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By Chris Floyd - The Moscow Times
October 21, 2002.

"It was Carter, milky mild and comfortably sweatered, who gave the greenlight to one of the most disastrous strokes of "grand strategy" since Hitler crossed the River Bug "

Those merry pranksters at the Nobel Academy kept up their wonted hijinks last week by awarding their Peace Prize to that prime purveyor of former presidential piety, Jimmy Carter. It's the Silly Swedes' best joke since they laid the peace purse on Hank "Hang 'em by Their Gonads and Fling 'em to Their Deaths but Be Sure to Maintain Our Plausible Deniability" Kissinger back in the day.

It's true, of course, that our good Jimmuh has spent years building houses for the poor and ensuring fair elections all over the world (with the notable exception of United States -- but that's OK, because God decides who rules in America, not the people). And certainly such a post-Oval career sets Carter several moral leagues above that gutter-crawling mass murderer George H.W. Bush, who after killing thousands of innocent people in Panama (And for what, exactly? Do you remember? Does he?) now feasts with his war-profiteering Carlyle partners on the blood and fear being churned by his numbskull namesake in the White House.

Still, it's only in comparison to such stinking pitch that Carter seems to gleam so brightly. For while he may have done years of laudable penance with hammer and nails, he must also bear a good portion of responsibility for the perilous state of the world today. It was Carter, milky mild and comfortably sweatered, who gave the greenlight to one of the most disastrous strokes of "grand strategy" since Hitler crossed the River Bug:

Arming the jihad.

He was goaded into this monstrous misstep by his national security adviser, the fierce Polish expatriate, Zbignew Brzezinski. Z-man -- perhaps understandably in light of his ancestral history -- was consumed with one overriding passion: sticking it to the Russian bear. It was Zbig who conceived the idea of arming the various warlords of extremist Islam who were beginning to stir against the Soviet-backed government in Afghanistan. Using the CIA's brotherly relations with the brutal Pakistani secret service, Carter and Zbig began pouring weapons and money into the hands of the warlords, who despised Western modernity in all its manifestations (again, as always, with the exception of our murderous technology).

Now here's the beauty part: Zbig began arming the jihadniks months before the Soviet moved troops into Afghanistan. "We can give them their own Vietnam," he told Carter, when outlining his plan to sucker the Russians into a military overreaction. And Jimmuh -- no doubt just back from one of his White House prayer breakfasts -- gave his meek and mild blessing to the scheme.

A few months later, when Ronald Reagan and former CIA chief GHWB took power -- with the help of a special team of CIA insiders on the campaign payroll and the paid cooperation of the American-hating extremist Ayatollah Khomeini -- Zbig's baby really took off. The Reagan-Bush gang expanded the relationship with militant Islam, drawing Communist China into the alliance, in backroom deals that saw the Chinese -- the same Red Devils against whom Reagan had raged so long and so profitably -- allow the United States to build secret communication posts in western China to help coordinate the anti-Soviet jihad.

(What, did you think Reagan meant all that hogwash? You actually expected Carter to live up to his ideals once he was in the catbird seat? You still believe that there is the slightest connection between the lofty rhetoric spewed by our betters and the ugly, death-dealing reality of power they wield behind the scenes? You must have rocks in the head, dad!)

But as we all know -- and as our leaders never seem to learn -- war operates according to the laws of unintended consequences. The Soviets got their "Vietnam" -- although that quagmire was not quite as ruinous as modern myth now paints it (except for the suckers who fought in it, of course). Certainly, it didn't lead to Vietnam-style social upheaval: The Soviet people were shielded from the war's brutal and bumbling reality as ruthlessly as the American public is now being kept in the dark about what's being done in their name in Afghanistan. And it occupied only a fraction of Soviet military resources.

Still, lots of people died, the country's infrastructure was destroyed, its social progress was hurled back several centuries and gangs of vicious, ignorant warlords were enthroned in power, where they proceeded to gnaw each other to pieces, killing more than 50,000 people in Kabul alone. That's something, isn't it? Certainly a price worth paying to cause mild aggravation to a tottering Soviet regime which was already collapsing under the weight of its own corruption and contradictions anyway, right?

Of course, there was that little problem of the Soviet-whupping holy warriors. Armed with the latest Western weaponry, flush with Western money, and well schooled by the CIA in covert ops, terrorism, illicit fundraising through front companies and dope dealing, the armies of Allah simply turned their guns to other targets. Osama bin Laden, for example, wanted to lead his troops against that modernizing evildoer and enemy of Islam -- Saddam Hussein, the invader of Kuwait. The Saudis, however, declined, and called in GHWB's American troops instead -- a "desecration" of Muslim holy ground that put the zap on Osama's pea-sized brain and gave him a new enemy to fight with his CIA methods.

And so here we are. It's true Ronnie and Georgie would have jumpstarted the jihad all on their own, but Jimmy -- good ole mild, milky, Jesus-lovin' Jimmy -- beat them to it and showed them the way. Thanks, Jimbo! Enjoy them Nobel laurels, y'hear?

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