Letters

Afghan Aftermath

To the Editor:

In his review (“The CIA’s Afghan Boomerang”, spring 2000), Amin Saikal pointed to some errors in my book, Unholy Wars: Afghanistan, America and International Terrorism, which I have endeavoured to eliminate in the new, second and updated edition, to be published by Pluto Press in October 2000. However, a closer reading of the first edition might change his opinion about some matters.

To claim that the CIA and the ISI regarded Hekmatyar’s group as ruthless and militarily effective (p. 58), and that the CIA had reservations (p. 61) about its real effectiveness, based on later performance against the Soviets, its strife with rivals and Hekmatyar’s visceral anti-Americanism, is not mutually contradictory. Neither was it my intention to equate Turkey’s Rafah party in terms of extremism with Pakistan’s Jamaat Islami. I merely wished to point to Rafah’s existence. Rafah’s record is different from that of Jamaat Islami, just as Turkey’s opposition Islamism is totally different from the almost official variety in Pakistan.

I do not claim that Hamas had “roots” in the Afghan jihad. However there is a congruence between them, centred on the personality of Abdallah Azzam, who served and recruited for both the Afghan jihad and for Hamas. Azzam was a charismatic Palestinian. The CIA, during the period when Israel was at least tolerating if not supporting the nascent Hamas organisation in Gaza as a possible counterweight to or opponent of the more secular mainstream PLO, permitted Azzam to recruit for the Afghan jihad in the United States.

My accounts of Osama bin Laden’s activities in the Arab world are based on many published sources, well documented in my endnotes. Other sources, not always itemised in my notes, are briefings by Egyptian officials, senior Egyptian and Pakistani diplomats who required me to respect their anonymity, and senior Arab journalists with direct access to “Afghani” militants. Most valuable of all was the personal help and encouragement of my late friend King Hussein of Jordan, resulting in useful briefings by his intelligence officers.

Many academic books and a host of media reports since 1979 have covered the motivations, heroism and valour of ordinary Afghans in their resistance to the Soviet occupation. I heartily endorse the fulsome praise they have received. I saw no reason to repeat it once again in a work which deals primarily not with the war of 1979–89 itself, but with its results. Nor did I wish to become enmeshed in the controversies about “moderate” opponents of the Taliban and which of the warring Afghan factions the West ought to back.

Above all, the book, especially the new edition, deals with the consequences of the Afghan war, which we are all still experiencing, from India and Pakistan to the Philippines, and from North Africa to Western Europe and North America.

John K. Cooley
Athens

Power and Morality

To the Editor:

Usually it is not in good taste for an author to comment on a review of his book, but I am moved to do so because Jim Kapsis’s thoughtful essay on America’s Imperial Burden: Is the Past Prologue? (“The Fallacy of ‘Humane Realism’ ”, spring 2000) both reveals and obscures significant differences in two opposed approaches to world politics. Writing from a liberal–left perspective, Mr Kapsis naturally faults my basic stance as a “humane realist”, as well as my strong anti-communist stand and my views on specific issues, such as the impact of Senator McCarthy’s demagoguery. He seems unaware that it was Hollywood producers, not McCarthy, who blacklisted artists.

Both Kapsis and I see America as the pre-eminent power, with unique responsibilities, but contrary to his assertions I acknowledge America’s fallibility and mistakes and warn repeatedly against hubris in the exercise of our power.

But Mr Kapsis’s basic flaw is his failure to understand the inextricable link between political power and morality. He asserts that “one cannot pursue a moral and political agenda simultaneously” (p. 139). This flat statement flies in the face of reality. In the complex human drama motives, means and consequences are always mixed, sometimes tragically so. America’s motives were mixed in the Persian Gulf War. The broad coalition President Bush put together shared a common interest in preventing Saddam from taking over Saudi Arabia, which would have threatened the world’s access to Middle East oil at a reasonable price—certainly a morally worthy objective. If America and its allies countenanced the blatant military conquest of Kuwait, peace in the region would suffer. Keeping that peace was a moral objective.

The classic just war theory deftly combines power, interest and morality. A war to be just must be fought for a just cause, use just and proportional means and, if successful, advance the cause of justice. So judged the Gulf War was just. This does not mean that the participants had no mixed motives, or that some motives were not more self-serving than others. But the pursuit of the national interest defined broadly enough to respect the legitimate interests of other states is legitimate and moral. America has an awesome responsibility commensurate with its great power. Unlike Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Soviet Union or Hirohito’s Japan, America is not a predatory power seeking to conquer the world or to make it over in its own image. No nation is compelled to eat McDonalds hamburgers or to buy Macintosh computers.

On page one of my book, I quoted historian Walter McDougall. America, he wrote, is “too mighty to ignore, too magnanimous to mock, too arrogant to admire, too erratic to trust, and too befuddled to explain”. Yet most people abroad still see America as the major force for peace and freedom, or even, in Abraham Lincoln’s words, as “the last best hope of earth”. This is a burden we must bear with imagination and humility.

Ernest W. Lefever
Washington, D.C.