Afghanistan: The Vicious Circle of Violence

There I was, a sophomore in college. The Soviet Union had just invaded Afghanistan and President Jimmy Carter reinstituted the draft. I had the honor of joining the first wave of young men to sign up for the Selective Service. I showed up at the Post Office to sign up, and ran into a friend. As we filled out the paper, a leader from our church saw us and said, "You boys should be proud?"

"Proud?" I was about to hide in caves and shoot at Soviet helicopters. "PROUD?" Well, the U.S. did not send troops, but they did sent everything else.

As the war progressed, I became outraged at the brutal Soviet tactics and a major supporter of the Afghan Mujahadeen. I was especially sickened when I learned the Soviets were gassing the guerilla fighters. I was a newspaper reporter then, and wrote a stinging editorial in the newspaper. I was helping the resistance in my own little way (and the CIA was funneling them over $2 billion in arms and supplies).

The neat thing about being a newspaper reporter is that you can get into places where the public never could. One day I learned that representatives of the Mujahadeen were coming to town as part of their national tour to raise support for the resistance. I had this crazy idea that I would go to their event and give them words of encouragement. That's how I would do my part.

I used my newspaper credentials to get into the reception and I began chatting with them, telling them how much I admired what they were doing. They were only half listening to me and were more interested in finding important U.S. officials. Suddenly, Congressman Larry McDonald came into the room and they cut me off and gathered around him. They knew that Rep. McDonald was a tough, right-wing Commie-basher, and they wanted his support. I continued to hang out with them as they made their pitch to the Congressman. They probably wondered who the heck I was.

What an irony that just a few months later Rep. McDonald was killed by a Soviet missile in the infamous South Korean airline disaster.

But there were more ironies to come. After 10 years of brutal war and horrible devastation, the Red Army left Afghanistan in defeat. And all those CIA financed and trained freedom fighters were suddenly out of work. Today, they have found new work as terrorists. Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of 9/11, and Abu Musab al-Zarqaw, the brute who beheaded an American on videotape, were both Afghanistan jihad fighters.

The moral of this story is that violence begats violence. Once the downward spiral begins, there seems to be no end. In 1980, those atheist Soviets were rolling into Afghanistan, and Holy War was declared against them. It was the god-believing fighting the godless, with help from the United States. Now, 24 years later, the so-called god-believing are fighting those who supposedly believe in the wrong god. The religious element only serves to whip up the fervor, but the violence remains a constant.

That is why I, most regretfully, oppose the death penalty. The cycle of violence has to end somewhere. And when we scream out in horror against today's bloodthirsty terrorists, remember that it was Russian aggression that started it, and U.S. dollars that fueled it. Afghanistan became just another Cold War proxy battle, and today the world's only remaining superpower is reaping what it has sown.