“ On another extreme, there are those who simply say it’s foreign policy to blame, . . . “
Here is someone who thinks the ‘recent problems’ are due to US foreign policy?
“RS: OK, and he {R. Gates} wrote a very interesting book. And in that book, he said the Afghan problem, and the problem of the whole Muslim world, really, started with our luring the Russians — the Soviets — into Afghanistan. . . .
we now know from Zbigniew Brzezinski’s famous interview with Le Nouvel Observateur, he was in the Carter administration and he said: We lured the Soviets in there because we wanted to give them their Vietnam. And in defense, he said: So what’s a few riled-up Muslims? We ended the Cold War because the Soviets ground to a halt in Afghanistan. Well, a few riled-up Muslims is what the war on terrorism is all about, and it’s shaped the whole world for the last 20 years. But it’s interesting, in Gates’s book he very categorically states: We intervened in Afghanistan before the Russians entered on the side of the guy who was actually the leader of the country at that time. Do you, you’re a Russia expert, do you have knowledge of that? . . . “