The Taliban

Q: When the Soviets justified their intervention by asserting that they intended to fight against a secret involvement of the United States in Afghanistan, people didn’t believe them. However, there was a basis of truth. You don’t regret anything today?
 
Brzezinski: 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: 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 unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.
 
Q: And neither do you regret having supported the Islamic [integrisme], having given arms and advice to future terrorists?
 
Brzezinski: What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?

(Le Nouvel Observateur, Interview with Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski, Paris, January 15-21, 1998, translated by Bill Blum)

There were many causes which led to the collapse of the Soviet Union. Mr. Brzezinski would have us believe that he single handedly dismantled the USSR. Informed  readers here do not need me to give reasons, which are numerous. Did Soviet involvement in Afghanistan play a part? Of course. So has every US president since Harry Truman. No mention, however of the one million Afghans killed in that war.
 
Brzezinski  apparently can’t see the thousands upon thousands that have been killed in Afghanistan by the Taliban.  Or that this is where bin Laden cut his teeth. Or that al Qaeda was supported by theTaliban. Training camps and bases of operation?

Yes, he did some good work with Jimmy Carter but his arrogance in refusing to even admit any of the blowback of unintended consequences or connect dots from the actions he prescribed is strikingly arrogant.  He has a McCain-like tin ear. He stubbornly refuses to acknowledge that there has been countless deaths in Afghanistan, and that the actions he supported led to the Taliban in Afghanistan and to the rise of bin Laden and al Qaeda.

Or how about his backing of Pol Pot?

From the New York Times

But while the United States gave tens of millions of dollars in aid throughout the 1980’s to Cambodian refugees, it orchestrated a complete program of sanctions against Cambodia because it was under Vietnamese occupation. And to insure that Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge would fight the Vietnamese occupiers, the Carter Administration helped arrange continued Chinese aid.

“I encouraged the Chinese to support Pol Pot. Pol Pot was an abomination. We could never support him, but China could.”

According to Brzezinski, the USA “winked, semi-publicly” at Chinese and Thai aid to the Khmer Rouge.

(Elizabeth Becker, When the War Was Over, New York, Touchstone, 1986, p. 440.)
You know when Jimmy Carter made a mistake, he was at least decent enough to acknowledge it. Carter took the blame for the failed attempt to rescue the US hostages from Iran when he spoke to the American people on April 26, 1980 two days after the tragic consequences of Desert One.  Brzezinski, well that’s another matter.  His callous approach and minimalization of the loss of human life for his distorted perceptions of a greater good is a far worse stain than anything on a blue dress.