Robert Conquest, pre-eminent historian of the genocides, purges and terrors of the Soviet Union, has long contemplated the blinders the West wears when looking at — or, rather not looking at — the millions of dead bodies the gigantically Evil Empire was responsible for. “Why people didn’t, and still don’t, understand the Communist regimes has to do with their concentration on reputable, or reputable-sounding, phenomena,” Conquest wrote in a 2005 essay. “This is what amounts to an attempt to tame the data or, perhaps more correctly, a mental or psychological bent toward blocking the real essentials, the real meaning.”
Only in rare instances is this mental block exposed. One example came when Jimmy Carter announced that the December 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan “has made a more dramatic change in my own opinion of what the Soviets’ ultimate goals are than anything they have done in the previous time I’ve been in office.” This was the president of the United States talking, not Little Bo Peep. Such laughable naivete, was clear evidence of data-taming and reality-blocking. Carter was ridiculed even at the time, given that the USSR’s invasion of Afghanistan simply repeated familiar historical patterns of Soviet behavior.
Such gullibility has outlived the Soviet Union. Indeed, a similar story has been unfolding as Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, publicly declared his disappointment in Pakistan’s actions in support of jihad terrorism in Afghanistan as “part of their national strategy.” Just as Carter took three years to admit Soviet aggression, so Mullen has taken three years to face any facts about Pakistan. And that’s after no fewer than 27 visits to Islamabad.
“Each time I go I learn more,” a chastened Mullen told the Wall Street Journal. “But one of the things I learn is that I have a lot more to learn.”
Had Mullen simply stayed home, he could have perused multiple sources documenting official Pakistani policies of complicity with terror networks in Afghanistan and India. As Joint Chiefs chairman, Mullen didn’t have to wait for Wikileaks to release the October 2009 cable from the U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, Anne Patterson, in which she stated that “no amount of money” could convince the Pakistani government to stop supporting Taliban and other jihad groups.
Then again, as Conquest might say, maybe Mullen just preferred “taming the data.” Mullen told a Pakistani military audience in December 2009 he wasn’t interested in dwelling on the past: “I am here to write a history for the future. It is really my intent … to build a future that re-establishes that trust.” That’s one way to concentrate on “reputable-sounding phenomena” and deny pesky facts.
Such concentration can only be achieved through vigorous denial of the record. Among the things to be ignored: a June 2010 study from the London School of Economics, which found that support for the Taliban in Afghanistan was “official ISI policy.”
“I’ve gone into this with my eyes wide open,” Mullen said of Pakistan after Osama bin Laden was killed and Pakistan was reported to be sharing U.S. stealth helicopter technology with the Chinese. “Trust isn’t going to be re-established overnight.”
But when will it be restored? In an overdue revelation reminiscent of Carter’s Afghan moment, Mullen has now “concluded that the partnership approach he long had championed had fallen short and would be difficult to revive.”
“I have been Pakistan’s best friend,” Mullen lamented. “What does it say when I am at that point? What does it say about where we are?”
It says that Uncle Sucker’s policy of trusting Pakistan without verifying anything has been downright Carter-esque.
Examiner Columnist Diana West is syndicated nationally by United Media and is the author of “The Death of the Grown-Up: How America’s Arrested Development Is Bringing Down Western Civilization.”
