The Afghan-American Narrative in 2011 by Fitzgerald & Gould

Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould expose the official 1980s "narrative" on the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan as propaganda created by the MSM to build support for Charlie Wilson's War. See invisiblehistory.com for more information.

Gould and Fitzgerald have covered Afghanistan and the surrounding region for 30 years, as both documentary filmmakers ('Afghanistan: Between Three Worlds') and authors ('Invisible History: Afghanistan’s Untold Story'). This long involvement with the issues has made them sharply critical of America for its lack of understanding of the ethnic diversity and social relations of the people, its application of Cold War thinking and strategy to a new and different kind of conflict, its military’s current counterinsurgency strategy, and its failure to define Pakistan as the real challenge.

The authors portray policies of previous years (e.g., U.S. support of insurgents fighting the Soviet invasion) as now coming back to hurt us, part of a repetition of errors previously made by European powers in the region over the past 400 years. They have marshaled an impressive array of sources, both journalistic and academic, to demonstrate that their ideas have long been available, if only policymakers had chosen to heed them.