Unintended Consequences

Here’s my understanding of how we got ourselves in this current fix with extremist Jihadis.

It all started with the Russian invasion/occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s. The CIA opposed this move by the USSR and decided to raise an opposition army in the middle-east — by approaching our ally, Saudi Arabia, and asking them to inspire their citizens to go wage war in Afghanistan.  The logic at the time was that we were fighting Communism.

Be careful what you wish for, because the Saudi Imams began preaching a Jihad message with a right-wing interpretation of the Koran — and the extremist Islamic sect called Wahhabi was born. Osama bin Laden was a leader of that group, and led Saudi fighters to wage Jihad in Afghanistan. Bin Laden led, and helped fund those fighters — as did the American government. Just watch the movie “Charlie Wilson’s War” to see how America meddled in Afghanistan during the Russian occupation of that country.

This movie glorifies Congressman Wilson’s and the CIA’s covert war in Afghanistan, but we now know the unintended consequences of that intervention:  the right-wing Wahhabi sect is now dominant in Saudi Arabia; Wahhabi-inspired Al Qaeda, and it’s spawn, are spreading Jihad like wild-fire throughout the Gulf States and beyond; and the West is gripped with a focus on terrorism that has turned from defeating Russia in Afghanistan, to defeating the West and all we stand for.

Here’s a trailer for the movie, watch the entire movie if you can — it very clearly reveals America’s undeclared covert war in Afghanistan.

It is actually fascinating to contemplate how our CIA’s meddling in other countries has wrought such horrible long-range consequences for us and for the world.  We all know that the CIA’s toppling of Iran’s democratically elected leader in order to install the former (and much despised) Shah as that country’s leader, led directly to Iran’s current theocracy under the firm grip of the Ayatollah.

The CIA at the time decided that since the democratically elected new leader of Iran was going to nationalize their own oil, that bringing back the Shah would help America’s Oil companies and therefore be in our nation’s interest.  The Iranian Revolution, also known as the Islamic Revolution or the 1979 Revolution, led to the ouster of the Shah and the installation of the Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.  And Iranian hatred of America and the West began.

A theocratic Iran that is funding Hezbollah and Hamas in their terrorist activities to destabilize the Gulf States, and the creation of Al Qaeda with all their off-shoots as well as ISIL, seems a high price to pay for CIA meddling in other countries’ business.

But that’s the thing about Unintended Consequences ~ they are not only unintended they are also short-sighted.

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