Fanatics, Mad Men Cult Leaders - How We Created the Middle East

By TRB

Remember when we were hoping theTaliban would tear the stuffing out of the Russians? We fell for the whole scam didn't we? Our troops even trained the Taliban, offered up - free of charge - shoulder-supported, hand-held ground-to-air rocket launchers that would literally knock hundreds of Russian helicopters out of the sky. Everyone who worked at the CIA at that time could tell you, we - The U.S. won that war for the Taliban. The first George Bush, himself a former director of the CIA, thought it was the bees knees.

That war crippled Russia's economy. It temporarily devastated their military. Many thousands of Russian soldiers died, as our soldiers now die. But the Russians, we were to learn later, never really posed much of a threat to us in the first place, In fact, the CIA had greatly exaggerated the size of the Russian military.

Today the Russians are busy building their military bigger than ever. So what exactly did the U.S. accomplish helping the Taliban defeat Russia? Nothing. For too long a moment at least it had all those manipulating "king makers" in the U. S. State Department and the CIA thinking they were really on top of their game. Yes they were geniuses of world politics. They used the Taliban to take the Russians down. Pass out the medals.

Then on 9/11 the real Taliban we had been supporting for all those years came looking for us or rather, sent somone. They had plenty of confidence. In their minds, they had single-handedly beat the Russians. One of their best pals from the beat-up-on-Russia days was Osama bin Laden. He was our pal too, of course. Members of his family where actually living in this nation - on 9/11. Our CIA knew Osama bin Laden, or apparently thought they did. Maybe that is why the CIA and the State Department were still busy posing for shots for that remarkable war they had helped the Taliban win against he Russians.

Then the planes hit the buildings. They stopped posing for photos. They were assigned to other duties.

There is one thing worth remembering about the Russians, though. Despite the Cold War and all the resentment that had built up between our nations during the Post War period, the Russians would not have hijacked our airplanes and flown them into the World Trade Center. No, the Russians are not maniacs.

The Middle East has always been seen as a region that has to be controlled by the more powerful nations that seek its oil. In the process, these nations have installed a group of deviants, maniacs, mad men and psychotics to do their bidding. But the real people of the Middle East are rising up. And, the U.S., regardless of what its spokespeople may say, has mixed feelings about that.

The Taliban were nuts, of course. And someone in the CIA had to know that back when they were arming them with sophisticated weapons using our tax dollars. Members of our State Department and our CIA had to know that the Taliban was seething with hatred for the West and considered all of us devils. There is no way they could have missed that.

So they set the Russians back for a few decades. It took them a long time to recover.

But will we ever recover from 9/11/? I have my doubts.

As you might remember, following their defeat of the Russians with our help, the Taliban seemed to go into the terrorist training ground business. al Qaeda took the long course, paying special attention to a group of Saudi Arabians, finally sending them off to America, all 19 of them. Some were already wanted terrorists on watch lists that were not being watched. So they had no trouble getting here.

Then they had no trouble enrolling in flight training school so they could learn to fly our passenger jets - just thought the instructions on how to land them were not all that important. The FBI actually knew where they were and was watching them. These Saudis liked their strip clubs and apparently became regulars at one in Florida.

Yes we helped the Taliban rid their lands of the Russian, and 9/11 is what the Taliban did for us.

Now we are back in an even bigger way. And everything is suddenly up for grabs There is a political movement in Saudi Arabia that poses a legitimate threat to the make-believe kings installed there by the West years ago. the U.S.-friendly government of Bahrain is seeing much political opposition from its people. So are Yemen, Iran, Syria, Tunisia, Algeria, Jordan and of course Libya.

In Libya we have one side of the country fighting the other. In Egypt everything is up in the air since Mubarak's forced departure. The illegal Iraq War is winding down like a slow wind-up toy. And Afghanistan isn't worth a life or a penny we pay to be there. Now there's this great "Awakening" throughout the Middle East. Our news media has called it that. Are we to believe that the Middle East woke up one morning and didn't want to be the Middle East anymore? No, if anything, they don't want so much evidence of the West in the Middle East. And they want their oil rights back and out of the personal accounts of the pro-American dictatorships who stole them.

North Africa and the Middle East are basically a Muslim region. The Muslims from these nations who are trying to overthrow their governments are simply intent on getting rid of dictatorships installed years ago by Western nations who wanted to insure a smooth flow of oil to their various countries. Some of these dictators go way back. The CIA and State Department and the President himself have known about their mistreatment of human beings, about the lack of human rights.They have known about the extremely inhumane treatment to these civilian populations.

But they have always looked the other way. Bush the second was over there holding the Saudi Arabian kings hand, literally, holding it, when everyone except the most powerless low-paid clerk in the CIA knows the Saudis maintain some of the most gruesome torture chambers ever built and it is basically a "no-human-rights" state. In fact there are no human rights to be found in any of these states we regularly support.

So the question becomes, how are these long mistreated people going to feel about the U.S. knowing well that the U.S. supported the governments they are trying to topple or have just finished toppling? The answer to that question is up in the air. Maybe they will forgive us. Maybe they won't.

One thing for certain is that the entire Middle East is no longer defined around what goes on between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Politically, it has become the most complicated region of this world.