable content.My very best wishes (talk) 14:43, 1 October 2016 (UTC)
"with the exception of two apocryphal quotes that confirm your far-Left worldview". Casually labelling others far-left is indicative of your politics only. Please stop with the projection, Times. I may have read less on this topic than you have, but I am certainly not the one here adopting a "faith-based" approach in ruling out the obvious.. Brzezinski reiterated that satisfaction in his memoir (according to Gibbs, and I have no reason to doubt him), to the Real News. The interviewer practically begged him to be circumspect on the issue and deny any "satisfaction"—Zbig responds by explicitly doubling down on the satisfaction at every step. It takes willful blindness not to see that this deep "satisfaction" with the outcome is the establishment view. The gloating is so great, that the "Soviet Vietnam" was oversold in establishment propaganda as a masterful plan to destroy the Evil Empire (by Zbig and a million others). I've just recently had to delete this propaganda from the info-box. You objection boils down to the fact that not every quote from Zbig shows satisfaction. So what? It was highly uncertain how things would play out at the time, duh. Indeed all your concerns could be addressed by adding additional sources to show how complicated the decision-making was, and giving lie to the later self-aggrandizement. Just sweeping it all under the rug seems clumsy and untenable. Guccisamsclub (talk) 15:07, 1 October 2016 (UTC)
P.s White's summary FWIW: In various ways, Freedman, Coll, and Gibbs are all correct in their assessments of the situation, but each also misses the mark by neglecting to factor other variables into the equation.. Gibbs gives the source for "satisfaction" (which Coll neglects): Brzezinski 1983, p 429. Guccisamsclub (talk) 16:02, 1 October 2016 (UTC)

References

  1. ^ a b c Steve Galster "AFGHANISTAN: THE MAKING OF U.S. POLICY, 1973-1990" National Security Archive, October 9, 2001
  2. ^ Robert M. Gates, From the Shadows: The Ultimate Insider's Story of Five Presidents and How They Won the Cold War (Simon and Schuster, 2011), p. 144-145
  3. ^ David N. Gibbs, "Afghanistan: The Soviet Invasion in Retrospect" International Politics 37:233 - 246, June 2000
  4. ^ Christian Friedrich Ostermann "New Evidence on the War in Afghanistan-Introduction" COLD WAR INTERNATIONAL HISTORY PROJECT BULLETIN, ISSUE 14/15 [Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars]
  5. ^ Jonathan Steele, "10 Myths About Afghanistan" The Guardian, September 27, 2011

Invasion

The war is usually called the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. (FrankFriar (talk) 13:33, 25 September 2016 (UTC))

I would prefer "Soviet War in Afghanistan" as the title. The war was not between the governments of USSR and Afghanistan, as the current title would imply, but an armed intervention of the USSR into Afghan civil war between the leftist regime and its Islamist opponents.--Paul Keller (talk) 12:13, 4 October 2016 (UTC)

US Role, point by point

I think the walls of the text in the previous section make it unsustainable. So I'll summarize the earlier points here in a separate section

  1. The US gave aid to the Afghan rebels before the Soviet invasion (and indeed after the Soviet withdrawal). According to Gates memoir, the CIA gave direct military aid as well, although it has been disputed [by whom?]
  2. The prospect of US aid increasing the likelihood of a Soviet invasion was envisioned by US policy-makers at the time, as was the possibility of dragging the Soviets into a "Soviet Vietnam" scenario, something reiterated by Zbig later. However the immediate prospect of a Soviet invasion had major downsides, according to contemporary documents and therefore the likely goal of the aid was not to push the Soviets into invading. Likewise, according to Gates later account, the policy was not intended to prompt a Soviet invasion. Some believed that USSR was not likely to invade regardless of US actions. Zbig later claimed his position at the the time was that the Soviet Union would invade regardless of US actions.
  3. Brzezinski and others subsequently defended this and subsequent involvements in Afghanistan on the grounds that it helped exhaust the Evil Empire in a "South Vietnam" scenario. On the other hand, Zbig has also remarked, much earlier than to the LNO interview, that the Soviet invasion could have been discouraged if the US had been more forceful at the time. Zbig has of course also remarked that the US played no role in Afghanistan 78-79, something most scribblers on the topic took at face value, until they heard otherwise from the horse's mouth.

Which of these are you debating exactly? They all appear to be verifiable, if complicated, facts. Guccisamsclub (talk)

  • This page includes very big section about foreign/US aid to mujahideen. So, all important info is already there. As about something before the war, well, this article is about the war, not something that had happen before. The background section should not be too long and include only most important and indisputable facts. My very best wishes (talk) 22:57, 1 October 2016 (UTC)
That wasn't what Times was objecting to. WP:BALASP in the sense you are using it, could be invoked to remove just about any other content in the article, including the entire background section. The disputed section was about 4 lines in length, hardly a case of coatracking. Guccisamsclub (talk) 23:08, 1 October 2016 (UTC)
Gucci, I was arguing principally against the blatant misrepresentations GPRamirez5 attempted to introduce into the article, as they are the main subject of the "US and Pakistani Funding prior to the Soviet Invasion" section. Your summary is certainly much more accurate than his, although I might flesh it out with some of the details I provided above (e.g., Carter ultimately approved the smallest possible aid package—$500,000 in non-lethal assistance—precisely to avoid causing "the Soviets to intervene more directly and vigorously than otherwise intended"; the program was undertaken primarily to improve U.S. ties with Pakistan in light of the growing Soviet involvement in Afghanistan and the Iranian Revolution).
I'm not sure if the U.S. provided direct military assistance to the mujahideen prior to the Soviet invasion. The standard account for decades has been that it did not, yet in From the Shadows, pp. 146-147, Gates writes: "By the end of August, Pakistani President Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq was pressuring the United States for arms and equipment for the insurgents in Afghanistan. ... Separately, the Pakistani intelligence service was pressing us to provide military equipment to support an expanding insurgency. When (CIA Director Stansfield) Turner heard this, he urged the DO to get moving in providing more help to the insurgents. They responded with several enhancement options, including communications equipment for the insurgents via the Pakistanis or Saudis, funds for the Pakistanis to purchase lethal military equipment for the insurgents, and providing a like amount of lethal equipment ourselves (emphasis added) for the Pakistanis to distribute to the insurgents. ... On Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, 1979, the Soviets intervened massively in Afghanistan. A covert action that began six months earlier funded at just over half a million dollars would, within a year, grow to tens of millions, and most assuredly included the provision of weapons." Gates doesn't follow up to say which of these "enhancement options" were ultimately approved, but it seems clear that in the latter months of 1979 the CIA was contemplating measures that arguably went beyond what Carter had authorized in his Presidential finding of July 3. Brzezinski has always denied that arms were provided until after the invasion (and he almost certainly would have been in a position to know, despite Paul Jay's speculation to the contrary, as he was essentially the architect of the whole covert aid program); in Out of Afghanistan: The Inside Story of the Soviet Withdrawal (Oxford University Press, 1995), a Brzezinski aide is cited as claiming "Strictly speaking ... it was not an American weapons program, but it was designed to help finance, orchestrate, and facilitate weapons purchases and related assistance by others." If weapons were directly provided at any point in 1979, then it is rather curious that Riedel—with his extensive access to so many of the participants—neglects to mention this. I would think, however, that the answer makes little difference to our historical understanding either way.
If you're asking what I think this article should say, I would support one sentence noting "In mid-1979, at the behest of Pakistani President Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, the Carter administration started a $500,000 covert program to assist the mujahideen"; we could also consider noting that Iran was supporting its own rebel factions at the same time, quite independently of Washington and Islamabad. I would leave more in-depth analysis to the specialized articles, such as Operation Cyclone and Presidency of Jimmy Carter. In any case, GPRamirez5's version absolutely should not be restored.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 23:34, 1 October 2016 (UTC)
Well the text could easily be compressed to about 6-7 lines, caveats and all. At the same time it's notable enough to take up 10+ lines, due to the surrounding controversy. Giving readers the tools to make up their own minds about a controversial topic is a public service we shouldn't shy away from. GPRamirez5's text was not essentially inaccurate, but rather misleading and one-sided, no less so than your preferred version IMO. It is not clear what the $500,000"exhausted in six weeks"(sic) means, or why statements by officials should be end all. Did they give that half-a-mil to the Afghans directly, or did they pass out small stacks of bills to the surrounding countries? The latter scenario sounds silly: the US' vehicle of choice was sending massive amounts to surrounding countries, part of which went to buy weapons destined for Afghanistan. Close US ally Pakistan had been involved up to its neck well before the Soviet invasion. It is also not clear why—if the aid was so tiny—Zbig later said that "we knowingly increased the probability that they would [invade]". Regarding official sources on direct lethal aid, the point is kind of moot, since any aid was ultimately military in nature. What these official sources admit or deny is also ultimately moot: Brzezinski had denied that the US had anything to do with Afghanistan in 78-79, until Gates smoked him out. Afterwards, he began saying how brilliant the previously non-existent strategy was, which he then also supposedly denied in its essentials. I've lost track of who is supposed to have denied what by this point. Also note that "Moscow had long sought to justify its invasion by accusing the US of destabilizing Afghanistan from 1978-79". If we are going to simply parrot what US officials say, dismissing the less credulous observers as "Chomskyite conspiracists" (there is no shortage of irony to that formulation here, as I noted above), then we should also state Moscow's position as fact, not that I recommend it. GPRamirez5, feel free to participate in the discussion — I don't feel like doing all the work of revising your edit. Guccisamsclub (talk) 01:29, 2 October 2016 (UTC)
Again, I doubt Brzezinski actually said that. The Nouvel Obs "interview" suffered in translation or is the product of outright fabrication, so let's take it out of the equation: You certainly can't point to another book, article, or interview where Brzezinski makes the same claim. To the contrary, "Zbig wasn't worried about provoking the Russians, as some of us were, because he expected them to take over anyway." The "six weeks" bit is presumably a typo by Riedel, who meant to say "six months." We can at least agree that "on direct lethal aid, the point is kind of moot, since any aid was ultimately military in nature."TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 02:39, 2 October 2016 (UTC)
From the shadows was published in 1996 (I'm actually reading the 1997 paperback edition atm). (edit conflict: you've retracted your claim about it being published in '07) Why is this turning into Becker 2.0? The only concrete thing I've heard him actually deny is the Real News mashup of the LNO interview, which misdated his specific comment on "Vietnam". I've also heard him say that he didn't agree to the LNO interview being published in the form that it was. Meh. The only one who says he denied anything concrete in the LNO interview is White, namely the comment about the earlier momo: And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention [emphasis added throughout]. This was followed by: We didn’t push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.. White does not bother to tell us how she knows he denied this (no footnote) , but she does tell that he denied nothing else in the interview. How two separate answers are supposed to have been invented out of whole cloth has been explained by exactly no-one. Nobody has even claimed that as far as I know. That's your reasoning for claiming the whole interview is a hoax? Is there anyone else in the world who actually believes this? Guccisamsclub (talk) 03:48, 2 October 2016 (UTC)
P.S: who's Riddell? the 6 weeks is from Gates' out of the shadows. Ghostwriter for gates? Guccisamsclub (talk) 04:19, 2 October 2016 (UTC)
Ok glad to see you've retracted your claim that it's a typo. But I am not really interested in exploring the hermeneutics of "initially" and "drawn". Guccisamsclub (talk)
If it's not a hoax, it should be fairly trivial for you to cite another, preferably English-language, interview with Brzezinski out of the scores he has given over the decades. Otherwise, I'm going with Occam's Razor.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 03:58, 2 October 2016 (UTC)
Not serious—you're shifting the burden of proof beyond all reason. Again nobody besides yourself believes the interview is a hoax, this is sourced to White! Now I have to prove the whole interview is not a hoax? I might re-watch the Real News interview to see if there is anything there (at some point)—but the burden of proof is on you to cite one source that actually believes that. This is just like the nonsense about Becker's interview, Times. You can investigate the issue by emailing all those involved and then writing a thesis. But it's absurd to suggest that we should treat your opinions on the talk page as an RS.
P.S. Occam's Razor? Not that shit again....Guccisamsclub (talk) 04:19, 2 October 2016 (UTC)
The burden of proof lies with you alone, because you are the one proposing additions to the article, while I am merely attempting to engage you in a discussion. Given the problems with the language barrier-impaired Nouvel Obs interview—which Brzezinski calls "very sensationalized and abbreviated," noting "they never checked with me for approval in the form that it did appear"—I think it is interesting to consider—purely as a thought experiment for those of us on the talk page—whether there is any other evidence whatsoever, besides Nouvel Obs, that U.S. officials "knowingly increased the probability" that the Soviets would invade—in contrast to the mountains of evidence to the contrary. Your candid admission that you have absolutely no corroborating evidence to support the WP:EXCEPTIONAL claims you would like to introduce speaks for itself.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 05:24, 2 October 2016 (UTC)
What's the WP:EXCEPTIONAL claim I'm trying to introduce? That the goal behind the aid to the rebels was to lure the Soviet into invading, and then into a "Vietnam"? Take a look at everything I wrote and show me where I said that—I took pains to rule that out every step of the way. Though there is a grain of truth to that claim, again: the Vietnam scenario was considered desirable, according to nearly all evidence presented. But policy makers were extremely sceptical it would work, and cognisant of the negative consequence for their administration. so they could not have possibly based their decisions primarily on that. Guccisamsclub (talk) 06:04, 2 October 2016 (UTC)
And he didn't say the aid was designed to prompt the invasion in the "sensationalized" LNO interview: Well, it want quite like that. We didn’t push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would. And all evidence points precisely to that. They explicitly considered whether it was worth the "risk" of an invasion in the documents. How many times do I need to quote this sentence? In the PD, he was denying that the aid was designed to prompt an invasion—a very different statement. By the way his gripe (in Peoples Daily) with the published interview is that is was "abbreviated". Ok,it may have been. "Sensationalized" refers to what others did with the the interview, at least according to the conventional meaning of that word. (Also some really cute Chinese-American camaraderie is going on on that interview. Oh the times when they supported liberation movements in Angola, Afghanistan and Cambodia against Soviet fascist-imperialism, those were the days) 06:24, 2 October 2016 (UTC)
Anyway, not really worth my time continuing since it's just the two of us bickering and taking past each other. I am not interested in adding more content to the talk page, which has already expanded three-fold in past day with no improvements to the article. Guccisamsclub (talk) 06:33, 2 October 2016 (UTC)
Let's suppose you're right, and the quote is accurate. "We didn't push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would" sounds like a contradiction in terms—probably because the nuances of Brzezinski's speech were distorted by the language barrier as well as the "very sensationalized and abbreviated" nature of the "interview" itself. There is only one interpretation of what Brzezinski meant to say that is consistent with other evidence, and White sums it up perfectly: "Brzezinski and others were well aware that the aid to the Mujahideen could have unintended consequences (hence, again, the extremely limited nature of the aid program approved on July 3), but what were their strategic choices at the time? Not many. In mid-1979 Brzezinski believed that the Soviet Union was going to invade Afghanistan—regardless. And he was not prepared to stand idle while Moscow continued its pushing and probing around the globe. Many strategic choices in the international arena have their drawbacks; however this does not mean that American foreign policy leaders should not make any decisions for fear of the unintended consequences. The aforementioned observation by Brzezinski reflects the fact that the administration was concerned that the aid could produce what is called 'blowback.' But the thought of doing absolutely nothing at the time was not an option." If you abandon the Chomskyite conspiracy theorist worldview, this sort of caveat is not terribly interesting or surprising—and certainly not important enough to devote "10+ lines" of this article "to the surrounding controversy," as you proposed. Soviet–Afghan War should stick to a broad overview of the facts, at most (like Coll) relegating this matter to a footnote.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 07:20, 2 October 2016 (UTC)
  • Just a note on your debating style here, though I doubt it will help: enough with the baseless insults. There is no "Chomskyite conspiracist" view on the issue. Chomsky views Zbig's comments in LNO with scepticism—interpreting them similarly to Gibbs and myself. It's an interpretation I've repeatedly explained, yet you persist in labeling it "Chomskyite conspiracist". Guccisamsclub (talk) 13:19, 2 October 2016 (UTC)
    • No, Gucci, that's not an accurate representation of our discussion at all. I made reference to Chomsky's oft-stated belief that America needs to be de-Nazified while critiquing GPRamirez5's proposed edit. You coined the term "Chomskyite conspiracists" in a completely different context, hoping that I would recoil at this strawman version of my argument—instead I embraced it, to your horror! Of course I know that Chomsky pretends to be a skeptic of conspiracy theories, but one thing I also know is that his fans overwhelmingly tend to believe in them. I've listened to Chomsky speak about 9/11 "truthers" and those who simply cannot believe a communist killed President Kennedy, and he never makes a substantive argument about the relevant facts or addresses any of the conspiracy theorists's specific allegations (like, say, Reclaiming History and "9/11 Debunked"); to the contrary, Chomsky is happy to encourage his followers to believe whatever anti-American nonsense benefits his cause, but he always includes a caveat along the lines of "Focusing on whether the U.S. government was responsible for the atrocity of 9/11—and it was an atrocity—is missing the more important point, because the U.S. government regularly commits far worse atrocities than 9/11 all across the globe." Chomsky never cited Brzezinski when the latter was telling the media over and over again that the Republicans were right, and the U.S. had been dangerously soft on Soviet expansionism—only when a fake quote with a potentially sinister implication was attributed to Brzezinski in a foreign newspaper did Chomsky go out of his way to publicize the dubious claim—while repeatedly proclaiming his "skepticism." (Of course, many of Chomsky's statements do venture into the realm of conspiracy theory or sheer fantasy, such as his assertion that Operation Menu—a limited bombing campaign of North Vietnamese-occupied Cambodian border territories with a total civilian population of 4,000—"killed up to a million people"—although, of course, in that case you have insisted sans evidence that the Phnom Penh Post must have either misquoted Chomsky or misunderstood his wonderfully complex and multifaceted argument.)TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 21:00, 2 October 2016 (UTC)
      • Times, I'm well aware of your political biases, so there's no need for these confessionals. We've pretty much exhausted the topic relevant to the article by this point, so there's not much left to talk about, without veering off-topic in all directions. I might put propose some specific changes to the article in the future in, but I am a little weary now. Guccisamsclub (talk) 21:33, 2 October 2016 (UTC)
  • The US role is already described too heavily on the page. It should actually be described more briefly than it is right now, not expanded by including even more questionable materials. As follows from the title, that was war by the Soviet Union, and it was not provoked by US (as G. is trying to "prove" here). It should be said more clearly in lede that the invasion was started by the Soviet Union without any actual reason except desire (mostly by Yuri Andropov in this case) to promote communism worldwide, just as in other countries. My very best wishes (talk) 13:38, 2 October 2016 (UTC)
I'd like to thank TheTimesAreAChanging for belatedly acknowledging that I principally rely on secondary sources, not "using primary sources for OR." I would caution him that over-reliance on oral history books featuring CIA officials (Becoming Enemies) might constitute that behavior however.
He most recently writes, "In mid-1979 Brzezinski believed that the Soviet Union was going to invade Afghanistan—regardless." But of course this is completely contradicted by ZB's own words that "we knowingly increased the probability that they would." ZB's interview is significant not because I snatch it out of the air, but because Gibbs' article in International Politics calls it a "revelation," of "new and important information."
With all due respect to Guccisamsclub, I don't consider my contribution to be misleadiing. If I'm omitting anything significant, then TheTimesAreAChanging should make a positive contribution to the article rather than censoring a quality edit. (Incidentally, the fact that the Soviets were also concerned about Amin's American connections doesn't mean the "opposite" of what I wrote, it's simply a corollary of it. I didn't mention it in this section because it doesn't directly relate to aid to the mujaheddin. You may include it elsewhere in the article.)
If there is consideration of removing anything about the CIA's meeting with Gulbuddin Hekmatyar in May 1979, by the way, that is confirmed in Peter Dale Scott's Road to 9/11, page 74. GPRamirez5 (talk) 22:25, 2 October 2016 (UTC)
Oh yeah here's another one (this has been repeated in about a thousand sources), from the horse's mouth: And the second course of action led to my going to Pakistan a month or so after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, for the purpose of coordinating with the Pakistanis a joint response, the purpose of which would be to make the Soviets bleed for as much and as long as is possible. There is absolutely no debate that a Vietnam scenario for Afghanistan was considered desirable by the establishment all along. The problem is that all of the gloating came after the Soviet invasion and there is every reason to be sceptical of the idea that Zbig was cocky about a Soviet invasion before it happened. This is in fact borne out by the numerous primary and secondary sources, which Times brought up, in my opinion. As much as Zbig and others desired a Soviet Vietnam, they were not sure it work out that way. The Soviets might win after all, and the Carter administration would never recover from the shame. For this and other reasons, your edit was misleading: it implied that the the covert operation was principally designed to prompt a soviet invasion. This interpretation relies mainly on Zbig's self-aggrandizing interview 18 years after the fact, to the exclusion of other evidence. Gibb's himself urged "caution" in interpreting these comments. Guccisamsclub (talk) 23:29, 2 October 2016 (UTC)
Gucci continues to play with fantasies rather than facts, leaping to conclusions that cannot be sustained by the documentation he cites or ignores. His strikingly careless use of Brzezinski's comment from the aforementioned 1997 CNN interview is simply another case in point. Here are some excerpts from the same interview that Gucci says proves "a Vietnam scenario for Afghanistan was considered desirable by the establishment all along": "I told the President, about six months before the Soviets entered Afghanistan, that in my judgment I thought they would be going into Afghanistan. (This is the comment that was mistranslated/misinterpreted by Nouvel Obs shortly afterwards.) And I decided then, and I recommended to the President, that we shouldn't be passive. ... I think we underreacted (to Soviet activity in Africa), and that's why they gradually escalated, and eventually, as I have said earlier, SALT was buried in the sands of Ogaden, the sands that divide Somalia from Ethiopia, and eventually led to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, which then precipitated a very strong, overtly so, American response. I would have preferred us to draw the line sooner, and perhaps some of the things that subsequently happened wouldn't have happened. ... I think the Soviets made a tragic mistake, and therefore it wasn't worth their while to go in. I think it would have been a tragedy if we had allowed them to overrun the Afghans (emphasis added)." U.S. observers were convinced that if the Soviets succeeded in Afghanistan, Pakistan or Iran would be next. All Brzezinski's comment about bleeding the Soviets shows is that "Brzezinski ... was attempting to ensure that if the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, it would be their last stab at aggression for the foreseeable future (emphasis added)." Gucci's portrayal of U.S. policymakers as Machiavellian Dr. Strangeloves hell bent on extracting revenge for Vietnam is pure projection; in reality, they were belatedly applying the policy of containment to Afghanistan in the hope that this might stop the Soviets from embarking on similar adventures throughout the Third World. To be frank, between the willful misunderstanding and misuse of sources and comments like "some really cute Chinese-American camaraderie is going on on that interview. Oh the times when they supported liberation movements in Angola, Afghanistan and Cambodia against Soviet fascist-imperialism, those were the days" it really seems like Gucci's bitterness is personal; i.e., his Russian background is clouding his judgement, causing him to literally read hidden messages into Brzezinski's innocuous CNN interview that are not apparent to objective observers. I've never denied that all editors have their biases, myself included (in fact, those who claim to speak only the objective truth are usually the most doctrinaire POV-pushers), but I have also maintained that the key to neutral editing is acknowledging those biases, and perhaps taking a step back on topics that arouse one's emotions.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 01:50, 3 October 2016 (UTC)
Indeed, this whole discussion by G. reflects Russian/Soviet propaganda: they tried to paint every act of aggression as a conflict between USSR and US. They occupied Czechoslovakia in 1968, allegedly to prevent its takeover by NATO; they occupied Afganistan to save it from US, and they even claim that the current occupation of Crimea and Donbass is a conflict of Russia with ... US. No, it were actually Afghan people who defeated the Soviet Army, not US. Once again, let's not overstate the role of US on this page. My very best wishes (talk) 03:55, 3 October 2016 (UTC)
Guccisamsclub the secondary sources don't have consensus on what ZB meant in LNO regarding provocation. But let me point out that Rodric Braithwaite, in his book on the Afghan-Soviet War for Oxford University Press writes--
"Brzezinski later claimed [emphasis added] that this was not a deliberate move to provoke the Soviets to intervene, 'but that we knowingly increased the probability that they would.'”
--which indicates skepticism of ZB's denial. In his book Devil's Game, Robert Dreyfuss considers ZB's provocation clearcut:
"In the Nouvel Observateur interview, Brzezinski admitted that his intention all along was to provoke a Soviet invasion of Afghanistan—even though, after the Soviet action occurred, US officials expressed shock and surprise."
Some scholars may say otherwise however, which is why there was no absolute statement about this in my edit. Mostly I gave a presentation of the significant facts, including ZB's quote (whose significance is indicated by its recurring place in the scholarly literature).GPRamirez5 (talk) 08:03, 3 October 2016 (UTC)
But this is all of no significance for this page, definitely undue. This page already provides a lot of more important info about US involvement. You guys have US-centric views about everything. My very best wishes (talk) 13:46, 3 October 2016 (UTC)
GPRamirez5, your first source is referring to two quotes from the same Nouvel Obs "interview"—the fact that it contains such internal contradictions should itself be a red flag—and therefore cannot be used as a critique of Brzezinski's later denial. Your second source is far more problematic: Robert Dreyfuss is a conspiracy theorist known for his ties to Lyndon LaRouche. In addition to claiming that the U.S. provoked Moscow into invading Afghanistan, Devil's Game also claims the Iranian Revolution was in part an American plot to radicalize Soviet Muslims, and even endorses the October Surprise conspiracy theory: "In 1980, as Carter administration officials frantically tried to secure the release of the U.S. hostages in Iran, it appears likely that members of the Reagan campaign team, including Casey, established contacts with Iranian officials, in an effort to postpone the hostages's release until after the election." Given that all of your "sources" are entirely dependent on a single fake quote from a foreign newspaper—as well as total ignorance of all other sources and evidence—this is, in fact, a very clear-cut case of citogenesis. As noted above (and as Coll and Riedel attest), the declassified record proves beyond reasonable doubt that U.S. officials were shocked and surprised by the invasion.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 19:35, 3 October 2016 (UTC)
TheTimesAreAChanging, an irrelevant or unreliable quote would not appear over and over again in reputable secondary sources. Regarding Dreyfuss, whatever associations he had in the distant past, by the time of Devil's Game he was a respected authority on covert action. He was invited to speak on the subject on PBS Newshour.
Dreyfuss doesn't say that about the Iranian revolution at all, in fact on pg. 230 he notes that the US government had almost no knowledge of Khomeini prior to the revolt. What he does say is that the interim government of Prime Minister Bazargan, in mid-1979 between the fall of the Shah and the hostage crisis, was continuing to work with the CIA on intelligence in Afghanistan. Most scholars acknowledge that the US was continuing to work with the Bazargan government up until November 1979, and was even contemplating working with Khomeini on Afghanistan, since he was so anti-Soviet.. GPRamirez5 (talk) 20:22, 3 October 2016 (UTC)
For the record, Guccisamsclub scrambled some of my hyperlinks when he did some sort of text move formatting on my comments. I've restored the major ones. The Braithwaite quote, for those playing along at home, is from page 114 of Afghantsy, and the Dreyfuss quote is on page 265 of Devil's Game. GPRamirez5 (talk) 21:12, 3 October 2016 (UTC)
Minor note: The edit history shows your links were scrambled to begin with.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 18:39, 4 October 2016 (UTC)
In Devil's Game, Dreyfuss dresses up his earlier conspiracy ravings with the veneer of scholarship, but his innuendo is clear enough. Dreyfuss says the U.S. knew nothing about Khomeini, but was worried about the Shah's cancer and believed an Islamic Revolution would result in "some sort of religious-secular hybrid democracy," and in succeeding pages favorably quotes the Shah: "The Americans wanted me out ... I was never told about the split in the Carter administration (nor) about the hopes some U.S. officials put in the viability of an 'Islamic Republic' as a bulwark against communism." Because this is actually a Rightist conspiracy theory—unlike the Leftist conspiracy theory holding that the peaceful, innocent Soviets were forced to invade Afghanistan by the evils of U.S. imperialism—Dreyfuss probably could not have been more explicit and still been published by Macmillan rather than LaRouche—although (Rightists generally being more in touch with reality than Leftists) this theory (unlike the radical Left's propaganda line on Afghanistan) is based on a significant grain of truth.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 21:32, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

Clearly, the four of us have failed to reach a consensus, without which there can be no change. I think it's time to put this discussion to rest.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 21:32, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

That's because a reworked text has yet not been proposed (word for word). You made all of your your valid points in your first reply—many of which nobody objected to (including I suspect GPRamirez5). What was objected to was keeping all material out of the art, correctly. You can fill 10 more talk pages with WP:NOTFORUM and WP:SOAP about how "it's a hoax" and how the Left is evil etc—it it will still be correct. We follow WP:V in discussing this issue. To be more exact we follow WP:V as it is today, not circa 1995, before Gates spilled the beans and Brzezinski proudly claimed them for himself. Yet this the article reads as if it was following the US propaganda line of 20 years ago. The is only a hint of this in the article: "the operation began in 1979" — immediately contradicted by a wall of text from Zbig about how the US set aid in motion after the invasion. Discerning readers might check the date of the Soviet invasion and wonder if it's before or after. That's pathetic. Guccisamsclub (talk) 22:03, 3 October 2016 (UTC)
If you ignore the retracted "induce" comment (recycled by numerous sources via the wonders of citogenesis), you have no case at all. Certainly, your own original research interpretation of what Brzezinski meant to say is not particularly constructive for the purpose of building an encyclopedia. Beyond WP:V, there are other policies to consider, such as WP:WEIGHT and WP:EXCEPTIONAL. Also, with regard to your dogmatic insistence "it will still be correct," see WP:TRUTH.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 22:36, 3 October 2016 (UTC)
"Because this is actually a Rightist conspiracy theory...this theory (unlike the radical Left's propaganda line on Afghanistan) is based on a significant grain of truth."
Yes, TheTimesAreAChanging, Dreyfuss does engage with both the left and right points of view. That is why, once again, he was invited to speak on PBS Newshour, one of the most blandly mainstream venues in American media. Are you trying to impose Conservapedia standards on here? GPRamirez5 (talk) 04:17, 8 October 2016 (UTC)
Yet, clearly, many of Dreyfuss's ideas are not widely accepted by other scholars—if they were, October Surprise conspiracy theory would have a very different name. Dreyfuss may be more respectable than Alex Jones, but he's still a conspiracy theorist. So the question of weight remains.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 04:35, 8 October 2016 (UTC)

The question of weight is resolved because I don't consider Dreyfuss the last word on the episode either. But he does have some kind of weight being a mainstream expert on the matter, along with the fact that Braithwaite, Gibbs, and other scholars share concerns that Brzezinski operated in bad faith--and they also quote the supposedly "fake" LNO interview. It is only your ideological baggage which prevents you from acknowledging this. And don't sidetrack us with the October Surprise blather. Dreyfuss wasn't invited on Newshour to discuss the October Surprise, he was invited on to discuss US support of Afghan rebels, the matter at hand. (And do you realize that you admitted that you sympathize with "conspiracy theories" when they support your politics?) GPRamirez5 (talk) 16:35, 8 October 2016 (UTC)

The more basic point is the article says not one word about American involvement before the invasion. It supposedly never happened, just like the US govt and Western experts maintained before 1996. The extent and motivations behind this involvement remain disputed, since nobody believes the LNO interview is a fake, and since nothing Zbig said afterwards (publicly after the invasion that is) can be taken at face value. Guccisamsclub (talk) 16:48, 8 October 2016 (UTC)
I made a proposal for how the article should address this matter. If you're not going to make a counter-proposal, you should really just WP:DROPTHESTICK.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 20:55, 8 October 2016 (UTC)
LOL, that's not even a real guideline. In any case, most of this debate has been you trying to employ an unpublished liberal arts thesis to "debunk" professional scholarship, along with your own unsolicited opinions about historical events. I guess you're trying to run out the clock filibuster-style, even though there isn't one.GPRamirez5 (talk) 00:23, 9 October 2016 (UTC)
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