August 18, 2021

NUSHIN ARBABZADAH—The Taliban’s conquest of Afghanistan in 1996, by contrast, strayed from the path of tradition. In a striking breach of precedence, the Taliban militia did not make use of their unspoken right to pillage and loot. They searched the conquered populations’ homes, but only to confiscate weapons and so ensure a monopoly of violence for their state.

In a comical incident that features in Sabour Bradley’s documentary series The Extreme Tourist, the Taliban saw a poster of Rambo with a machine-gun in the home of an Afghan bodybuilder fan of the Hollywood star Sylvester Stallone. Ignorant of the world beyond the sharia law, the Taliban assumed that Rambo was a family member and told the bodybuilder: “Tell your cousin that he must hand over his machine gun to us.” The bodybuilder’s protestation that the poster depicted a fictional Hollywood hero fell flat with the Taliban, who subsequently imprisoned the man.

The actual origin of the Taliban is a bit confusing (to most Americans), and although Jimmy does a brave job at explaining the matter properly, confusion continues. In any case, we are preparing a special post on this subject alone. For the time being, keep this in mind: (a) The Afghanistan War, as far a the US is concerned, began more than 40 years ago, when Pres. Carter listened to his manichean National Security adviser major russophobe Polish emigre Zbigniew Brzezinski, who, along with Henry Kissinger, had the great idea of giving the Soviet Union its “own Vietnam”, by spawning a huge countrywide resistance to the Soviet presence in Afghanistan (the Soviet military was there at the invitation of the government, and to bolster a reform-oriented but besieged leftist government opposed by fundamentalist jihadists (the mujaheddin). 

MICHAEL HUDSON—Hardly anyone asks how the U.S. ever got in. Jimmy Carter was suckered by the Polish Russia-hater Brzezinski and created Al Qaeda to act as America’s foreign legion, subsequently expanded to include ISIS and other terrorist armies against countries where U.S. diplomacy seeks regime change. Carter’s alternative to Soviet Communism was Wahabi fanaticism, solidifying America’s alliance with Saudi Arabia. Carter memorably said that at least these Muslims believed in God, just like Christians. But the Wahabi fundamentalism army was sponsored by Saudi Arabia, which paid for arming Al Qaeda to fight against Sunni Moslems and, early on, the Russian-backed Afghan government.