In Central American conflicts that I covered for the Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s, some of the "death squads" associated with pro-U.S. regimes were drawn from neo-fascist movements allied with the far-right World Anti-Communist League. In Afghanistan, the CIA relied on Islamist extremists, including Saudi jihadist Osama bin Laden, to kill Russians and their Afghan government allies.
Today, in Syria, many of the most aggressive fighters against Bashar al-Assad's government are Arab jihadists recruited from across the region and armed by Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf oil sheikdoms. So, it fits with a pattern for the U.S. government to hold its nose and rely on neo-Nazis from western Ukraine to take the fight to rebellious ethnic Russians in the east and south.
The key to all these unsavory alliances is for the American people not to know about the real nature of these U.S. clients. In the 1980s, the Reagan administration advanced the concept of "public diplomacy" to intimidate journalists and human rights activists who dared report on the brutality of U.S.-backed forces in El Salvador and Guatemala and the CIA-trained Contra rebels in Nicaragua.
Thus, most Americans weren't sure what to make of recurring reports about right-wing "death squads" killing priests and nuns and committing other massacres across Central America. Regarding Afghanistan, it took the American people until Sept. 11, 2001, to fully comprehend whom the Reagan administration had been working with in the 1980s.
Similarly, the Obama administration has tried to maintain the fiction that the Syrian opposition is dominated by well-meaning "moderates." However, as the brutal civil war has ground on, it gradually has become apparent that the most effective anti-Assad fighters are the Sunni extremists allied with al-Qaeda and determined to kill Shiites, Alawites and Christians.
So, it should come as no surprise that the Kiev regime would turn to its Maidan "self-defense" forces -- formed around neo-Nazi militias -- to go into southern and eastern Ukraine with the purpose of burning to death ethnic Russian "insects" occupying buildings. The key is not to let the American people in on the secret.
[For more, see Consortiumnews.com's "Ukraine, Through the U.S. 'Looking Glass.'"](Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
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