Peter Werbe interviewed the authors, Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould, on this Sunday's show.
They have a comprehensive and accurately detailed knowledge of the how and why the US with Pakistan and others turned an isolated and largely unknown and relatively hospitable and peaceful land into a killing field with millions of dead. If you want to understand the details of how and why the US (Brzezinski/Kissinger) began funding, organizing and encouraging religious fanaticism within Islamic nations, read their book.
You can buy the book from the publisher, City Lights, at:
http://www.citylights.com/book/?GCOI=87286100741260 (If you want to pay more, you can go to Amazon, and if you want to do more good, get it through any independent bookseller in your town.)
Or at least check out the associated website:
http://www.invisiblehistory.com/Werbe's archive will not be up until sometime Monday, but there are a couple of videos where the authors talk about this subject:
On CSpan2 BookTV:
http://www.booktv.org/watch.aspx?ProgramId=FV-10236A youtube video of their presentation at The World Affairs Council of Western Michigan:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksyYsTd1GP4Following are some comments by some reviewers, taken from the City Lights site cited (and sighted) above:
"In this penetrating inquiry, based on careful study of an intricate web of political, cultural, and historical factors that lie in the immediate background, and enriched by unique direct observation at crucial moments, Fitzgerald and Gould tell 'the real story of how they came to be there and what we can expect next.' With skill and care, they unravel the roots of Afghanistan's terrible travail, and lay bare its awesome significance for the world at large. Invocation of Armageddon is no mere literary device. The threat is all too real as the political leadership of a superpower with few external constraints charges forward on a course that is fraught with peril. Invisible History: Afghanistan's Untold Story is a critically important contribution to our understanding of some of the most dramatic and significant developments of current history."
–Noam Chomsky
"A revealing and commanding exposé of the imperial history, official skulduggery, and media manipulation that have enveloped Afghanistan; a story that Americans need to know."
—Michael Parenti, author of Contrary Notions and Against Empire
"From the dawn of the Cold War onward, generations of conservative strategists have eyed Afghanistan as a launching pad first for the subversion of the Soviet Union and then to checkmate Russia in central Asia. To that end, as Gould and Fitzgerald show, since the 1950s the CIA has played games with both reactionary, feudal landlords and wild-eyed Muslim fundamentalists. In their exhaustively documented book, Gould and Fitzgerald reveal how that sort of gamesmanship played havoc with a battered nation of twenty-five million souls—helping to spawn, in the process, the virulent strain of violent Islamism that reaches far beyond the remote and landlocked territory of that war-torn country."
—Robert Dreyfuss, author of Devil's Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam
"
phenomenal compendium of history, research and critical analysis. . . Invisible History is filled with ground-breaking analysis, not only for those interested in the more recent politics of Afghanistan, but also for those wanting the larger historical context."
—Sima Wali, President of Refugee Women in Development, from the introduction
"Invisible History: Afghanistan's Untold Story is a defining work of great wisdom and depth in which the authors get to the bottom of the cauldron that is Afghanistan. We cannot fully understand today's Afghanistan without reading this insightful book. Afghanistan was the first war in the US war on terror. Understanding Afghanistan is the key to the current war. You could not start at a better place than this book. To understand why eight years later it is still being fought, Invisible History: Afghanistan's Untold Story is a must read."
—Ahmed Rashid author of Taliban, Jihad, and Descent into Chaos
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