Devil's Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam by Robert Dreyfuss

The first complete account of America’s most dangerous foreign policy miscalculation: sixty years of support for Islamic fundamentalism.


(Sound like something we all need to know about? Here are some excerpts from the Salon.com article and interview):

The book is a chronicle of mistakes made, opportunities lost, and lessons most vividly not learned....

For instance: In a chapter on the U.S. proxy war in Afghanistan, Dreyfuss describes how the United States deliberately channeled money to the "nastier, more fanatic types of mujahideen" in Afghanistan (to quote Stephen P. Cohen, a former top State Department official) in order to do the most damage to Soviet occupiers. Among the nastiest: Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who won the confidence of his Pakistani and CIA backers in part by skinning prisoners alive and approving the practice of throwing acid in the faces of women who failed to cover themselves properly. After 9/11, Hekmatyar would resurface as an ally of the Taliban and a bitter opponent of U.S. occupiers.

Dreyfuss also reveals how Israel helped to create and empower the forerunners of Hamas as a bulwark against Palestinian nationalism (as embodied by Yasser Arafat and the PLO). The Likud-Hamas link -- with both organizations thriving in unstable, warlike environments -- is sure to be one of the book's most controversial points, and it is a disturbing parallel to the "blowback" the United States suffered by backing bin Laden and his fellow "freedom fighters" in Afghanistan... When asked about the rise of the Taliban in 1996,President Carter's national security advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, offers this thoughtful rejoinder:

"What is more important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Muslims or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?"

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Brzezinski used to brag about how he "suckered" the Soviet Union into invading Afghanistan. I always thought, about Brzezinski, from day one, that he didn't understand how to do what he wanted, i.e., follow in Kissinger's footsteps. he never understood -- still doesn't -- it wasn't enough to merely be an evil, ruthless, soulless, unconscienable, totally self serving excretion.

You have to be all those things and also brilliant, maybe even a genius. Brzezinski was not -- just, sad to say, one more stupid, unpleasant Polish joke.