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Unholy Wars

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Unholy Wars

Afghanistan, America and International Terrorism

Pluto Press,

15 min read
10 take-aways
Audio & text

What's inside?

As Machiavelli wrote: “Mercenaries bring nothing but loss.”

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Editorial Rating

8

Qualities

  • Innovative

Recommendation

In this impressively detailed and exhaustively documented book, John K. Cooley gets to the roots of the international terrorist organizations that are striking fear and violence into the world’s populations. Beginning with surprising revelations about U.S. and Soviet actions in Afghanistan during the Cold War, Cooley traces the origins of today’s terror back to the West’s strategy of creating an army of fanatical Muslim warriors to mire the USSR in its own Vietnam. While that plan was successful, it gave birth to the terrorist violence we face today, and Cooley deftly explains how. getabstract.com strongly recommends this book to all readers for the historic context lacking in mainstream media coverage of the war on terrorism.

Summary

Russia’s Vietnam

Sometime in 1979, the U.S. began providing support to warriors, or moujahidin, who were resisting the Soviet-backed government of Afghanistan. In December of that year, as developing opposition in Afghanistan sparked fears in Moscow that American influence was growing in Central Asia, Soviet troops invaded the country.

It’s unclear as to which came first: the flow of U.S. aid, or the Soviet invasion. But U.S. National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, who helped convince President Jimmy Carter to sign a secret directive authorizing the aid, later shed some light on U.S. intentions during the months leading up to the Soviet invasion: "We didn’t push the Russians to intervene, but we consciously increased the probability that they would do so," he said. "This secret operation was an excellent idea. Its effect was to draw the Russians into the Afghan trap." This trap, as Brzezinski told President Carter in 1979, would be nothing less than "the USSR’s own Vietnam."

With Soviet forces on the ground, the U.S. fully unrolled its plan to arm and train an army of Muslim zealots to fight them. Men and weapons were collected in Egypt, with the help ...

About the Author

John Cooley is a long-time author and journalist whose other books include Payback: America’s Long War in the Middle East, Green March, Black September: The Story of the Palestinian Arabs , and Libyan Sandstorm.

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