An Insider’s Assessment of American Foreign Policy

Bruce G. Richardson
An Insider’s Assessment of American Foreign Policy
The US has discorded pretensions to International Legality and Decency and embarked on a Course of raw Imperialism run amok…William Rockler, Nuremberg Tribunal Prosecutor, also, Washington has openly disclosed the right to unilateral use of force anywhere to uphold its own interests, Sergei Lavrov.
For a critical look at US foreign policy including issues and concerns among the Afghan people look to ‘Through Our Enemies Eyes’, by Michael Scheuer, as published by Brassey’s Incorporated of Virginia and written by a decorated, former senior member of the US Intelligence (CIA) community. The book represents a breath of fresh air regarding such issues as the grooming of(Abdullah) a pro-Moscow neo-Communist cabal as successor to the Karzai Government in Afghanistan, unconditional American support for Israel totaling 3-billion US dollars annually, a country along with its benefactor in serial violation of numerous UN Security Council Resolutions and international law as it applies to human rights.
Motive for war: Though the US has not suggested punitive measure be exacted against Israel for breaches of Security Council Resolutions, they had become standard operating procedures against Iraq and Afghanistan. This hypocritical policy (in the form of sanctions) has cost the lives of more than one-million, Iraqi and Afghan citizens to include children. (See: Afghanistan: the Great Game Revisited. Edited by Roseanne Klass, 1987)
Moreover, our author discusses in great detail lost opportunities by the US Intelligence apparatus regarding the extradition and apprehension of Osama bin Laden prior to 9/11. His meticulous research combined with foreknowledge as an intelligence operative had shed insight into threats issued at a summer international contact-conference (July, 2001) in Berlin where Niaz Naik, Pakistan’s former Foreign Secretary was advised by US officials of the impending US attack against the Taliban in Afghanistan “before the snow flies in October”), months prior to 9/11, the oft-stated US-justification for war. (See: The US used Military force 240-times in 237 years of existence, by Yuri Skidanov, the Wisdom Fund, 1/20/14)
Also, not to be overlooked is the ominous threat issued to Taliban emissary Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi by US officials in February of 2001 while visiting Washington, a not so subtle inferred threat over stalled Trans-Afghan-Pipeline (TAP) negotiations, he was thus advised, “you either accept our carpet of gold or we will bury you in a carpet of bombs”, tragic events, which many including the author suggest could have been averted had the intelligence community been listening to and heeded warnings from the Taliban and a multiple of other sources warning of an impending attack which many investigative researchers now construe was a pre-emptive strike to forestall the threat and likelihood of a US attack on Afghanistan. A preponderance of evidence suggests that regime change was uppermost for a majority of US policy makers who sought to secure the lucrative contract for the Trans-Afghan-Pipeline (TAP) for UNOCAL, a US concern yet saw the Taliban regime engaged in negotiating with and favoring Bridas of Argentina to be awarded the lucrative contract as impeding and undermining that effort. (For indisputable confirmation of pre-9/11 US threats and their oil-dominated strategy, (See: Forbidden Truth, U.S. Secret oil Diplomacy and the failed hunt for Bin Laden, Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillame Dasquie, PP. 37-46, Thunder Mountain Press, 2002, and US planned war in Afghanistan long before 9/11, by Patrick Martin, WSWS News and Analysis, 20 November 2001, and the UK Newspaper Guardian’s confirmation, Timeline, 22 September, 2001)
The author addresses the reactionary and ill-informed response of an ill-prepared George W. Bush as he sought to anesthetize the American public against allegations of government malfeasance, an institutionalized lapse that failed dramatically to prevent the attack and thus provide for national security. Addressed as well, is the allegation first uncovered by French investigative journalists that many Americans are loathe to hear and or consider, and that is that the US attack on Afghanistan was not predicated on combatting terrorism but on regime change to facilitate the construction of a pipeline and on subsequent, concluding favorable negotiations for the US firm (UNOCAL), a multi-billion dollar pipeline project stretching from the Caspian Basin through Afghanistan to Gwadar on the coast of Pakistan and the Arabian Sea. (See: Afghanistan, Political Frailty and External Interference, by Dr. Nabi Misdaq, 2006)
The author is also extremely critical of the current (Obama) Administration’s rhetorical and material support of Russian bloodletting in Chechnya, prior to 9/11, the Bush Administration had been sharply- critical of Kremlin policy in the Caucasus. Perhaps more troubling for those in support of world peace and open constitutional government, however, is the Obama Administration’s recent secret agreement with the government of Vladimir Putin. In a politically expedient quid pro quo, Washington has pledged support for Russia’s genocide in Chechnya to include proscribing aid to the embattled Chechens. For its part, Russia is flying combat missions against fixed Taliban positions in unmarked aircraft based in Tajikistan while troops (17,000) from the 201st Motorized Rifle Regiment (MRR) also based in Tajikistan are fighting alongside Northern Alliance regulars against the Taliban in disguised uniforms. Both the US and Russia under the existing agreement are in serial contravention of the Hague Draft Rules of (1923) and are therefore in violation of international law. (See: Documents on the Laws of War, Edited by Adam Roberts and Richard Guelff, 2nd edition, 1989)
Government dissemination of disinformation and propaganda through select, coopted broadcast and print media organizations is analyzed along with their impact on public perception of world events. Our intrepid author also examines the hypocritical and uninformed role of US feminist organizations in formulating US foreign policy and the extremely close ties between these organizations and the former Clinton White House. According to the author this symbiotic relationship had a profound impact on the Clinton White House policy during the Taliban period and continues this day by underwriting Afghanistan’s notorious Northern Alliance. (See: American Raj Liberation or Domination: Resolving the Conflict between the West and the Muslim World, Eric S. Margolis, 2008)
Of topical if not critical importance is the author’s discussion of the dynamics that led to the horrific attacks on the World Trade Center on 9/11. The discussion explores events that have and continue to shape Muslim perception and conviction that the West has embarked on a modern incarnation of the Crusades. For example, the author cites a statistic that has and will continue to have a profound bearing on how the US is perceived in the Muslim World; “Between 1980 and 1995 the US conducted 17 military operations…each and every one was prosecuted against Muslim peoples.” (In 1896, Frederick Nietzsche wrote: ‘The State lies in all the tongues of good and evil, and whatever it says is lies, and whatever it has, it has stolen, everything it is, is false, it bites with stolen teeth, and it bites often, it is false down to the bowels’…Friedrich Nietzsche…1986)
Of equal import is a discussion of America’s hypocrisy and double standard extant through support for corrupt and repressive regimes that are guilty of gross human rights violations throughout the Islamic World. Karimov’s repressive Uzbekistan, another US-partner in the war on terror, for example, has been the recipient of 300-million in US aid, 79-million of which is earmarked for his brutal secret police. With a keen eye of an intelligence professional, the author also takes note of the Obama Administration’s uncritical and unwise support for Afghanistan’s Northern Alliance, inveterate drug traffickers, Soviet-collaborators and gross human rights violators of record. (See: America’s War on Terrorism, 2nd Edition, by Michel Chossudovsky, 2005)
Throughout this work, the author, a highly skilled intelligence analyst and insider examines and evaluates Western injustice toward the Muslims of the world with a well-informed and foreboding eye and suggests the ominous possibility of a “clash of civilizations.” He reminds us that of some 57 Muslim countries worldwide, each and every one considers the US as an aggressor state and one leaning towards imperialism. (‘The US has discorded pretensions to international legality and decency: and embarked on a course of raw imperialism run amok’, former Nuremberg Tribunal Prosecutor William Rockler)
Of critical import for the Afghan specialist, political scientist and historian is a discussion of US policy in Afghanistan. The author, in no uncertain terms, criticizes both the Bush and Obama Administrations for seeking the removal or eradication of the Taliban through force of arms while expending multiples of billions of tax dollars to establish a leftist regime for which during the Cold War they had spent billions to evict. Presently, Washington is grooming a regime (Northern Alliance) cited in a scathing thirty-page report by Physicians for Human Rights for gross human rights offenses to succeed the current government of Hamid Karzai. A discussion also ensues over the endless controversy that surrounds both the Clinton and Bush administrations failure to recognize or exploit numerous overtures by Taliban to surrender and or extradite Osama bin Laden to US authorities, and the endless investigation surrounding the threats issued by the US during the Summer of 2001 which exposes premeditation and fabrication on the part of the US in regards to the justification for launching war in Afghanistan. America’s subsequent assassination of Osama bin Laden is viewed worldwide as a failure to respect the rule of law or due process, a process whereby any citizen/individual regardless of nationality or origin in the United States is presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. (See: Communications by Members of the Afghan Diaspora about Events in Afghanistan to US Leaders, the UN and World Leaders September 21, 1979-October 7, 2013, by Dr. M. Siddieq Noorzoy, 2013)
Of interest to the specialist, is the author’s keen observations vis-à-vis Ahmad Shah Massoud. As the author notes on page 271, “Massoud also was a master media manipulator and kept a number of prominent Western correspondents on his leash for more than twenty years. Massoud consistently misled these journalists…and some US and European politicians to believe he was a pro-Western Muslim who would install democracy, diversity, and feminist policies in Afghanistan.” There is also mention of Massoud’s numerous agreements with the Soviets, which is not news, but does introduce another Western element and source for historians and others to ponder. See: (American Raj, Liberation of Domination, Resolving the Conflict between the West and the Muslim World, by Eric S. Margolis, 2008)
The author is also quizzical as to why a number of internationally–acclaimed and noted journalists and authors of books on Afghanistan failed to recognize and report on Massoud’s well-documented treason. Perhaps Massoud’s ability and predisposition to court and mislead the press may explain, at least to some degree, as to why he was given a free pass for his collaboration with the Soviet High Command and for his utter failure as a Jihadi-leader by the Western media. There exists other reasons as well; during the Cold War rumors were rife that Massoud was lavishing gifts of lapis lazuli and emeralds upon those visiting correspondents who wrote favorable reviews of his Panjshiri-mode of operations. The author also notes that amongst many journalists during the Soviet/Afghan War a certain lack of initiative and inquisitiveness was all too prevalent in their respective reporting and that many harbored preconceived notions about the celebrated, though mythical Lion of the Panjshir. In an interesting comment regards the latent motives behind volumes of uncritical reports of the fabled Massoud, the author reasons that perhaps a number of all too impressionable correspondents, could be ascribed to their reading and subscribing to legendary tomes such as For Whom the Bells Tolls, by Ernest Hemingway and or the work of celebrated foreign intrigue writer, John Grisham and therefore fell victim to copious, spurious propaganda emanating from the Panjshiri media machine and redoubt. The author also criticizes the enormous plethora of ill-informed file copy provided by these intrepid journalists and as to how it has contributed to a distorted history of Afghanistan from 1979 to the present. A critical pronouncement as apparent and substantiated in the following quotes: (‘The CIA owns everyone of any significance in the major media’…William Colby, former CIA Director, 2013, and Washington has openly declared the right to unilateral use of force anywhere to uphold its own interests…Sergei Lavrov, Global Research, 10/17/14)
Understandably, the author of this masterful and riveting work has chosen anonymity which has led to a number of reader’s to speculate that the author’s name as shown on the book cover (Michael Scheuer) is an assumed, fictitious so-called “pen-name”.
It has been said that the motivation behind his decision to select an assumed pen-name arises out of fear of agency (CIA) retribution for this riveting expose of Washington’s true motivations behind the launching of an illegal war in Afghanistan. As a member of the intelligence apparatus he fought unsuccessfully for two years to get permission from his former employer’s (CIA) approval for this controversial manuscript. Finally, under the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act the book is now available to the general public. It is an exceedingly well-documented, good and informative book that substantiates and corroborates much of what others have written about controversial principals and events in Afghanistan. This riveting book is without doubt, one of the best of the genre and vividly illustrates the importance of a solid, comprehensive literary compendium for those engaged in fact-finding.
Bruce G. Richardson