Re: mystery solved

Hi Jim,

I see no reason to suspect that the Russians would have been any more
successful at "controlling the region" for any significant length of time
than we will we be. They weren't even doing very well in the Afghan
mountains before we sent anti-tank missiles and small weapons and serious
funds to Bin Laden and Al Qaeda, those noble warriors that Rep. Bob Dornan,
on the floor of the US House of Representatives, declared to be "Freedom
Fighters" and "patriots" as brave and as righteous as our own Founding
Fathers -- of course, that was more than a few years before they drew up and
executed their plan to hijack four airplanes and fly them into buildings here
in the good old US of A.

No, I don't think the Russians would have done any better than us. And they
would have eventually left, too. Just like the Romans, just like the French,
just like the Spanish, just like the British (twice), and just like we will.

Afghanistan already on the way back to tribalism. Iraqis chanting "No to
Bush, No to Saddam, Yes to Islam." Syria and Lebanon backing Hezbullah
against Israel. Iran sending weapons around the region and helping the
fundamentalists establish local authority in rural Iraq. Our own allies, the
Saudi's and the Kuwaiti's, for instance, refusing to crack down on their own
local support for international terrorism or even to consider anything like
"democracy." And so on...

In ten years, the region will be no different politically or in terms of
"peace" or "democracy" than it was last year. But we will have spent
billions.

Watch and see.

All the best,

--John

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Received on Mon Apr 21 20:53:40 2003