{"id":283486,"date":"2021-08-22T08:44:55","date_gmt":"2021-08-22T08:44:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/?p=212064"},"modified":"2021-08-22T08:44:55","modified_gmt":"2021-08-22T08:44:55","slug":"generation-of-vipers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2021\/08\/22\/generation-of-vipers\/","title":{"rendered":"Generation of Vipers"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_212417\" style=\"width: 690px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-212417\" class=\"wp-image-212417 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/daniel-stuben-VMXXvU1oKw8-unsplash-680x453.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"680\" height=\"453\" \/><\/p>\n<p id=\"caption-attachment-212417\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Image by <a href=\"https:\/\/unsplash.com\/@dxstub\">Daniel Stuben<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>People need to understand something about Afghanistan, and the debacle we\u2019re witnessing there. America\u2019s involvement in Afghanistan didn\u2019t begin in 2001, after the 9\/11 attacks. It began in the last years of the Carter Administration, when he and his advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski set out to \u201cgive the Soviets their own Vietnam.\u201d They did this by funding and arming an international cohort of violent fundamentalist extremists and training them in terror tactics. (Osama bin Laden was one of those who joined this jihad army supported by the US, Saudia Arabia and Pakistan.)<\/p>\n<p>At that time, there was a modern, secular regime in Afghanistan. It wasn\u2019t a paradise. It was ridden by internal factionalism, sometimes violent. It was supported by the Soviet Union. It was beset by fundamentalist extremists. It had repressive features. But it was a secular regime. Women were emancipated; many held high positions. Children, including girls, were educated. Science was honored and promoted. Religion was tolerated, albeit uneasily.<\/p>\n<div class=\"woocommerce\">\n<div class=\"woocommerce-info wc-memberships-restriction-message wc-memberships-message wc-memberships-content-restricted-message\">\n\t\t\t\tTo read this article, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/my-account\/?wcm_redirect_to=post&#038;wcm_redirect_id=212064\">log in<\/a> or <a href=\"https:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/subscribe\/\">or Subscribe.<\/a><br \/>\nIn order to read CP+ articles, your web browser must be set to accept cookies.\t\t    <\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p>\t\t <a href=\"https:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/2021\/08\/22\/generation-of-vipers\/\">More<\/a><\/p>\n<p>The post <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/2021\/08\/22\/generation-of-vipers\/\">Generation of Vipers<\/a> appeared first on <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/\">CounterPunch.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"syndicated-attribution\">This post was originally published on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/2021\/08\/22\/generation-of-vipers\/\">CounterPunch.org<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Image by Daniel Stuben.<\/p>\n<p>People need to understand something about Afghanistan, and the debacle we\u2019re witnessing there. America\u2019s involvement in Afghanistan didn\u2019t begin in 2001, after the 9\/11 attacks. It began in the last years of the Carter Adminis&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1184,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[228,3084],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283486"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1184"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=283486"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283486\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":283550,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283486\/revisions\/283550"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=283486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=283486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=283486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}