Jim Austin

His previous columns are archived HERE.

JIM AUSTIN

Dancing with the Devil

I understand about expediency. Our government is slow-dancing with the devil to try and retaliate immediately against those who perpetrated the 911 murders. America has often gone for the quick and dirty relationship instead of the long and thoughtful romance. We kissed and made up with the Nazis after WWII when it seemed expedient and in the light of the looming cold war with Stalin's boys. We supported corrupt regimes in Iran, Salvador, Panama, and Chile.

Now we are doing who knows what back door deals with Putin of Russia. Turn a blind eye to the ethnic cleansing in Chechnya is my first guess. Financial support is another. In return Putin will soft pedal his opposition to the missile defense shield.

Does the Northern Alliance remind anyone of South Vietnam? When you hear Rumsfeld say that our special forces are only going into Afghanistan as 'advisors' does that make your blood run just a bit cold?

The last time we started off as advisors we ended up with 50,000 dead and the first lost war in American history. (We can argue about 1812 if you happen to be Canadian.)

The Taliban have been dealt a mighty blow by our bombs and the Northern Alliance. It really looks good on them, too. These terrorist-supporting abusers of women who destroy their own history are a disgrace to humanity.

The only problem is that the Northern Alliance, according to some Afghani women's groups, are worse.

This Afghanistan, with its tribal hatreds and bizarre interpretation of Islam has to be the world's largest can of worms. It looks like we may have missed the boat again.

We spent billions to put these Northern Alliance characters into Kabul. They would have stayed in their tiny 5 or 10 percent of the country forever, eating scorpion on a stick and living in holes in the ground, if it weren't for us.

We told them to hold off going into Kabul until we could get some neutrals from the UN or some of our own in there to take governmental control. These NA leaders weren't about to fall for that.

When word came to the front lines that the Taliban had scurried off to southern rat holes, they moved in. I don't know what the UM can do to organize a government for these people. Democracy is as foreign to them as throwing acid in the faces of unveiled women is to us.

How soon until a government theocracy based on the dictates of fundamentalist Muslims starts to turn their country once again into a terrorist theme park? We shouldn't trust these bastards any more than the Taliban.

Any thinking American must know that the key to suppressing terrorism is diplomacy. It will take years of using our resources to support regimes and movements that take human rights into consideration.

When we supported the Shah of Iran we also silently trained the Savak, his brutal terrorist police force. It was us, with our short sighted and greedy behavior, that brought the Ayatollah Khomeini to power.

We made a dangerous enemy in Iran and across the Muslim world. We are repeating the pattern in Saudi Arabia. When we buy, buy, buy from Saudi Arabia and prop up the hideously corrupt royal family there, we are tightening a noose around our own throats.

On the one hand the population hates our guts for our association with the royals and funnels thousands of young men into terrorist organizations bent on cleansing the world of us.

On the other are our 'allies,' the royal family who try to placate Muslim fundamentalists by subtle opposition to us. Note the refusal of the Saudis to allow us to investigate bombings against our interests or even to interview the perpetrators who in one case, were summarily beheaded.

Why? Because the bombers would have implicated the Saudi government is my guess.

Maybe I'm impatient but I don't think it is too early to start thinking about the big picture. Is it even possible to see a future for America that doesn't have us viewed as big, fat, resource-hogging bullies?

Instead, Bush is in Crawford, Texas with his new buddy, former KGB agent Putin. Right now he's getting Putin's okay for his moronic missile-defense shield which will guarantee a huge upsurge in Chinese, Indian, North Korean, and Pakistani nuclear capability. Right now without approval from anyone we are spending more on the development of a missile defense shield than any other weapons system.

Ask the Pentagon if you don't believe me.

This has become the American method of dealing with the rest of the world. Don't use our resources to assist anyone, just threaten them with more and more technology and bigger and bigger aircraft carriers. Do that until our streets are like those in Jerusalem with bombs a daily occurrence and killings an every day fact of life.

If we continue to use our muscles instead of our brains, we'll be hamstrung again and again by maniacs with box cutters or basement dwelling freaks with vials of anthrax.

Thursday's Brattleboro Reformer reprinted David Broder's Washington Post column that outlines Bush's plans to cut a program that has been attempting to stabilize nuclear materials in Russia. If Al Queda were to get hold of some plutonium, they wouldn't need to fashion it into a bomb. Just shove it in a suitcase with some C -4 and explode it in Times Square. The place would be unlivable for the next few decades.

Before all of the 911 bodies have been laid to rest Bush appears to be playing politics with our security.