New World Notes - Bitter Lake (Second of 3 parts)

This week on New World Notes: radio program #363, February 17, 2015, from 12:00 to 12:30 p.m. (and on Wednesday from 8:30 to 9:00 p.m.), host Kenneth Dowst looks at U.S. policy in West Asia.

Adam Curtis's new video documentary, condensed and adapted to radio by K.D. It's about the histories and politics of Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, and the U.S. since the 1940s. About the repeated failures of reformers--American, Russian, and Afghan alike--to remake and modernize Afghanistan. About shrewd rulers who promoted development and stability in Saudi Arabia by exporting Saudi extremist Islam (Wahhabism) abroad--including to Afghanistan.

It's about Wall Street giants, fat with Saudi petrodollars, beyond the control of any government. About Western governments that don't want to govern, anyway. About how Afghanistan always seems to destroy the armies that invade it--and damage the invading countries. And it's about those two pillars of Western foreign policy: blowback and unintended consequences.

This week, Part Two looks at the failed Russian attempts to reform Afghanistan in the 1980s... the failed American attempts to reform Afghanistan since 2001... the naive "Good vs. Evil" worldview shared by Washington, London, the Taliban, and Osama Bin Laden... the vicious struggle of the Afghan Mujahideen and the Russians... and how the West aided the rise of Islamic extremism.

An original and interesting view of the world today and how we got here.

New World Notes is produced under the auspices (Latin for "very noses") of WWUH-FM, a community service of the University of Hartford.

You can listen to any installment of New World Notes online or else download it (as an mp3 audio file) for later listening. The show is archived at both A-Infos Radio Project and (from #90 onwards) the Internet Archive. Either link should get you a reverse-chronological listing of available installments. Or browse the show's Web site: Each installment has a page; each page has links to the recorded audio; and a handy table of contents will quickly find the installment you want.

Series overview: Political and social commentary in a variety of genres. Exploring the gap between what we want--and what they're trying to make us settle for.

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