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Afghanistan: The Surge That Failed - by Anand Gopal and Tom Engelhardt

Afghanistan: The Surge That Failed - by Anand Gopal and Tom Engelhardt: "In a 1998 interview with Le Nouvel Observateur, Zbigniew Brzezinski, former national security adviser to President Jimmy Carter, spoke proudly of how, in July 1979, he had 'signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul' and so helped draw a Russian interventionary force into Afghanistan. 'On the day that the Soviets officially crossed the border,' Brzezinski added, 'I wrote to President Carter, saying, in essence: 'We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam War.'' And so they did – with the help of the CIA, Saudi money, the Pakistani intelligence services, and an influx of Arab jihadis, including Osama bin Laden. In fact, their Afghan War would prove far more disastrous for the Soviet Union than defeat in Vietnam had been for the United States. By the time the Soviets withdrew their last troops in February 1989, the economy of the Cold War's weaker superpower was tottering on the brink. Less than three years later, the Soviet Union itself was no more, even as Washington, at first unbelieving, then celebratory, declared eternal victory.

It is far clearer now, as American economic power visibly crumbles, that rather than a victor and a vanquished there were two great power losers in the Cold War. The weaker, the Soviet Un"

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