Even after this turn, the western lionization of the the Soviet-Afghan War’s Mujahideen veterans, and of Bin Laden in particular, continued into the 90s. As late as December 1993, The Independent (a major British newspaper) even published a puff piece on Bin Laden, plastered with a huge photo of the smiling sheik, titled “Anti-Soviet warrior puts his army on the road to peace.” The article lauded Bin Laden as a humanitarian, gushing over how the “Saudi businessman who recruited mujahedin now uses them for large-scale building projects in Sudan.”

As it turned out, his largest-scale project was to build up the international militia that the CIA helped him recruit into Al Qaeda, which he would then lead in an anti-Western terror jihad throughout the 90s. With that wave of attacks in mind, Brzezinski’s 1998 interviewers asked if he had any regrets over blowback from Operation Cyclone. The statesman was totally dismissive.

Q: And neither do you regret having supported the Islamic fundamentalism, having given arms and advice to future terrorists? Brzezinski: What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war? Q: Some stirred-up Moslems? But it has been said and repeated: Islamic fundamentalism represents a world menace today. Brzezinski: Nonsense!

Later in 1998, mere months after Brzezinski’s interview, Eqbal Ahmad delivered the exact opposite assessment of Bin Laden and Al Qaeda, warning his American audience:

“They’re going to go for you. They’re going to do a lot more. These are the chickens of the Afghanistan war coming home to roost.”

Three years later, Brzezinski was proven spectacularly wrong, and Ahmad tragically right, when the terror jihad of Bin Laden’s Mujahideen-descended band of “stirred-up Moslems” culminated in the attacks of September 11, 2001.

During the planning of those attacks, Bin Laden and his inner circle were hosted by the Taliban, yet another band of Mujahideen-descended “stirred-up Moslems,” then ruling Afghanistan.

As Ahmad foretold, the chickens of the CIA’s Afghan Jihad (and of the Gulf War) had indeed come home to roost.

True to their names, Operations Cyclone and Desert Storm sowed the wind. Years later, it was 3,000 American civilians who reaped the whirlwind.

Incredibly, that whirlwind harvest was then reseeded, ensuring that still more civilians would later reap an even bigger whirlwind. Apparently cultivating chaos is the only trade that empires know. The regime and its kept news media sowed the whirlwind by exploiting America’s post-9/11 fear and anger to garner acquiescence for even larger and more frequent foreign misadventures: for a globe-spanning Long War that continues to this day.

First came the Afghanistan War against the Taliban and in pursuit of Al Qaeda. Almost inexplicably, Bin Laden escaped into hiding in US-allied Pakistan after being pinned down in the caves of Tora Bora. It is somewhat less inexplicable in light of the fact that the neocon-led Bush administration was trying to fear-monger the public into countenancing another war in Iraq, and that this involved pushing bogus intelligence connecting Saddam Hussein with Al Qaeda. At least until the regime got its post-9/11 bonus war, it was convenient to still have Dread Pirate Osama at large to keep America’s war fever up. Better dread than dead.

Similarly, in 2002, the Bush administration denied the military’s request for permission to kill another figurehead terrorist: Abu Musab al-Zaraqawi, who had in the 80s been yet another recruit for the CIA’s Afghan Jihad. That too was likely about the administration getting its war in Iraq. At the UN, Secretary of State Colin Powell falsely identified Zarqawi as a link between Saddam and Al Qaeda (he was allied with neither, and an enemy of the former), in order to paint the planned invasion of Iraq as a necessary front in the War on Terror.

As it turned out it was the Iraq War itself that unleashed Zarqawi in 2003, freeing him to emerge from autonomous Kurdistan, where he had been hiding from Saddam’s security forces under the protective aegis of an American no-fly zone. His formerly obscure terrorist gang rapidly ascended amid the chaos of the Iraq War, becoming Al Qaeda in Iraq or AQI (after Zarqawi swore allegiance to Bin Laden), and then the Islamic State in Iraq or ISI (after Zarqawi was finally killed).

After suffering severe setbacks in Iraq, in 2011 the Zarqawiites began infiltrating neighboring Syria to take part in the insurgency against Bashar al-Assad’s regime. Thereafter renaming itself ISIS (Islamic State in Iraq and Syria), the group, along with its offshoot the Al Nusra Front and other Mujahideen militias, came to dominate that insurgency.

US Senator John McCain with mujahideen from the Northern Storm Brigade.

The growth of ISIS and Nusra in Syria was fed by the United States (the State Department, the Pentagon, and the CIA) and its Western and regional allies (the UK, France, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States, etc.). By at least 2012, these powers had launched a veritable Operation Cyclone 2.0: recruiting, training, financing, and arming Mujahideen fighters for the purpose of overthrowing the secular ruler Assad (who, like the post-1973 secular Afghan regime, is an ally of Russia). Just as in Afghanistan decades ago, young men, radicalized by the call to jihad and militarized by the promise of weapons and money, have poured in from countries throughout the Muslim world, and from Europe too. This has not only led to the death of hundreds of thousands of Syrians and the displacement of millions, but has turbo-boosted ISIS and Nusra in myriad ways.

The Syrian Jihad, like the Afghan Jihad, was preceded by less direct and lower grade subversion using militant Islamists. In the Afghan prelude, America’s dirty work was done by Pakistan and Iran. In the Syrian prelude, it was done by the Saudis and lesser Gulf Sheikdoms, who with US approval, began sponsoring anti-Assad Salafist militias in neighboring Lebanon as early as 2006.

There were voices even among the Saudis who, like Eqbal Ahmad, darkly forebode blowback from dealing with such devils. One former Saudi diplomat warned:

“Salafis are sick and hateful, and I’m very much against the idea of flirting with them. They hate the Shiites, but they hate Americans more. If you try to outsmart them, they will outsmart us. It will be ugly.”

Yet they were drowned out by voices who, like Brzezinski, shrugged off such concerns over “stirred-up Salafis.” A US government consultant related to the great journalist Seymour Hersh that:

“This time… Bandar and other Saudis have assured the White House that ‘they will keep a very close eye on the religious fundamentalists. Their message to us was ‘We’ve created this movement, and we can control it.’ It’s not that we don’t want the Salafis to throw bombs; it’s who they throw them at…”

“Thanks for paying for our jihad in the 80s. And sorry about your towers. But this time around it’ll be totally different, trust us. Sincerely, the Wahhabis”

Yet, regarding Syria, the American deep state has been just as much sinister as it has been gullible and hubristic, if not more. As a recently disclosed Pentagon intelligence report reveals, US planners knew full well that they were once again “sowing the cyclone,” and that others would soon “reap the blowback.” The report from 2012 predicted that supporting the Syrian insurgency would create “the ideal atmosphere” for ISIS “to return to its old pockets” in Sunni Iraq and also create “the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist Principality” in the region.

And that is precisely what happened. In 2014, strengthened by the US-backed Syrian Jihad, ISIS burst back into “its old pockets” in Iraq, conquered the northwest of the country down to the gates of Baghdad, and declared a Caliphate (a Salafist Principality).

The wind sown by Operation Cyclone took two decades to fully germinate into the blowback that blew the Twin Towers down. Yet it only took two years for us to reap the whirlwind from the Syrian Jihad. Scott Horton proposes the term “backdraft” for blowback that is so prompt and predictable: like the firestorm that immediately erupts in your face upon opening the door of a burning hot room.

The US and its allies have opened the door to Hell in Syria. And the ensuing ISIS backdraft has lately spread far beyond Syria and Iraq, consuming 44 lives in the bombing of a Beirut marketplace, 224 lives with the bombing of a Russian airliner, and 130 lives with the recent attacks in Paris.

It took longer than it did in 1979, but America’s current proxy jihad has drawn in Russia once again. The chief difference is that this time, the US and its allies are not limiting themselves to covert ops, but are involving their air forces as well. This is ostensibly to “destroy” ISIS. However, the US-led coalition also wants the Assad regime gone, while the Russian-led coalition is trying to save it and to fight the US-supported non-ISIS Mujahideen as well (including Syrian Al Qaeda). So the countless warplanes buzzing over and bombing Syria are flying at cross purposes. This has turned the Levant into a nuclear powder keg.

And now, unthinkably, a US ally may have just lit a match. Just this morning Turkey shot down a Russian warplane. Two pilots were reportedly executed by anti-Assad insurgents in mid-air. A video has emerged on the internet of insurgents standing over one of the dead Russians saying “Allahu Akbar” and apparently calling themselves “Mujahideen.”

Remember, Turkey is a NATO member, who can draw the entire West into a thermonuclear war if it picks a big enough fight. The backdraft we reap from this latest American jihad may consume us all.

Even if we survive this near-term global existential crisis, our warlords have more in store for us. The Paris attacks especially have yielded yet another crop of fear and loathing in the West, which the tillers of terror are keen to plow right back into still more proxy warfare and mayhem.

But they cannot do so if we, their tax cattle, refuse to pull the plow or let them drive us like beasts of burden that are so easily spooked and prodded. We the people must convey that if they do not stop cultivating the storms of chaos, then we will cast off their yoke once and for all.