Another day, another Moore award:
Moore Award Nominee
“The monster we created-yes, WE-in the 1980s by ARMING, FUNDING, &TRAINING him in the art of terror agnst the USSR, finally had 2 b put down. … Which reporter has the courage to say it? “American-armed terrorist from the 80s, Osama bin Laden, was killed earlier today by America,” – Michael Moore.
Remember, the Moore award is for “is for divisive, bitter and intemperate left-wing rhetoric.” From wikipedia:
In mid-1979, about the same time as the Soviet Union deployed troops into Afghanistan, the United States began giving several hundred million dollars a year in aid to the Afghan Mujahideen insurgents fighting the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan and the Soviet Army in Operation Cyclone. Along with native Afghan mujahideen were Muslim volunteers from other countries, popularly known as Afghan Arabs. The most famous of the Afghan Arabs was Osama bin Laden, known at the time as a wealthy and pious Saudi who provided his own money and helped raise millions from other wealthy Gulf Arabs. An often missed fact, when the tables began to turn and the Soviets started to overcome these Afgan fighters, the United States then stopped all aid. This lead to the complete demise of the forces meant to help the U.S. with the Soviet issue. Tens of thousands of Afgans were killed in this U.S. funded venture.
As the war neared its end, bin Laden organized the al-Qaeda organization to carry on armed jihad in other venues, primarily against the United States — the country that had helped fund the mujahideen against the Soviets.
Apparently, Sullivan uses the Moore award to shield himself in his little fantasy world, making sure no inconvenient truths burst through the bubble.
Alex S.
He’s trying to screw you, that’s a difference.
cleek
and for added fun, Google: “University of Nebraska” madrassas.
TenguPhule
Sullivan is a Gay Tory Hack who gets off on Boning the Poor while being dependent on the Corporate Tit to keep from dying from the AIDS he picked up for being a loose male slut.
Moore that.
Turgidson
I don’t think he’s actively screwing with you. He’s just an idiot. It’s time to stop expecting better from him, seriously.
Michael D.
More fun. Let’s play a game of “Guess what his political party is”
Anti-pot lawmaker busted for pot.
Brian S
I have never understood why Sullivan is popular. Once in a great while he makes a cogent point, but more often than not, he pulls this kind of crap. He’s not stupid, at least I don’t think he is. Or maybe he is and he’s just ambitious enough to get away with it. are we collectively fooled by his Britishness, perhaps?
maye
he should put charlie wilson’s war in his netflix queue.
Michael D.
Oh. Wow. I hope this doesn’t go by unnoticed here. That’s a huge insult to hundreds of thousands of people who got HIV the same way Sullivan did – through no fault of their own when they didn’t realize it was even out there.
Dumbest comment I’ve ever seen here.
Mike Kay (Team America)
boooooooooooooooooooooring
Poopyman
@Alex S.: Ah! The all important preposition. Or lack thereof.
Cole, I think you’d better learn how to quit him. Mistermix did it earlier today. C’mon! Why not?
maye
@TenguPhule: did you work for the reagan administration?
dmsilev
Can someone please break into John’s computer and delete the Sullivan bookmark? Either that, or stage an intervention.
I think it’s time.
Chris
The hell with Osama. Want to talk about American-armed terrorists? We’ve been harboring Oliver North since the eighties.
maye
@Michael D.: not dumb, just bigoted.
Parallel 5ths (Jewish Steel)
@Michael D.:
Someone check his match dot com profile.
Also, too this Guatemalan sound like fun!
eemom
why would he screw with you? It’s not like you’re obsessed with him or anything.
Poopyman
@Chris: Now let’s all be honest. Who here didn’t do something in the 80s that they now regret?
…
It’s just me, isn’t it?
RGuy
How dare you interrupt Sully’s grave dancing with that liberally biased reality.
To be honest, I don’t know why anyone attributes Sullivan as some sort of bygone era of reality based conservatism. He’s as finger-in-the-ears-i-can’t-hear-you conservative as Bachman or Palin. He just tries to pretend he’s not.
Stillwater
He’s not alone. I called out the same postmodern reinterpretation of premodern facts in DougJ’s Bobopost from last night:
Surely if the CIA were funding, training and equipping OBL as early as 1980, some (but maybe not the most) brilliant intelligence analyst was aware of it.
These guys have turned ‘intelligence’ into a four letter word.
MikeJ
Forget about directly arming bin Laden. Reagan showed him that Americans crumble when they sustain any casualties when he pulled the Marines out Beirut. That’s what led to AQ.
JonF
We gave the weapons to the ISI, they gave them to Bin Laden.
Lolis
I was done with Sully after the consecutive support for the Ryan budget and then acting like Obama should have released his long form birth certificate long ago. Clown.
Anyone know if he has responded to David Cameron trying to block gay kissing on TV during evening hours? I hope his explodes over that one.
malraux
In fairness, that rhetoric is divisive, bitter and intemperate left-wing rhetoric. The fact that it also happens to be true apparently isn’t a consideration. Niceness is much more important than truth, obviously.
Lev
This is the new version of political correctness, and Sully is its high priest. So much for the constant struggle to see what’s under his nose, or whatever that quote is.
BTW, I’ve removed Sullivan from the RSS feeder and I’ve never been happier. I get his good stuff from Google Reader buddies that share it, and I get to ignore the rest.
Trinity
John – Seriously, for your own sanity, please stop reading Sullivan. He’s never had an astute intellect.
Oh, and I respectfully request a Tunch pic. It already feels like a long week.
gex
Personal responsibility, or responsibility, for conservatives are things to be applied to others.
What we could really use is for someone to call him a faggot for this in a totally non-homophobic way.
Keith
I could have sworn that at one time, Sully said that the namesakes of his awards cannot receive them.
Brian S
In a very short time, Sullivan has gone from writing for The Atlantic to The Daily Beast. What are the odds his next gig is for the Weekly Standard? WorldNet Daily? Free Republic?
Villago Delenda Est
@RGuy:
Sullivan is the kind of guy who would be happy to serve as a Kapo in Pat Robertson’s Vernichtungslager for fags.
Chris
@Poopyman:
Nah, me too: I was born. Not that, you know, that in itself was a mistake. But if I had to do it over, I might not pick the same decade.
Now, as your your action that you regret… You voted for Reagan, didnja?
R.Mutt
His masthead says “To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle” – the appeal of his blog is to see him enter that struggle (or at least proclaiming to enter it) and then, over and over and over again, lose it.
Arclite
John, you’re being played. Obviously Moore edited the Wikipedia entry right before posting that inflammatory remark.
kdaug
@Brian S:
Two reasons, as far as I can tell:
1) He was one of the first bloggers
2) 80% of the stuff he posts is curated links to other other sites, or quotes thereof (see: HuffPo model)
Turgidson
@malraux:
Quite right. Truman said it best when he said “I just tell the truth and they think it’s hell.”
Pointing out uncomfortable truths is just not acceptable behavior if you’re a liberal. The only way to demonstrate your seriousness if you’re to the left of Sullivan is to take principled (and usually fact-free) stands against the liberal hordes. Meanwhile, a complete buffoon Randroid like Paul Ryan can unleash a nakedly ideological call to arms disguised as a budget blueprint and get a 3-week reach-around for his brave seriousness.
What a world. Every day I become more doubtful about whether I want to bring a child into it.
jeffreyw
Bah! Fuck Sully. (Not that that is a bad thing.) Here’s a nice doggie.
Keith
@kdaug:
There’s also his marijuana advocacy (trivia tidbit: he got busted for possession a couple of years back and had some strings pulled to prevent his citizenship push from getting screwed). And his View From A Window is nice.
I don’t get the beard/anticircumsision (“genital mutilation” in Sullyspeak) fetishes he has, though.
pk
Oh for the love of God let go of Andrew Sullivan! You guys seriously need an intervention.
Jay in Oregon
Civility is the last refuge of scoundrels.
Trinity
@jeffreyw: Squeeeeeee!
Citizen Alan
@malraux:
As I have said many times (including in emails to the Twit of the Year back when I actually read the Twit of the Year’s idiotic blog), the Moore Award is presented to leftists who make statements that are 100% true but which hurt the tender fee-fees of right wing monsters.
Guster
Sully is right.
He monitors ‘bitter, divisive, and intemperate.’
‘True?’ Eh.
Captain Howdy
Since Moore’s tweet is a true statement, and Sully linked to FoxNews rather than Moore’s own site, isn’t this really a Malkin Award nominee?
More posts on bearded bottoms and Pet Shop Boys, pls.
Ann B. Nonymous
I don’t like the man — his actions are consistently those of a bigot and a misogynist, regardless of the purity of his intentions (which I doubt) — but it might be the retrovirus that’s fucking him up, dementia-style, which is not a fate I would wish on anyone.
p.a.
John, Sully’s advertising for interns. I double dog dare you to apply. Part of the job description involves ‘remedial tasks’. I don’t know what this could mean except explaining his own screw-ups to him. A man for every job, a job for every man.
srv
Several “professional” intel sites, and even Pat Lang’s site have busied themselves with revisionism on how “our” money never went to OBL or the pre-Taliban folks. It only went to the good guys that later became the “northern” alliance. We probably never directly funded OBL, but any detailed reading of Operation Cyclone shows plenty of our money and not just Saudi-to-ISI money went into then hands of folks like Hekmatayer.
In fact, interviews in a couple of books talk about how the local CIA thought Hekmatayer and his crew were the real deal, would actually go out an fight the Soviets, whereas the heroes of the later alliance preened around and filled up their bank accounts.
geg6
Apparently, Sully has never seen “Charlie Wilson’s War.”
It is made abundantly clear in that film that we funded bin Laden and his ilk during their fight against the Soviets. Perhaps Sully missed all the parts when Wilson (Tom Hanks) is in Afghanistan setting up his arms sales to them (“them” being proto-al Qaeda and the Taliban).
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Turgidson:
Don’t let the knaves and fools inherit the Earth:
1) Have kids
2) Teach them the values that you cherish, and to fight like bloody hell for those values
3) ???
4)
profitcute grandkidsjl
I don’t think we know whether the US actively recruited radical Arabs into the Afghan resistance against the Soviets.
But I think the US did actively recruit, or it approved Pakistan of actively recruiting extreme political Islamicist militants into the fight.
I heard this story from ex Afghan resistance fighters themselves at several World Affairs Council meetings in SF, going back even before 911. Fremont, in the South Bay, has one of the largets Afghan communities in the US, so always been some interest around here in Afghanistan, and ability to get interesting speaker panels of Aghan expats.
They said that militant religious extremists were favored in getting support. They were told that the US and Pakistan thought the only religious extremists were ‘tough enough’ to go up against the Soviets.
Moore might be accused of oversimplification. The influence of these militants who were recruited worked though a nasty civil war in Afghanistan that happened after the Soviets left, and after the US lost all interest in Afghanistan as soon as the Soviet bogeyman left.
Bin Laden was so rich, he could create his own network to get financial support. But the Afghan religious extremists who were favored in the fight against the Soviets got their money and guns from the US and Pakistan, and won the civil war. And they could give Bin Laden something no amount of money could buy: a sovereign safe haven, and whole country to use for a base of operations.
A L
Does anyone outside of the Beltway care about Andrew Sullivan.
trollhattan
@geg6:
Also, too, maybe he missed that whole Iran-Contra thingie as well. Saint Ronnie’s memory started going south around then and perhaps Andy’s did as well.
jibeaux
Wait, he gives the Moore award to Michael Moore? Doesn’t that lack a little bit of punch?
schrodinger's cat
@jeffreyw: Nice doggie, but you know what would be even better, a Homer kitteh update
Calouste
@Lolis:
Let’s see:
Q. Does Sully perform gay kisses on UK TV before 9 PM?
A. Nope -> It doesn’t affect Sully personally, so Sully won’t give a shit.
Bulworth
Well, Moore’s comments were “divisive, bitter and intemperate”. They also happened to be true.
Southern Beale
Michael Moore won a Moore award? What are the odds!
Chris
@geg6:
Actually, Charlie Wilson’s War kind of rewrote history too – the only warlord they mention as receiving most of our support was Massoud, while in reality Hekmatyar got far more than Massoud ever did.
geg6
@trollhattan:
It was fascinating for me to read and then watch “Charlie Wilson’s War.” Mainly because I know this guy’s family and some of his friends:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gust_Avrakotos
They had no clue what he did until the book came out. And, believe me, the people of Aliquippa have mixed feelings about ol’ Gust. Proud that he was such a good spook. And pissed that he may well have been the single individual who created bin Laden, who likely received US funding to funnel into Afghanistan through his organization at the time, Maktab al-Khadamat.
BTD
I again applaud the deserved Sully bashing.
Keep up the good work.
scav
I’m trying to work it out. He won a Meta-Moore? A More-Moore? A MMoooooooorree?
Bob Loblaw
Keep fucking that chicken, John. Keep fucking that chicken.
Chris
@jl:
I believe the lines were far blurrier back then when everyone was fighting the Soviets.
My understanding is that we basically didn’t care who we funded as long as they killed Russians. Our two main allies and middlemen, the Saudis and Pakistanis, are the ones who cared about the Salafist jihad thing, mostly because of post-Iranian-Revolution politics. Organizing and funding their own jihad against a “great Satan” allowed them to show off their own Islam-cred, and also get their own crazier elements to leave the country and hopefully get killed.
res ipsa loquitur
Kudos to you for constantly calling Sullivan on his nonsense. The guy traffics in four kinds of posts:
1. Compare and contrasts, e.g., “X supports torture, Y differs”;
2. “Reax”, where he aggregates others’ responses to various an sundry events and non-events without taking a position himself;
3.”View from your window” and “Mental Health Break” parlor games.
4. His dopey and pointless awards, e.g., Moore, Yglesias, etc.
Honestly, he’s the laziest blogger out there and I can’t understand why anyone bothers with him.
Poopyman
@Chris:
Oh no! HEEEEEELL no! Never voted for a Republican, starting back in ’72.
No, it was the decade of unfortunate hair styles, clothing styles, and choices of girlfriends.
jrg
The fact that something undeniably true is considered divisive, bitter, intemperate, leftist rhetoric is just about all you need to know about modern political discourse.
I suppose we should balance this out by saying that Osama bin Laden was armed by Santa Clause in the ’80s.
Sully is such a fucking clown.
Lysana
@Ann B. Nonymous:
He’s been this way for so long it can’t be the retrovirus dementia. He’d have long descended into drooling and staring at walls. And this isn’t a snark. The Bell Curve was published how many years ago?
geg6
@Chris:
Well, of course they had to condense things for film. The book covers it very thoroughly, though. But what is shown in the film, admittedly incomplete and condensed, makes it clear that we created our own worst enemies.
And discussions I’ve had with those who knew Avrakotos and his work very well confirm what I found quite clear in both the book and the film. By the way, Avrokotos could never admit to his own responsibility in this, even his breaking the law in approaching Wilson in the first place. He would have been a good Bushie (and may well have been as he was a contractor until his death in ’03). Notice that his Wiki article says that he also worked for Rupert Murdoch at Newscorp.
Chris
Reality not only has a left-wing bias, it’s also divisive, bitter, and intemperate.
Dennis SGMM
@jrg:
It hadda’ be Santa Claus; St. Ronnie would never arm and train an obvious fanatic who was born and raised in the home of Wahhibist Islam!
New Yorker
Where does it say the US supported Osama bin Laden there, John?
jrg
@Dennis SGMM: Good point. Plus, anyone who gives toys to undeserving children hates America. That’s in the Constitution.
New Yorker
I know, I know, we can do that GOP thing where we pretend the rag heads are all the same when it makes the US look bad.
almostaquantum
I think there is an important thing to say here.
Toward Sullivan, I am ambivalent. His track-record is better than George Will’s or Thomas Friedman’s, but it is nothing heroic. Clearly, though, Sullivan is an articulate voice for The Center.
This role is useful.
Flame all you want about how Andrew Sullivan is wrong. His view is the widely held public opinion which you must correct. Good luck.
Chris
@geg6:
Ahh, okay. I never read the book. I just remember Massoud being the only Afghan warlord mentioned in the film and thinking it was a dodge of the unpleasant fact that bad guys were funded as well (notice that “the crazies” don’t get mentioned until the end of the movie, in the context of “the crazies are trying to take over now”).
Didn’t know that about Gust Avrakatos either, thanks.
slag
@scav:A S’Moore.
gnomedad
@Southern Beale:
Clearly John needs to establish a Sullivan Award to give to Sullivan whenever Sullivan, you know, posts.
jl
@New Yorker:
You are correct, it does not say that. It says:
“Along with native Afghan mujahideen were Muslim volunteers from other countries, popularly known as Afghan Arabs.”
Which leaves a lot open to interpretation.
BTW: I am travelling, and spent more than an hour knowing only that an ‘urgent national security’ announcement was coming from the WH. I assumed it would be some extra special security scare that would make travel even more unpleasant.
So, I am lucky in missing most of the media coverage. Except I have noted that the TV pundits seem to be going out of their way to give Bush Jr some credit. Why? As far as I know, Bush Jr’s accomplishment in getting bin Laden was that he failed. Clinton failed too. So, why isn’t Clinton sharing some credit also, too. Glad to see there is some pushback on the apparently bogus line that
torture, enhanced interrogation techniques produced vital information.Dennis SGMM
@almostaquantum:
Useful to whom? It may have been useful to the left back in the early Eighties, but now that the Center has moved somewhere to the right of Richard Nixon it doesn’t need an articulate voice, it needs to be informed and corrected.
jrg
@almostaquantum:
He has a PhD from Harvard in government, used to write for the Atlantic, and runs one of the most widely-visited blogs on the internet, yet he has no responsibility to acknowledge widely accepted historical facts? That’s our responsibility?
Give me a fucking break.
jl
@gnomedad: If the Sullivan award can only be given to Sullivan, then I think BJ already has that. Just need to add a new tag line is all.
almostaquantum
@jrg: Dude, I think I’m with you on the issues. Sullivan is a barometer. There will be votes, man. Do you want to be right or make things right?
Chris
@jl:
Tell me about it. I thought he was going to tell us Iran had nukes, or the government was defaulting on its debt, or something.
b-psycho
I think Sullivan anticipates (for reasons I can’t figure out) a Republican wins in 2012, so he’s airing out his winger sensibilities in preparation for returning to 2nd class citizen status.
Bender
Yep, just like FDR “created” Stalin. The blood of 20 million is on his wheels!
scav
@slag: S’Moore. Like it. We could reserve that one for the extra-special-delicious ones handed out by Sullivan himself. Or maybe for the second award, a.k.a. the bookend, the one before the Hat-trick.
Lit3Bolt
@Bender:
LOLOLOLOLOLOL. That, sir, is hilarious.
Jaymurph
I realize I’m late to the comments here to suggest this… but could someone with enough clout to get a communication through to Sullivan ask very politely and without snark if the Moore award and complete factual accuracy are mutually exclusive?
Does he think the facts are themselves divisive? Or does he think that the act of someone bringing them up as being divisive? Either way, could we get a list of which historical facts are acceptable to bring up and which are not?
I’m serious. I would really like to know what his reply would be.
iLarynx
Is there any provision in the Moore award for the statement being, you know, true? Maybe an asterisk or something? Or is Sully denying that the US/CIA sent OBL stinger missiles and provided training against the U.S.S.R. in Afghanistan before OBL turned his sights on the US for some blowback? I’m just as happy as anyone that OBL is no longer a threat to anyone, but the facts are the facts.
When I’m debating someone with diametrically opposed views (as I’m doing today with pro-torture Republicans) I personally don’t mind at all if I myself am divisive when making my “left-wing” points. My goal is not to be divisive, but to impart the truth (e.g. torture/waterboarding is immoral, ineffective, and un-American). That this divides myself (distinguishes me) from the pro-torture Republicans doesn’t bother me one iota.
Given this recent example, I think Sully must have updated the Moore Award definition to read “being undaunted about telling the truth regardless of how uncomfortable it makes Republicans.”
iLarynx
Woodrowfan
Moore is wrong. The US did NOT finance and support Bin Laden in Afghanistan. He used his own money and remained separate from the US-aided groups. It is fair to say that he was allied with groups funded by the US, but he was not one of them.
This is not to say that US policy towards Afghanistan during the Soviet invasion and after did not help create the very people we are fighting today, but it’s simply not accurate to say that the US funded, or, even worse, “created” Bin Laden.
HyperIon
At This Point, I’m Convinced YOU are Just Screwing With Your readers.
celticdragonchick
Um…we didn’t create him. We didn’t give him his millions of dollars, and we didn’t send him to the Wahabist finishing school for terrorist wackos.
He got in line for some rpg’s and second hand Kalashnikovs we handed out in Afghanistan back in the 80’s.
I recall something about Ollie North warning folks to keep an eye an the bastard around that time.
almostaquantum
@HyperIon: AND i am conVINCED that you ARE conFused”.”
alwhite
Join Mixmaster & quit this ignorant cow. Move his link to “Blogs we monitor and mock as needed” where it belongs (and has for a very long time) and move on.
Asshole
I think that wikipedia entry is a little screwy. At least, according to what’s in “Ghost Wars” and “The Looming Tower.” The Saudis ran their own parallel effort in which they funneled money into the place. Zia ul-Haq and the ISI favored the Islamic extremists over more CIA-friendly guys like Ahmed Shah Massoud (who was also one of the more effective guerrilla leaders, and a Tajik instead of a Pashtun). American aid didn’t stop until after the Soviets left; we didn’t even start supplying Stingers until roughly 1986. Our aid increased exponentially until the Soviets left the country.
Osama Bin Laden certainly didn’t need any financial assistance from us. And if he did receive any direct military assistance, that fact hasn’t come out yet. The Saudis had their own Wahhabist recruitment network to find religious nutters eager to get themselves killed fighting atheist Marxist infidels. They had their own money, and their own weapons. We funneled our stuff more through the ISI. Was there some cross-over? Almost certainly, but the details are murky and no evidence of direct support of Bin Laden has come out.
Furthermore, Bin Laden didn’t actually turn on us until Gulf War I. He was pissed that the infidel Christians were invited to the Holy Land instead of his own tiny network of Islamists being used to defend Saudi Arabia from the apostate Saddam.
Andrew Sullivan is an ass, and an asshole. But the wikipedia entry is factually flawed based upon the information currently publicly available.
Mr Barky
Soon after Sully gives a Heh Indeedy link to some guy who compares birthers to the people that doubted Bush’s military service based on the fact that this was “debunked” because CBS screwed up.
Ozymandias, King of Ants
@almostaquantum:
If Andrew F**king Sullivan represents “the Center” in this country, all is lost.
Tuffy
“Sullivan is a Gay Tory Hack who gets off on Boning the Poor while being dependent on the Corporate Tit to keep from dying from the AIDS he picked up for being a loose male slut.” – Tenguphule
So true! This must be shouted from the mountains until all hear its clarion call.
beergoggles
You should start giving Sully Awards to eloquent fucktards who cannot handle the truth. McMegan would qualify if she could write better than she can count.
beergoggles
@TenguPhule: I hope u get waterboarded. Repeatedly.
Amanda in the South Bay
@Michael D.:
I think the point is-he’s an upper middle class gay man who, if he could enact his policies in an ideal world-would be condemning tons of poor LGBT (yes Sully, trans people exist!) HIV positive people to death.
abscam
@jeffreyw: Why, hello there, gorgeous!
Not you, the doggie…sorry :-)
DFH no.6
Anyone who thinks we (as in, “U.S. Foreign Policy, particularly of the 1980s”) aren’t complicit (everyone turn and look at Bender) needs to read Afghan expert Steve Coll, and the Blowback series by Chalmers Johnson, with an open mind. For a start.
I know asking a conservative to do that (the “open mind” part) is like asking someone to try opening a rusted steel bear trap with their bare hands, but it can (rarely) be done. Our esteemed host, as prime example.
Along with humor and irony, conservatives just don’t “do” analogies very well. Reagan : Bin Laden as FDR : Stalin. Riiiiiight…
You guys all scored like zero on this part of the SATs, didn’t you?
KXB
@JonF:
True, anytime the U.S. tried to get involved in seeing who the weapons were going to, the Pakistanis would object, claiming they knew what they were doing/ “Ghost Wars” by Steve Coll is the best source on this.
If you do business with a neighborhood business, and the owner of that business does more business with unsavory characters, how liable are you for that?
Don’t let your dislike for Sullivan blind you to Moore’s poor logic.
gene108
I don’t understand why some on the Left want to blame America for the creation of al-Qaeda.
The mistake we made was that we ignored Afghanistan after the Soviet withdrawal and let the country descend into another decade of military strife.
We armed a lot of people most of whom just wanted to rule Afghanistan or live the way they had before the Communist government started trying to turn Afghanistan all atheist by busting up the mosques. They weren’t interested in taking broader action against the U.S.
Bin Laden’s unique among the Mujaheddin because he never attempted to become a war lord, supposedly tried to negotiate peace deals in the early 1990’s and never tried to rule Afghanistan. He went bat-shit crazy, when the Saudi government asked for U.S. troops to be stationed there after the first Gulf War. That’s not America’s fault.
If anything bin Laden’s an outlier among the Mujaheddin.
As far as the Taliban problem we have in Afghanistan, they were armed and trained by Pakistan.
Either you are a pacifist like Gandhi and renounce violence or you accept the fact wars are being fought and sometimes you have to take sides.
Given our military power, I think we have our hands in too many places, but that’s another issue all together.
I don’t think Michael Moore is a pacifist in the mold of Gandhi. I don’t know why he has a problem, with the U.S. aiding Afghan rebels because of events that happened a decade and more after the 1980’s.
Antonius
Man, even I’m getting tired of the all-Sullivan channel, and I love a thorough snark. Maybe we could, you know, just stop reading him.
Midnight Marauder
No one should post in a thread dedicated to Andrew Sullivan until his blog is moved into the “Blogs We Monitor And Mock As Needed” category.
No one.
(after this, of course.)
almostaquantum
@Ozymandias, King of Ants: I am not endorsing Sullivan. This be descriptive. What pundit do you think better expresses precious Middle America?
Yes, Sullivan has all his Talking Dog cred in order: former-Republican, current-gay ex-pat Catholic with unfortunate fiscal-conservative tendencies; he’s broadly liberaltarian, similarly pro-Obama and also increasingly anti-war. However he came to these aggressively farina views, there they are. In all their incoherent glory, they are pretty close to middle-of-the-road U.S. of A.
So: what pundit you you think better expresses precious Middle America? You don’t have to agree, but surely you realize that you must convince (at least some of) them?
malraux
@KXB:
It’s one thing to supply office products to like paper or staples to a mob connected business. It’s an entirely different thing to be an ammo supplier to a mob connected gun shop. especially if you know that its a mob business. And especially if you helped launch that mob business.
I’ll provisionally accept that we never gave money, arms, or training to OBL directly, but that doesn’t mean we had no role in creating him.
Ozymandias, King of Ants
@almostaquantum: I wasn’t necessarily disagreeing with you. I was just pointing out that if Sullivan is “the Center” then I see a bleak future for this country.
TD
We didn’t fund Al-Qaeda, we funded the Afghan mujaheddin. If you don’t think there is a difference, YOU are the one that is misinformed.
almostaquantum
@Ozymandias, King of Ants: Fair enough. But let’s not throw up our hands.
Omnes Omnibus
@almostaquantum: He currently has views that mesh reasonably closely with those of the (statistically) mean American. Three problems though: 1)The statistically mean American does not actually exist, 2) The way by which one comes to one’s views is important as it shows how tightly those views are held and what, if anything, will cause them to change, and 3) Sullivan, by taste and background, is not Middle America. He is an outsider,something that could, but in his case does not, make a person a good observer of America. Sullivan does not write about what Americans think; he he writes about how he feels about things.
Stillwater
@Southern Beale: Michael Moore won a Moore award? What are the odds!
Lou Gehrig died of Lou Gehrig’s disease. How’d he not see that comin? (/Denis Leary)
walt
Does Sullivan matter enough to care? Well, I’m typing something so the answer must be yes. Don’t forget Sullivan is not just one of the most widely-read bloggers. He’s on Bill Maher and Chris Matthews. He writes op-ed pieces for prestigious newspapers. And he’s compulsively opinionated to the point he simply makes up stuff on the fly and then has to walk it back (e.g., the Ryan budget). One of the reasons there’s so much schadenfreude about him is his preciousness, his legion of suck-ass letter-writers (whom he quotes liberally), and his religious gassiness that has all the depth of a Hallmark card. Sullivan is gifted and he’s also too aware of the fact. That alone makes him an inviting target.
Joseph Nobles
This post and thread are nothing short of amazing. Moore makes several easily disprovable statements about Osama’s funding during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Several people have by now pointed out that Osama funded himself in Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation. Indeed, the OP provides documentation showing that the Afghan Arabs provided their own funding.
And yet the OP and most commenters then continue to promote what Moore said as true when it is most manifestly false. The OP does this even after quoting from a source that shows its own assumptions to be wrong. The notion of Osama being funded by the CIA is so firmly entrenched in the liberal mythology that people can actually quote and read material that proves it to be incorrect and yet persist in the error.
For more on this, please read Lawrence Wright’s inestimable history of Al Qaeda, “The Looming Tower.”
Stillwater
There seems to be some dispute about whether the US funded/aided/abetted/created al Queda in the 80s. The CIA not only passed monetary, logistical and training support to what Reagan called (approximately) Freedom Fighters much like our Founding Fathers, to create what what Brzezinski called the ‘Afghan trap’ (he took a tremendous amount of pride in laying the necessary groundwork for it to be successful) but the CIA also produced and disseminated literature, books and educational material to encourage the Islamic radicalism they (we) thought necessary to fight a well armed, materially superior, Soviet army. In a technical sense, the US didn’t fund al Queda in the 80s since that group didn’t take shape until after the Russian exit from Afghanistan. One of the things that pissed OBL off back in the day was how the US supported his/their efforts in fighting for Afghan liberation only to abandon them to the more powerful Taliban warlords once US interest in the outcome was determined. Subsequently, the US funded the Taliban up until at least 1999, very probably 2000, and possibly even at the beginning of 2001.
Long story short: we helped create, and in a material sense did create, the very Jihadism we’re now fighting.
(Citations would include Nazeef Ahmed’s several books on the topic, among many others including the hated Noam.)
almostaquantum
@Omnes Omnibus: What you say is true. Sullivan is a Talking Dog with a coinflip success rate.
Still, as someone who wants to influence all of America–including Middle America–I find it useful to have a barometer of how I’m doing. Again: if not Sullivan, who then is the better proxy for how we’re doing? Understand: I don’t care to influence him directly; I’m saying, let’s read him to see how it’s going.
Joseph Nobles
@Stillwater: The US also didn’t in the technical sense fund Osama bin Laden or any of the Afghan Arab cottage industry of Freedum-Fighting tourist/jihadis that sprung up around the actual funding of actual Afghani citizens fighting the actual Soviet occupation. Yes, there does seem to be some dispute between the facts and what you want to believe.
jeffreyw
@schrodinger’s cat:
Here’s a pic from Saturday for ya, scroll down.
Stillwater
@Joseph Nobles: I think you need to read more about this than one source. On your view, the US limited it’s support to indigenous Afghan groups. I disagree, but fair enough. Towards what end? Liberating those Afghanis from Soviet oppression? Even you don’t believe that (do you?).
The purpose of the whole Afghan trap was to bankrupt the Soviet Union, not to liberate Afhganistan. The US was equal opportunity in that regard: OBL was a member of the Mujaheddin as much as any other radicalized Muslim. Sure OBL brought money to the table. That doesn’t mean he wasn’t supported, trained, and funded by the US (directly or indirectly). I mean, it seems to me your hung up on the specific wording of ‘funding’ here in the sense that because OBL was rich and therefore didn’t need money, he wasn’t the beneficiary of US material support. That’s just incorrect, no matter what the limited sources your basing those claims on might say.
Mnemosyne
@jeffreyw:
Homer looks like he’s thinking, “OMG! That rock just STARTED WALKING!”
schrodinger's cat
@jeffreyw: Wow he has grown! He looks pretty big now.
Asshole
@Stillwater:
How did America finance Bin Laden directly? As I understand it, our aid went to the ISI. Zia ul-Haq directed it toward the Afghan mujahideen, particularly the more Islamic groups. The Saudis ran a parallel operation involving functionally-unlimited money and international networks of Wahabbist volunteers. A parallel operation. This is in both “Ghost Wars” and “Looming Tower.” What books do you have that discuss direct CIA support to Bin Laden or the Islamist networks set up by the Saudis? I read “Ghost Wars” and “Looming Tower” very carefully, looking for that. They didn’t discuss it. If it happened, it’s not in those two books. So what book discusses it? When/where did it happen? What did it involve? Weapons? Money? Drugs?
Joseph Nobles
@Stillwater: When you read Lawrence Wright’s book, and I’m sure you won’t, you’ll realize that it draws on far more than one source. In fact, quite the opposite. There’s a reason the book won the Pulitzer.
Moore said the US funded and created Osama. John quoted a source that says precisely the opposite. John’s source is correct. Moore is not. But other than being completely incorrect, what Moore said is true and Sullivan sucks.
PS: And Osama was a Muhajadeen about like McHale had a Navy.
Stillwater
@Asshole: How did America finance Bin Laden directly? As I understand it, our aid went to the ISI.
Well, alot of this is apparently reducing to semantics – what constitutes material support or funding. Maybe this is a bit of a misplaced ‘gotcha’, but on your view (expressed in the quote above) the US didn’t support anyone in Afghanistan: the ISI did. Of course, that money was allocated for specific purposes that the Pakistanis were entirely clear about: funding, training, supporting the Mujaheddin in fighting the Soviets. Now, lots of that money clearly went to Hekmatyar, and so far as I know no money went directly to OBL. But I don’t see how that changes the facts that OBL was closely tied to the CIA, benefitted from US sponsored training and support, or that the US fostered and encouraged Islamic radicalism for pragmatic and strategic purposes which OBL played a significant role in during the 80s.
@Joseph Nobles: I don’t know what you’re arguing here: that the US didn’t play a role in creating Islamic radicalism for the purpose of fighting the USSR and that OBL therefore wasn’t a beneficiary and to some degree a product of the cozy relationship he maintained with the CIA, or that OBL never got any money directly from the US? If it’s the latter, I’ll concede the point. That doesn’t mean that the CIA didn’t foster and encourage the radicalism that led to the creation AQ once the Soviet-Afghan war came to a close. Saying that the emergence of Islamic radicalism was the result of spontaneous, indigenous unrest is just plain false.
Asshole
@Stillwater:
See, but this isn’t the same thing. I want to agree with you, but I can’t. If the Saudis and the Americans/ISI are running parallel insurgent operations in Afghanistan at the same time, it’s not fair to say that the Americans armed, funded, and trained Bin Laden. The fact that American support means that the war ended sooner and OBL got to stop fighting the Soviets a little earlier (and maybe, just maybe didn’t get killed because of that) doesn’t equal the same thing as American arming, funding, or training. At least, based on the information I’ve seen- it wouldn’t surprise me terribly if 10 years from now documents showing OBL was trained in a CIA camp were declassified. But for now there’s just no evidence of direct American support, and even indirect American support is tentative and arguable. So what Moore said was wrong. I hate agreeing with that asshole Sully about anything, but in this case Moore is wrong.
Asshole
I think the question is whether or not Moore is right that the Americans were “ARMING, FUNDING, &TRAINING [Bin Laden] in the art of terror agnst the USSR.” From the available evidence, it does not appear that we were.
Stillwater
@Asshole:
Maybe. I guess I go the other way on it. The Afghan Trap was a construct of the US. It required a) mobilizing Islamic sentiment against Soviets and the Afghani government’s Soviet pact b) radicalizing that sentiment for the purposes of overcoming what appear to be extreme odds, and c) funding/supporting the resulting insurgency. This all occurred under Carter as bait to entice the Soviets into a military invasion.
The high goal was to get the Soviets to take the bait against better judgment: never get involved in a land war in Asia. But they did. During all this, the US was funneling propaganda through various channels to encourage radicalism in defense of Islam against the Soviets. When the US got more overt during the middle of the campaign, it wasn’t to end the conflict quicker, but to prolong it by making sure the Afghan Mujaheddin didn’t lose, ie., that the Soviets had to expend even more capital. And to the specific point being discussed, OBL was a Freedom Fighter along side with other Taliban in the Jihadi cause. He was part of an operation created by the US for the purpose of furthering US geopolitical interests. He was advised.
The idea that the Saudi’s – or more specifically Saudi monies – were funding their own insurgency, independently and in juxtaposition to the US is certainly news to me. They put money into it, but I never once assumed, or was ever led to believe, that they did this without communicating with the US regarding their operational objectives.
As to your specific claims that you haven’t seen any evidence that OBL was a CIA asset or was working with them, I guess all I can say is two things: I have seen evidence from numerous sources (Ahmed Nafeez, mentioned above, being just one), and that from an institutional pov there is simply no way that two independent efforts to overthrow the Soviets could not conjoin to a significant degree and share information and materiel, especially given that the US’s interest in the fight was purely strategic, limited to merely weakening the Soviets.
SoINeedAName
Good lord, Cole, give it a rest!
Stillwater
@Asshole: That I can agree with. But of course, by saying he’s wrong you reject the correct point he’s trying to make. Furthermore, I don’t think Moore means this literally (as in ‘put money directly into OBL’s bank account’) but rather loosely: that OBL and AQ were to a great degree the product of US efforts to destabilize the USSR. (A non-trivial degree anyway.)
TD
Nobles and Asshole (great law firm name, btw) are absolutely correct. The “Arab Afghans”, to the extent that they were even allowed near the “front”, were useless, and seen as such by the experienced Afghan fighters. Not only is this point explicitly made by Wright and Coll in their respective books, it is also recognized by terrorism experts ranging from Marc Sageman to Bruce Hoffman.
Moore was incorrect.
TD
Saudi money WAS going to the Afghan mujaheddin, but mostly through those Saudi brats who were showing up to “fight” the Godless Soviets. The Arab Afghans were blobs of money that appeared in Afghanistan so they could brag to the girls back in the gilded kingdom. They were–mostly–kept away from areas where they could do harm. The Afghan fighters didn’t trust them to fight, and they had good reason not to. They were viewed primarily as sources of revenue; in exchange for “training”, they paid handsomely.
This, as I understand it, was the main dynamic between the parties.
priscianus jr
Life’s too short. I have never been to Sullivan’s blog, probably never will. I get all the Sullivan I need, and more, from BJ.
LosGatosCA
I’m almost missing the ED Kain posts I always skipped.
johnny walker
We have always been at war with Andrew Sullivan.
… actually I have no problem with the SullyWatch project on this blog, I just thought it sounded funny. Oh man, that pet/booze/Cole hurting himself blog is tackling insufficiently weighty subjects again! Cole, I demand that you confine your writing and publishing of free shit to things I deem vital and relevant!
Politics is repetition. Is a nice stern ignoring supposed to change Sully’s mind, or help inform people who might not yet realize he’s a dumbass?
TD
I think Cole should issue a correction on this. History is history.