conflations.
deflections..
and false equivalencies are all the dissenting arguments i am seeing.
and this is not due to me being a "leftist' and therefore not owning the ability to critically digest historical information and come to a conclusion.

someone spent 20 minutes to refute some of the data in this video only to find out the numbers were accurate BUT they did not reveal the specifics and hence the argument was invalid.
kinda like: "the yellow honda ran over a man today crushing his skull"
"HA! the car was GREEN"
"so it was but how does that change the fact the car crushed a mans skull?"

some have suggested that american interventionism is sometimes messy but usually a necessity.so while it may be complicated,sometimes america has had to do what the rest of the world would not.
this (falsely) implies that their is a thread of moral good when america attempts to straighten out an ugly situation in a foreign country and that sometimes,sadly,this leads to unintended consequences that may lead to blowback.
this is pure propaganda and i say this not because i hate my country but because if it were a true statement then america would be where ALL human rights,oppression and suffering under the hands of despotic governments resided worldwide.

see:rwanda,east timor,bangledesh there is a massive amount of places where america had a strict non-interventionist attitude.
and the reason is simple.those countries had nothing to offer,but our government seems to REALLY like working with dictators.easier to deal with one person who is friendly to american interests than a whole population that might (gasp/horror) have the ability to vote your interests down.so not only does america not give two shits about a country with no resources to exploit,they prefer despotic dictators and have installed them when necessary in the name of american interests.

war is always for the same things:resources,land and labor.now for thousands of years it was religion that was the driving force to get the average person to go out and slaughter but for the past 100 years it has been nationalism.

one last thing to address those who have mentioned alqaeda and what they post.
firstly:this has nothing to do with this video and is a false equivalency.
secondly:look up where alqaeda was on the FBI's most wanted list in 1999.look at who trained alqaeda,even funded them.notice anything?

so we can say vietnam was complicated.
ok..i can agree with that but lets remember it would have never even been issue if not for our government creating a false situation in which to enter vietnam in the first place.see:gulf of tonkin.
and again,has nothing to do with the premise of this video.

we can say muslims dont hate our freedom but rather they perceive us as immoral and decadent.
i would agree with that also if we were in the 1950's and the conversation was sayyid qutb and the muslim brotherhood but we are talking alqaeda which is the creation of the american intelligence CIA.
so it is america which created the complications we are speaking of.so whatever propaganda alqaeda uses now to recruit besides just pointing to us bombing the shit out of them is still indirectly a result of american interventionism.

neo-conservative ideology has nothing to do with being conseravtive but everything to do with using the massive might of the military to secure american interests globally.
might makes right.

lets also remember traditionally republicanism tended to be isolationist and faaar less hawkish.so ron paul is just being a traditional republican.of course now we live in bizzarro universe where everything is opposite so we have self-proclaimed republicans admonishing ron paul for ..what exactly? being a republican?
thats just weird.

and please understand that my points are not just some rage against america.i am not,by my commentary,ignoring the vast amount of good and noble things my country has done over the past 100 years or so but i also will not shut my eyes to what my countries foreign policy has done to so many small countries who happen to coincidently all be populated by brown people.

might i suggest:
chalmers johnson "blowback"
bryzenski's "the grand chessboard"
or the stellar book by john perkins "economic hitman"

maybe you will understand ron pauls position on these things.
/rant off

I think left to themselves, anyone would choose pragmatism and trying to stabilize relations rather than wanton violence. The Kurdish section of Iraq is far less violent, has a much more established and effective civil service which has more or less functioned autonomously from the rest of Iraq. Iran, despite essentially having being demonstrated to be an autocracy at the highest level of government, still has a functional economy for the most part despite high inflation, and a relatively stable society. The opportunities to incite people to join a violent cause hardly exist in such circumstances, where there's relative or at least comparative peace and possible employment opportunities for young people.

See I have trouble imagining a situation where religion by itself is the prime motivator. Even looking at the origins of Al Qaeda according to Curtis's Power of Nightmares, the argument he makes is that Sayyid Qutb, arguably the founder of modern Islamist thought was only able to justify violence and only turned from secular reformist to radical Muslim after being tortured for his opposition to Nasser's westernization of Egypt. It's certainly possible that I simply don't understand how pious certain people can be, and how open to persuasion they are to perversions (or rather literal interpretations) of their faith, but I simply don't see the average person ditching their normal life and instead devoting themselves to violence purely from a particular interpretation of a holy book.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'bbc, zawahiri, sadat, reagan, cheney, rumsfeld, soviet union' to 'bbc, zawahiri, binladen, qutb, sadat, reagan, bush, cheney, rumsfeld, team b, soviet union' - edited by my15minutes

Tags for this video have been changed from 'strauss, qutb, conservatives, islamists' to 'strauss, qutb, conservatives, islamists, adam curtis' - edited by fissionchips

whoa, whoa, whoa... i never said that YOU said that the us aided the taliban - read more carefully -- i also was not the first to bring it up... jon did with his graphic innuendo at 3:25 in the vid - when my correction of this misinformation was subsequently challenged by nebosuke, i reiterated the mistakes in the initial premise - then you came in chiding me for not providing references

but if you check carefully, you'll see that what i said to you in regards to the taliban was prefaced with:

'your cites also continue to claim...'

and

'basically what your skewed sources are claiming...'

so, am i offbase? not at all - your cites did indeed misrepresent...

'Backed by Pakistan’s military intelligence, which in turn was controlled by the CIA, the Taliban Islamic State was largely serving American geopolitical interests.'

'These organizations or movements, such as the Taliban, often foment “opposition to Uncle Sam” in a way which does not constitute any real threat to America’s broader geopolitical and economic interests. Meanwhile, Washington has supported their development as a means of disarming social movements, which it fears may threaten US economic and political hegemony.'

http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/sociopolitica/americawarterrorism/americawarterrorism02.htm

so either you don't read your own sources, or you don't believe them -- nice

a. your cites, my cites - yeah, who cares? i at least carefully read both mine and yours -- what follows in this post should satisfy your need for a higher (both in number and quality) degree of sourcing than you've provided - speaking of which, bergen doesn't provide his sources because HE is the primary source -- your cites' quotings from the likes of abdel monem said ali and ahmed rashid are what are called secondary and tertiary sources -- finally, i think when you fully peruse the citations i'll provide, you'll see that the sourcing of the state dept webpage belies your opinion of it

b. lol - if you think i agree with you, then you are pretty dense -- you probably blame hurricanes on butterfly wings

c. 'And prior history notwithstanding, without the ISI's, and through them the US, insistance on bringing in Arabs to fight with the mujahideen there would LIKELY be no Al Qaeda.'

lol, again - what makes you think that the us and isi insisted on bringing in arabs to fight? you're very misinformed -- first of all, if they did insist, then why the hell didn't the arabs fight? heh --- what both the us and isi DID want was SUPPORT, re. cash and logistics

unfortunately, along with the cash, the arab states sent us their fundamentalist troublemakers and criminals given early parole to fight for islam in afghanistan, e.g. the folks who assassinated anwar sadat, etc -- the trouble came about after the afghans won and the arab states didn't want their 'jihadists' back - lol

but anyway, here are the cites and sources for you...

'Assess for me the role of Osama bin Laden and his fellow Afghan Arabs in the victory over the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.
The Arab element of the ten year engagement in Afghanistan was fundamental to its success, but within the context of fund-raiser.'

'The Saudi Arabian government, and rich, wealthy princes ... contributed and matched dollar for dollar the US government's money in the Afghan war?

That was within the context of the program that CIA was managing. And that's the way it was funded. And that is known. Beyond that, you had Saudi Red Crescent and all forms of Gulf Arab organizations who were drawn to the only operative jihad at the time, a very major event within the world of Islam. And they were fund-raisers. And they brought additional moneys into the Afghan program, into the resistance from their own sources, and did good works.

They built orphanages, they built homes for widows of martyrs, and brought in, after the war turned to the advantage of the mujahedeen, some ... 20 to 25 million dollars a month. ... So in that regard, they played a very major role. Now, part of your question is what about the combat role. Minimal. There were some Arabs that fought with some mujahedeen groups, but not many. At any given time, inside Afghanistan, [there were] maybe 2,000 Arabs. ... But the people of Afghanistan fought that war, they bled, they died, they were driven out of their country. To suggest that others were engaged in the combat activity to any extent is just simply wrong.'

'Who were the Afghan Arabs?

Muslims from all over the world: North Africa, Persian Gulf, but from all over the world. Other than that, you had a rag tag bunch of Muslims that were taken from one jail or another, whether it's in Cairo or in Algiers or any other country in the Gulf, and put on an airplane and flown to go do the jihad with the fondest hope that they not come back. They didn't die in great numbers. They died in tiny numbers, and they did come back. And my bet is that even the Saudis were terribly happy to see the son Osama bin Laden go off to war. And some might have thought wouldn't it be nice if he didn't return.'

'Because so much of what we hear about Osama bin Laden comes out of his Afghanistan experience, I'm trying to get this straight, he was mostly a philanthropist and a financial contributor, and a minor combat figure, who happened to dabble in combat?

... I can possibly give him credit for having been present and accounted for at one major battle in ... Baktia Province in 1987. Beyond that, I simply cannot say that there is any war record at all. What I can say is that the hype that surrounds Osama bin Laden--most of it generated by the US media and backed up by statements that verge on hyperbole from the United States government--that this man was literally swinging through the valleys of the Hindu Kush with a dagger in his teeth and single-handedly driving out the Soviet army, this did not happen. The Afghan people did that. The Arab role in the combat situation on the ground was minimal to nonexistent, period. And to suggest otherwise is simply to either gloss over history or to create history for your own reasons.

I can imagine someone out there watching saying. "This is the CIA talking." You're not going to admit that you created the most dangerous public enemy in the world.

You bet I would. If I could look you in the eye and say, "Trust me, Osama bin Laden was my guy. If it wasn't for the CIA he wouldn't be anything then, he wouldn't be anything today," if I could say that with a straight face, I think that would speed up the process of removing Mr. bin Laden as a source of great, great concern for the United States. I can't say that because it's simply not true. You can find nobody who is familiar with the situation in Pakistan and Afghanistan in those years that would say bin Laden played any role other than the fund-raiser.'

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/binladen/interviews/bearden.html

'MILTON BEARDEN, AUTHOR; FORMER STATION CHIEF, CIA: That's what it was. It was a jihad, and it was a jihad for ten years. There were a million Afghans killed, a million-and-a-half wounded or maimed, and five million driven into exile. That's -- it's awfully close to 50 percent of the population of the country. So it was in fact a jihad, and our role was pretty much tandential to what everybody else was doing. The Afghans were doing the dying and the fighting. The Saudis and the Americans were paying the freight. The Chinese were ordinance. They provided an awful lot of weaponry. The Egyptians provided a lot of weaponry. And bin Laden and a lot of young Gulf Arabs and other Arabs came to do the jihad.

ADAMS: It was quite a cause for them.

BEARDEN: Of course, it was.

ADAMS: Did you meet bin Laden then?

BEARDEN: No, no. Bin Laden was one of many. Bin Laden is becoming a myth that I'm a little uncomfortable with. When bin Laden was in Peshawar in Pakistan where he spent almost all of the war, but he was a fundraiser. We are talking about money that came from Gulf Arabs in a given month could have been $20, 25 million in a given month.

ADAMS: Had you heard about this man, though, that had $250 million of his father's money from Saudi Arabia to bring to the cause?

BEARDEN: Had I heard of him? I knew bin Laden was out there. I knew that the Saudi Red Crescent was out there. I knew that all of the Red Crescent organizations of the Gulf Arab states were out there. But did I take a look and say that this tall thin ascetic-looking Saudi was special? No. To be perfectly frank, the money that they brought in relieved the United States and Saudi Arabia of going deeper into their own national treasuries for more money.'

'ADAMS: When the Gulf War starts and bin Laden says never has Islam suffered a greater disaster than this invasion, meaning the presence of U.S. forces there to defend Kuwait and to support Saudi Arabia, and you hear this, and you know these are the guys that you helped -- the CIA helped fight against the Soviet Union -- what do you think? What's your reaction at that time?

BEARDEN: Well, a couple of reactions. One, CIA, CIA as the executive instrument of the United States government, you know, three presidents beginning with Jimmy Carter were helping the Afghan people resist the Soviet invasion. It's a real stretch in my opinion to say we helped bin Laden or even cared about him. That he participated in it most certainly -- it was OK with us. It was his business and all that.

Now on the one hand, it was fundamentalist Islam that defeated the Soviet Union, and it set in play or set in motion the history that played out through 1989. November 9th, the Berlin Wall is breached, and it's all over.

Now that some of the Arabs that went to that jihad have remained problematic, sure. Am I shocked? Not really. You know, war brings strange allies together, doesn't it? I mean, if you had to worry about unintended consequences, then would we have ever helped Joseph Stalin deal with that other great acute evil, Adolph Hitler? Sure we would, even though 200 million people get subjugated for 50 years; and we spend our nation's treasure for half a century dealing with the Soviet Union.'

http://www.asms.net/facultymanaged/srou/osamabinladen/real%20Articles/Interview%20with%20CIA%20agaent.htm

'Most of the leadership and the whole ideology of Al Qaeda derives from Egyptian writer Sayyid Qutb (1906–66) and his progeny, who killed Anwar Sadat and were arrested in October 1981. President Mubarak generously allowed them to be released in 1984.

Many of the released men, harassed by the Egyptian police, migrated to Afghanistan. With the end of the Soviet-Afghan War, they continued on to jihad. These Arab outsiders actually did not fight in the Soviet-Afghan War except for one small battle at Jaji/Ali Kheyl, which was really defensive: the Arabs had put their camp on the main logistic supply line, and in the spring of 1987 the Soviets tried to destroy it. So they were really more the recipient of a Soviet offensive, but they really did not fight in that war and thus the U.S. had absolutely no contact with them. I heard about the battle of Jaji at the time, and it never dawned on me to ask the Afghans I debriefed who the Arabs were. They turned out to be bin Laden and his men at the Al-Masada (Lion’s Den) camp.

After the war, a lot of these foreigners returned to their countries. Those who could not return because they were terrorists remained in Afghanistan.'

http://www.terrorisminfo.mipt.org/Understanding-Terror-Networks-Sageman.asp

'REPORTER: Mr. Bin Ladin, tell us about your experience during the Afghan war and what did you do during that jihad?

BIN LADIN: Praise be to God, the Cherisher and Sustainer of the worlds, that He made it possible for us to aid the Mujahidin in Afghanistan without any declaration for jihad. It was rather the news that was broadcast by radio stations that the Soviet Union invaded a Muslim country. This was a sufficient motivation for me to start to aid our brothers in Afghanistan. I have benefited so greatly from the jihad in Afghanistan that it would have been impossible for me to gain such a benefit from any other chance and this cannot be measured by tens of years but rather more than that, Praise and Gratitude be to God. In spite of the Soviet power, we used to move with confidence and God conferred favors on us so that we transported heavy equipment from the country of the Two Holy Places (Arabia) estimated at hundreds of tons altogether that included bulldozers, loaders, dump trucks and equipment for digging trenches. When we saw the brutality of the Russians bombing Mujahidins' positions, by the grace of God, we dug a good number of huge tunnels and built in them some storage places and in some others we built a hospital.'

http://www.anusha.com/osamaint.htm

'Was this the origin of al Qaeda?

Yes. al Qaeda wasn't an outgrowth of Adbullah Azaam's "Office of Services," as has been suggested elsewhere. al Qaeda grew in opposition to Azzam's organization, not out of it. Azzam's organization had been becoming something like an NGO, which provided education and the like. Bin Laden didn't want to do that. He wanted to fight the Soviets by forming his own group. But this is also an early example of an interesting trait of bin Laden's: He acts on impulse and doesn't follow good advice. Azzam didn't think the Arab jihadists in Afghanistan were all that important to the anti-Soviet effort. So Azzam wanted to pepper them among different Afghan units and use them as morale-boosters. Bin Laden didn't listen. And at the end of the day Azzam was right: It was the blood of Afghans that won the war against the Soviets, along with lots of money from the United States and Saudi Arabia.'

http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/31205/

'Peter, what is the--you talk a little bit in the book about this notion of blowback, the fact that the CIA really created al-Qaeda or the entire--this sort of Muslim fundamentalism network that we're now facing and more or less put lie to that, or at least minimized the impact of the CIA and say that Osama bin Laden had a bigger part in that.

Mr. BERGEN: Well, I mean, I--just for clarity's purposes, the CIA, you know, obviously had a big role in the Afghan resistance, $3 billion they supplied, but they were basically signing checks. And it's interesting--it's a widely held view on the left that somehow CIA was involved in the founding of al-Qaeda or helped bin Laden, and conspiracy theorists around the world believe this, but there's just no evidence for it. Surprisingly, there are very few things that the US government and bin Laden agree upon, but Ayman al-Zawahiri has released statements that there was no backing from the United States. Other people within al-Qaeda--there really is just simply no evidence for that. The real story is not that the CIA knew who--you know, was helping out bin Laden 'cause they had no idea who he was until about 1995 when they first set up a unit in--specially looking at him directly in January of 1996. So really the story is not one of CIA complicity in the rise of bin Laden; it's actually ignoring the problem before it was too late.'

http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=5151657

d. i have a very open mind, but it's also quite critical - i try to check the facts that i choose to believe very carefully, and if i ever see a source that intentionally tries to deceive, well, they lose all credibility with me - that's why all these CT nuts with their tongue-in-cheek logical fallacies and faulty syllogisms hold no truck with me -- if that means i have a closed mind, in your opinion, so be it - i'm more than fine with that