Syria under Bashir Assad (closed end 2014)

[Madhu]

I fear too that we are making a huge mistake by getting more involved in the Syrian Civil war.

On Bearden, though, I've never been a fan of the "we walked away and that's why 9-11 happened" narrative. While there is certainly some truth to it, it's too simple a narrative. It doesn't take into account other things that happened including the larger context that the first Bush administration was dealing with. Nuclear proliferation and other issues came to the fore. The CIA plan of outsourcing our dealings in Afghanistan through intermediaries was recognized as problematic even at the time.

CUSAP had one big name on its original eight-person board: Milton Bearden, a former CIA official whose name carries weight on Afghanistan because he helped run the war there against the Soviets in the 1980s. When Bearden testified about Afghanistan before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in the fall, John Kerry called him a "legendary former CIA case officer." But in his testimony Bearden did not advertise his ties to Wardak or to the company's Defense Department contracts; Bearden is on the advisory board of NCL, a firm with millions of dollars at stake in Afghanistan. ("Aram," he said when I reached him on his mobile phone, "I don't have anything to talk to you about, so go ahead and do your story." Then he hung up.) Another former board member, Hedieh Mirahmadi, a prominent expert on Islamic radicalization, told me she had never been to a CUSAP board meeting. "I don't actually know what they did," she told me.

www.thenation.com/article/afghan-lobby-scam#ixzz2WOUALQoy

The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan has enabled Pakistan to acquire sophisticated American arms intended mainly for use against India and to scoff at the Symington Amendment with impunity. Likewise, it is important for the American right to distort the Indian-Soviet military relationship to justify a new round of United States arms to Pakistan, forgetting that Indian military dependence on the Soviet Union was created by American arms to Pakistan. Meanwhile, massive economic aid for Pakistan - the third largest per capita foreign aid the United States gives to any country after Israel and Egypt - has enabled it to enjoy the highest economic growth rate in South Asia. It is no wonder Pakistan is not serious about resolving the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.

http://www.nytimes.com/1987/12/19/op...ly-787087.html

I'm not sure how the CIA types that ran the operation against the Soviets get away with their narratives completely unchallenged. The brave freedom fighters turned out to be a complex mix, to put it mildly.

The biggest lesson is that our running the operation through our allies became problematic in addition to, "we will end up owning regime change." More problematic than self-aggrandizing CIA types allow. Myth and reality are two different things. They didn't know where the money was going and they didn't really know what was going on. Freedom fighters my $%#. Nice job, Foreign Policy. No one else on the digital rolodex to write op eds?