The terrible cost of Usama bin Laden
By Earl Ofari Hutchinson

The bin Laden saga stands as another in a lengthening string of U.S. Foreign policy backfires.

There are two big unanswered questions about the monstrous attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The first is that if President Bush firmly fingers Saudi-exile terrorist Usama bin Laden as the mastermind behind the cataclysmic slaughter, what will the U.S. do? In polls, nine out of ten Americans thirst for revenge. Bush promises swift retaliation.

An army of 4,000 special federal agents, 3,000 support personnel, and 400 FBI lab specialists are at work on the investigation, and NATO allies have offered the U.S. full backing for any retaliation. This guarantees that the actual plotters will be slammed in a court docket, and that cruise missiles, or even bombs or U.S. troops could hit Afghanistan.

But if it's bin Laden, the equally troubling question is who created him? The answer requires painful glance back at the U.S. foreign policy blunder two decades ago on Afghanistan. Alarmed at the Soviet Union's invasion of the country in 1979 to prop up an unpopular, leftist government under siege by loose bands of Islamic guerrillas, then-President Jimmy Carter issued a secret policy directive. It authorized CIA convert support to the guerrilla fighters.

The directive, however, did not entail the supply of money and arms to the guerrillas. But the next year, Carter was out of the White House, and Reagan was in.

Reagan saw the Afghan battle……………..

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