Afghanistan

Miles Seeley spent his career in the CIA, so he speaks with feeling:

"Even Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld seem to realize that bombing Afghanistan would be pointless. What are you going to bomb, rocks or a few million wretched people already suffering horribly?

Any veteran intelligence officer will tell you the solution to our current problem is simple in design and very difficult in execution: identify, unilaterally and with allies, where the cells are and who is in them; then eliminate them. Since the Church Committee hearings, Washington has not had the stomach for the nasty work in the back alleys that is required here. Perhaps the WTC and Pentagon bombings have caused an awakening. I hope so. Had I been a case officer overseas when the directive came down not to hire any agents with dubious backgrounds, I would not have had a single useful agent. We have known for a long time that Fortress America was vulnerable, and now it has been proven. Conventional military action will not defeat this enemy, but covert action can if it is supported through the long months and years it will take.

You say the USA and the CIA created the Taliban? Pardon me, but that seems sheer nonsense. We helped arm the mujahadeen, yes, and they proved that 10 years of Soviet military action could not win (is there a lesson here?) But fanatical terrorists are created, I believe, by extreme poverty and hopelessness. That is what I found in the Palestinian camps in the 1960s, and I knew then they were breeding grounds for suicidal fanatics. Not much different than the situation in the Philippines, in southern Mexico, and many other places. Usama bin Laden's extremism draws followers from those areas. The Taliban grew from the utter poverty and hopelessness of the Afghan people. The young men are, not surprisugly, attracted to parties and leaders offering a vision of something better. It is also sad but true that when the fanatics do seize power, they are quickly corrupted by it.

I am sickened but not shocked by the attacks on us. There will be more. I am gladdened by the outpouring of sympathy and support from so much of the world, and the realization that our complacency must give way to a determined effort to rid the world of those who would kill indiscriminately. The Koran, by the way, as any Islamic scholar will tell you, abhors the slaughter of the innocents and the extremism of the Taliban".

My comment: Washington hearings have brought out the fact that intelligence officers must deal with individuals of dubious background. While the CIA did not directly create the Taliban, it did arm the "Afghans" who have returned to their native lands and now support the Taliban.

Ronald Hilton - 9/22/01