Doublethink Squared

David Finkel

IN THE BAD 1980s under Ronald Reagan, the United States encouraged the dictator Saddam Hussein to invade Muslim fundamentalist Iran, while partnering with Saudi Arabia in arming Afghan Muslim fundamentalists and Osama bin Laden to fight the godless Soviet Union, and on the side secretly selling weapons to the Iranian regime and using the proceeds to arm counterrevolutionary armies to overthrow the government of Nicaragua.

This was obviously a murderous and destructive policy that led to multiple disasters. Fortunately, under Barack Obama things are much better now.

Today, the United States has allied with Iran to defeat the “Islamic State” (the mutant offspring of Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda and Saddam’s military) in Iraq, and negotiated a “framework agreement” on Iran’s nuclear development program against the fierce opposition of Saudi Arabia and the government of Israel.

In Yemen, where Saudi Arabia is bombing cities controlled by Houthi forces, the United States supports the Saudi “coalition” in its retaliatory anti-Iran proxy war. The Houthis by the way are currently allied with the former Yemeni president Saleh, who attempted to exterminate them while he was in power.

In Syria, while the United States is bombing the “Islamic State” and al-Qaeda, Saudi Arabia bankrolls the al-Qaeda franchise Jabhat al-Nusra, and Iran helps keep the Assad regime standing. Assad was a U.S. friend — “rendition” prisoners were sent by the CIA to be tortured in Syrian prisons — until the United States began trying to overthrow his regime, which was before the Islamic State took over a third of the country.

All this should be perfectly plain. If not, George Orwell explained it for you in 1984, where the Ministry of Truth of Oceania made clear that Oceania was, and always had been, allied with Eurasia in a war against Eastasia, and also firmly allied with Eastasia in the war against Eurasia.

May/June 2015, ATC 176