Defense secretary admits Sept. 11 was blowback for U.S. mistakes (Page 1 of 1)

You likely won’t see the above headline elsewhere anytime soon. Eventually, it might show up on Page Five in your local daily, but it won’t be top of Page One, where it counts.

Just as you never saw these headlines, at least not when they might’ve made a difference:
War will cost 100 times more than Bush 
team predicts (Oil won’t pay for it)
U.S. looks other way as Pakistan perfects nuclear bombs and delivery system
Bush suppresses the science behind global warming
No WMDs found in Iraq
No aerial drones. No new anthrax. No yellowcake. No centrifuges
No significant links found between al-Qaeda and Saddam
Decision to invade based on ravings from tortured man, lies from a double agent
Memos reveal U.S. told England we’d fix the evidence in joint plan to invade Iraq
Many surrounding Bush believe they’re fulfilling Biblical prophecy in Middle East
Decision to torture originated in White House
U.S. soldiers committing suicide at record levels
U.S. is building permanent military bases in Iraq
U.S. hands control of Iraq to Shiites, natural allies of Iran
Saudi gas profits linked to spread of Wahabbism
Cost of one cruise missile could build secular schools in 80 Afghan villages
Counting the over-votes in Florida would’ve put Gore in White House
Voting machines are easy to hack, say experts

No, you seldom saw headlines like these leading the page when they might’ve made a difference, though columnists were writing about them in the back pages, carefully citing evidence. One by one, all the things we were pilloried for saying out loud 
are being confirmed.

In fact, because all except the headline at the top of this page have long since been proven to be true — the whole lousy shooting match — let’s talk about that one.

In testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee April 10, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates made the following jaw-dropping statement:

“We were attacked from Afghanistan in 2001 and we are at war in Afganistan today in no small measure because of mistakes this government made — mistakes I, among others, made in the end game of the anti-Soviet war there some 20 years ago. If we get the end game wrong in Iraq I predict the consequences will be far worse.”

That’s an astonishing confession. OK, he didn’t use the word “blowback,” but by definition, that’s what he’s talking about. A certain radio commentator in this town once all but called me a traitor for saying the same thing — and I didn’t use the B-word either. Rev. Jeremiah Wright has been denounced all over the country for suggesting Sept. 11 was caused in part by failed U.S. policy. So why are Big Media virtually silent about Gates’ admission?

After all, the rise of the Taliban and al-Qaeda are subjects Gates knows well. Though his precise role in their rise is unclear — Gates made a career of operating from the shadows — it’s easily provable he at least cheered on the arming and training of fundamentalist Muslims who later resurfaced as movers and shakers inside al-Qaeda, the Taliban and the reactionary government the Taliban overthrew. All you have to do is go to the library or click on Amazon.com and request Gates’ book, From the Shadows: The Ultimate Insider’s Story of Five Presidents and How They Won the Cold War.

In that book, Gates outlines how the United States began infiltrating Afghanistan with secret forces in a self-conscious effort to lure the Soviet Union into invading Afghanistan and “give the Soviets their Vietnam.” The process started under President Jimmy Carter but reached full flower under presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, when American operatives trained, armed, funded and otherwise empowered radical fundamentalist Muslims in Afghanistan and Pakistan in order to initiate a jihad against the Soviet Union and throw them out. The mission was successful, the Soviet Union left, but the Taliban and al-Qaeda soon filled the vacuum and set their sights on us.

As I documented in a column at the time of Gates’ confirmation, he also had a role in the Iran/Contra affair as well as in the U.S. policy of showing Saddam where to bomb Iran on aerial maps while, at the same time, selling Iran anti-aircraft weaponry to use against him, during the Iran/Iraq War. How cynical was that?

How many innocent people have died as a result of Gates’ and others’ manipulations? Millions in Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq? Hundreds of thousands in Central America? Thousands more in Kuwait?

So when Gates says the end game in Afghanistan contributed to Sept. 11, he’s in a position to know.

The difference between Gates and critical columnists — besides the obvious ones of power and influence — is that Gates sees Sept. 11 blowback as the result of a failure to “fine-tune the end game” in places we’ve broken open and wreaked havoc, like Afghanistan. Thus his straight-faced advocacy of staying the course in Iraq and making sure we “get the end game right,” no matter how long it takes.

Others see the whole philosophy of having an American shadow government funding secret armies and using American military might to destroy other countries and change regimes as one that’s always going to be a gamble at best and a predestined disaster at worst because violence begets violence, and the Law of Unintended Consequences is not revoked. Just look at the disastrous fruits of World War I, Vietnam or, yes, Afghanistan and Iraq. The Unintended Consequences of our wars there already have born bitter fruit: ethnic cleansing, torture, loss of rights and privacy in the United States and a trillion dollars squandered.

Gates apparently can’t bring himself to admit empowering the leaders of Islamic jihad was a horrible mistake that ruined 
millions of lives.

What puzzles me is why none within the reach of his voice dared call it “blowback.”