November 28, 2016

"WikiLeaks releases more than half a million US diplomatic cables from the momentous year of 1979."

Announces Julian Assange:
If any year could be said to be the "year zero" of our modern era, 1979 is it.
In the Middle East, the Iranian revolution, the Saudi Islamic uprising and the Egypt-Israel Camp David Accords led not only to the present regional power dynamic but decisively changed the relationship between oil, militant Islam and the world.

The uprising at Mecca permanently shifted Saudi Arabia towards Wahhabism, leading to the transnational spread of Islamic fundamentalism and the US-Saudi destabilisation of Afghanistan.

Osama bin Laden would leave his native Saudi Arabia for Pakistan to support the Afghan Mujahideen.

The invasion of Afghanistan by the USSR would see Saudi Arabia and the CIA push billions of dollars to Mujahideen fighters as part of Operation Cyclone, fomenting the rise of al-Qaeda and the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union.

The 1979 current of Islamification spread to Pakistan where the US embassy was burned to the ground and Pakistan Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was executed.

The Iranian hostage crisis would go on to fatally undermine Jimmy Carter's presidency and see the election of Ronald Reagan.

Saddam Hussein? Took power in 1979....

50 comments:

Balfegor said...

Park Chung-hee was also assassinated in 1979. I don't know what Assange mentioned that, since the link is to blogger.com, but that seems pretty important to me too, for perhaps obvious reasons. Also his daughter is currently screwing things up in Korea as President today.

Ann Althouse said...

Bad link fixed now. Sorry.

mccullough said...

Shakedown 1979

David Begley said...

And just check out how the Religion of Peace™ has been at the center of world conflict. What is wrong with them?

Lewis Wetzel said...

Blogger David Begley said...
And just check out how the Religion of Peace™ has been at the center of world conflict. What is wrong with them?

11/28/16, 12:56 PM

The problem with "them" is that you are a racist, David Begley!
Go hit yourself with a rolled up newspaper!

Sebastian said...

In the future, there will be no secrets.

traditionalguy said...
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traditionalguy said...

The year 1945 is still the most momentous year of them all. Let me count the ways: As Dickens said, "I am born." And in apparently reaction to my coming, the Germans surrendered one month before and The Japs surrendered two months after. And then millions of men in arms began to "arrive alive in 45," whereupon they promptly inseminated the Boomers.

OK, maybe HST had something to do with the timing of those events. The totally unknown Missouri hick and Scots Irishman named Harry S. Truman appeared from nowhere. And he was always doing stuff that was momentous each year, like stopping Stalin with the Marshall Plan, ordering and sticking with an impossible Berlin Airlift, and creating a Jewish State named Israel. All of which he had to sneak and push past the elite schooled State Department men, including the near human god, George Marshall, who was Truman's Secretary of State, but never thought Truman was elite enough for the job.

I hope The Terrible Trump ,like HST, helps us now to, "Arrive alive under # 45."

Left Bank of the Charles said...

1975 was year zero, per Pol Pot.

Wilbur said...

I was born after Truman was in office, but still remember my father referring to him as "Horse Shit" Truman.
It was the only time I ever heard my father use a profanity.

damikesc said...

Honestly, this might be the most historically interesting dump they've ever done.

Etienne said...
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JAORE said...

Truman also ordered the integration of the armed forces. Hardly a trivial matter in those days.

Balfegor said...

Re: coupe:

Don't they have anything on the Frogs and Krauts?

Probably, but not as extensive as the US archive. Wikileaks appears to have obtained documents ultimately sourced from the secure SIPRNet system used by the United States. (Incidentally, as I understand it, this is the, ah, "secure" system that Clinton II should have been using, instead of her bathroom server) That gives them a lot more visibility into US communications than they currently have for the Continental powers. I haven't followed Wikileaks closely, but I haven't heard news suggesting that any systems used by foreign powers have been as compromised as the US government's secure communications were sometime in 2010.

Ambrose said...

Strange Rebels by Christian Caryl is a good book about the events of 1979. Buy it through Ann's portal.

Brando said...

That was also the year of the malaise! I can't watch sitcoms from that era without saying "look at all the malaise!" which becomes more pronounced when you think of it. That sort of "disco is no longer a novelty but a way of life" and "energy shortages? We got your energy shortages right here!"

I'm wondering what revelations will come up in the doc dump--we already knew our foreign policy had screwed the pooch in that decade, so at this point I'd be more surprised if they uncovered some actual competent decisionmaking.

buwaya said...

Ditto, damikesc, this may be material for rewriting libraries of recent history. There seems to be enough there to keep many university departments busy.

buwaya said...

This does seem like some intelligence agency dumping it's archives.
Why now ?
I'm getting too old for all this paranoia. It's a young man's game.

Bad Lieutenant said...

I guess this is their Venona. Thanks Snowden! Or whoever. We seem not short of traitors. Or have they in fact broken our codes? Not to be dramatic but it seems like a problem.

readering said...

FRUS is an edited series put out by the USDOS. When I was in college in the mid seventies they were running about 30 years before present (with the Pentagon Papers as a key exception thanks to Ellsberg). As volume grows they run further behind, but I believe they are somewhere in the Carter Administration. Of course they may be censored in a way wikileaks is not. But this is not too big of a deal unless Assange is planning lots of subsequent years.

bagoh20 said...

Year Zero will be 2017 - Ides of March to be more precise. You wait and see. I know stuff that others do not.

Come, meet me in my underground city that we will build together. I promise there will be cake.

Bob Ellison said...

It's time to watch Logan's Run again.

Sammy Finkelman said...

How did they get them? Were they even online? These couldn't have been copied by (Bradley -> Chelsea) Manning.

Sammy Finkelman said...

Are these documents that were being readied for release? (except that soem would be kept classified?)

madAsHell said...

How did they get them?

Don't you know!?! 1979 is now on the internet. /sarc

I'm really surprised the cables, and intelligence are on-line.
Who in their right mind would spend the resources to scan old 1979 documents?......oh, wait!

rcocean said...

"I was born after Truman was in office, but still remember my father referring to him as "Horse Shit" Truman."

Everyone in my family felt the same - Republican or Democrat. "To Err is Truman". Believe it or not Truman wanted Ike to run as Democrat President in '48 with himself as VP.

rcocean said...

They were all amazed in the 1970s when the whole "Give 'em Hell, Harry" thing was popular. Every time my Mother heard someone talking on TV about how great Truman was, she'd say "Everyone hated him when he was President".

Paul said...

79? Wasn't that the last year of Jimmy Fucking Carter?

readering said...

Truman's approval rating low of 22% in February 1952, when he determined not to run again, is the lowest recorded by Gallup (since Nixon called it quits when he got to 24%). It was years later that folks realized how skillfully Truman managed the start of the Cold War and he became rehabilitated. Plus his modesty. He was very poor on leaving office, and needed the first presidential pension ever voted by Congress. (The only other then ex-president, millionaire businessman Hoover, who had been a dollar-a-year man in office, also accepted the pension so as not to embarrass Truman.)

sinz52 said...

Paul,

Carter didn't end his term till Reagan got inaugurated in January 1981.

1979 is also significant because that was the year that Margaret Thatcher first became British PM, foreshadowing Reagan's election victory a year later.

There are plenty of things from 1979 that the Government still kept secret. Heck, the Government didn't reveal what was really happening at Area 51 in New Mexico till the 1980s (I think), which is how the whole UFO conspiracy theory got started. (The Air Force really was keeping something top secret there, but it wasn't space aliens.)

traditionalguy said...

Truman had a problem with Nuclear Bombs. First he used them without blinking to save millions of lives, and we were riding high. Then he had the good sense not to use them after Stalin got his bombs and the Containment doctrine became the best he could do. He fired MacArthur over that new reality. Suddenly nuclear arms became unusable.

The public blamed Truman and elected Eisenhower because they wanted the pre Hiroshima world back without silly hesitation to use nuclear armaments on China and Russia. And Joe McCarthy went after Truman for being the President who would not incinerate a hundred million communists.

But then Eisenhower did the same thing, and for the same reason ended Korea without a victory, just like Nixon for the same reason ended Viet Nam without a victory.

JackWayne said...

9/15/71 was the beginning of the "modern era" with the breaking of Bretton Woods.

JamesB.BKK said...

Jaore: Re-integration? Wilson's folks segregated what was once integrated in the federal government including several mil agencies.

Michael K said...

"The problem with "them" is that you are a racist, David Begley!
Go hit yourself with a rolled up newspaper!"

Better a newspaper than a machete wielded by an innocent Religion of Peace member on his way to Friday (or Monday) prayers.

Paul said...
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Paul said...
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Paul said...

Like I said sinz52,

Last year of Jimmy Fucking Carter (ok, maybe a bit longer than just one year.)

Those dip cables would be about his fear of big rabbits and his confidential talks with Amy over nuclear proliferation. That and the lust in his heart.

Wonder what Amy said back to him and who he lusted for.

Michael K said...

I have to defend Carter slightly. He seemed capable of learning and appointed Volcker and began to rearm after the Soviets invaded Afghanistan.

Obama has learned nothing and forgotten none of his Frank Marshall Davis lessons from long ago.

gadfly said...

traditionalguy said...
The year 1945 is still the most momentous year of them all. Let me count the ways: As Dickens said, "I am born."

Which begets the question of: Why in the Dickens did Charles say "I am born" in 1945 when he was born in 1917?

Just pulling your chain, tradguy.

buwaya said...

Carter admin and the Democratic congress also started significant rounds of deregulation, of the business, operational sort, that paid off richly in a few years, for which Reagan got the credit.

ddh said...

"The problem with 'them' is that you are a racist, David Begley!"

The problem with this comment is that its author thinks Islam is a race.

MAJMike said...

Yup. I was a new Infantry 2LT watching the seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and anticipating a war that never came

Tyrone Slothrop said...

It was a turning point in my life. I went back to Uni to get my BSME at the ripe old age of 25. Gonzaga had a lot of foreign students. The Iranian ones got very sullen about the middle of the school year.

sinz52 said...

Paul, 1979 was Jimmy Carter's third year in office.
1980 was Carter's last full year in office.

Quaestor said...

The problem with this comment is that its author thinks Islam is a race.

The problem is undetected sarcasm.

sinz52 said...

buwaya puti:

At the time, the conservative mag, National Review, did give Carter credit for decontrolling the airline and trucking industries.

However, Carter was absolutely opposed to decontrolling oil prices. Price controls on oil were why there were gas lines and shortages of home heating oil in the 1970s.

Reagan immediately decontrolled oil prices. The supply increased, prices fell, and the shortages vanished.

Daniel Jackson said...

And, let's not forget Three Mile Island.

damikesc said...

Come, meet me in my underground city that we will build together. I promise there will be cake.

Don't we all know that the cake is a lie?

TheThinMan said...

"The problem with "them" is that you are a racist, David Begley!
Go hit yourself with a rolled up newspaper!"

Islam is a religion practiced by all races, but whites especially, since Arabs, Persians, etc. are white. So, if anything, David Begley is the good kind of racist who hates white people and should be in good standing with you. That must be why you asked him to join you in self-flagellation!

Paul said...

"sinz52 said...

Paul, 1979 was Jimmy Carter's third year in office.
1980 was Carter's last full year in office."

So what? It was still Jimmy Fucking Carter and the diplomatic messages were in his time period.