Freedom Fighters and the New Republic

Last month, in the August 18/25 issue, The New Republic (TNR) magazine ran a cover story which focused on my role in creating the Reagan Doctrine, which contributed to the downfall of the Soviet Union. 

While not critical of me directly, the article criticizes the leaders of the anti-Soviet freedom fighter movements the Reagan Doctrine supported.  This is supposed to serve as a warning to the Bush White House regarding putative support for anti-radical movements within the Moslem world.  Here is my response.  We’ll see what TNR does with it.

Editor
The New Republic

Frank Foer’s alliterative article — “Founding Fakers by Franklin Foer” — is an interesting mix of insight and inaccuracy.  Much of the article is based on an interview he had with me, coupled with denunciations of Contra leader Adolfo Calero and UNITA leader Jonas Savimbi.  Strangely, although I knew them both well, Foer never asked me about them.  He got Adolfo wrong — calling him a caudillo is silly — but Savimbi right. 

Further, it is outright perverse to claim that conservatives were fond of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar in Afghanistan.  The CIA, led around by the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) with a ring through its nose, idiotically insisted on supporting Gulbuddin while I and others who had been inside Afghanistan and seen for themselves kept warning that Gulbuddin was an ineffective Khomeini-loving America-hating Islamo-fascist.

The bottom line with the Reagan Doctrine was that it worked.  The Soviet Union no longer exists, which was the doctrine’s explicit goal.  Yet, as I told Foer but he does not mention, it succeeded in spite of itself, in spite of fanatical opposition to it from the State Department and the CIA. 

The best example is Mozambique.  Former RENAMO guerrilla leader Afonso Dhlakama is now poised to be elected the country’s president and is the very opposite of a “founding faker,” having brought real democratic freedoms to his country.  Yet Chester Crocker, Undersecretary of State for Africa under Reagan, was rabidly opposed to any US aid to RENAMO and demonized Dhlakama at every opportunity.  (Note that earlier this summer, Crocker had nothing but praise for Dhlakama at a private lunch in the latter’s honor at the Washington residence of the Portuguese embassy.)

Today we are faced with the same squishiness at State and Langley regarding Iraq and Iran.  Ahmed Chalabi is the current equivalent of Afonso Dhlakama.  I am quite surprised that Foer has bought Foggy Bottom’s anti-Chalabi propaganda.  He is right to assert that the number of conservatives praising the Iranian Mujahedin is very small — and it will remain that way, for it is as Foer describes, a cult of proto-Marxist goons.  The real problem is that the CIA is too incompetent and timid to back a popular uprising to rid Iran of its hated Mullacracy.

The purpose of the Reagan Doctrine was to stop playing defense against the Soviets as we did for over 30 years with George Kennan’s “Containment.”  The strategy of the Reagan Doctrine was to identify and exploit the weaknesses and vulnerabilities of Soviet imperialism.  This strategy was successful where Containment was not.  Our national security requires that we develop and implement a similar strategy regarding Radical Islam. 

Supporting anti-Soviet guerrilla liberation movements proved to be a useful tactic in implementing the Reagan Doctrine strategy.   A similar tactic regarding Radical Islam may or may not prove useful.  What is “salutary realism” and not right-wing idealism is to insist on the necessity of going on the offensive with Moslem Terrorism and its totalitarian ideology.

Cordially,

Jack Wheeler
Editor, ToThePoint (www.tothepointnews.com)