15 JULY 2022
GUESTS: LIZ GOULD
PAUL FITZGERALD
Topic: Mystical Imperialism and
Valediction: Resurrection
Liz and Paul
About the guests–
Paul
Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould, a husband and wife team, began
working together in 1979 co-producing a documentary for Paul's
television show, Watchworks. Called, The Arms Race and the Economy, A Delicate
Balance, they found themselves in the midst of a swirling
controversy that was to boil over a few months later with the Soviet
invasion of Afghanistan. Their acquisition of the first visas to
enter Afghanistan granted to an American TV crew in 1981 brought
them into the middle of the most heated Cold War controversy since
Vietnam. But the pictures and the people inside Soviet occupied
Afghanistan told a very different story from the one being broadcast
to Americans.
Following their exclusive news story for the
CBS Evening News, they produced a documentary (Afghanistan Between Three Worlds) for PBS and
in 1983 they returned to Kabul for ABC Nightline with Harvard
Negotiation Project director, Roger Fisher. They were told that the
Soviets wanted to go home and negotiate their way out. Peace in
Afghanistan was more than a possibility, it was a desired option.
But the story that President Carter called, "the greatest threat to
peace since the second World War" had already been written by
America's policy makers and America's pundits were not about to
change the script.
As the first American journalists to get deeply
inside the story they not only got a view of an unseen Afghan life,
but a revelatory look at how the U.S. defined itself against the
rest of the world under the veil of superpower
confrontation Once the Soviets had crossed the border into
Afghanistan, the fate of both nations was sealed. But as Paul and
Liz pursued the reasons behind the wall of propaganda that shielded
the truth, they found themselves drawn into a story that was growing
into mythic dimensions. Big things were brewing in Afghanistan. Old
empires were being undone and new ones, hatched. America had
launched a Crusade and the ten year war against the Soviet Union was
only the first chapter.
It was at
the time of the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993 when Paul
and Liz were working on the film version of their experience under
contract to Oliver Stone, that they began to piece together the
mythic implications of the story. During the research for the
screenplay many of the documents preceding the Afghan crisis were
declassified. Over the next decade they trailed a labyrinth of clues
only to find a profound likeness in Washington's official policy
towards Afghanistan - in the ancient Zoroastrian war of the light
against the dark - whose origins began in the region now known as
Afghanistan. It is a likeness that has grown visible as America's
entanglement in Afghanistan threatens to backfire once again.
Afghanistan's civil war followed
America's Cold War while Washington walked away. A new strain of
religious holy warrior called the Taliban arose but at the time few
in America cared to look. As the horrors of the Taliban regime began
to grab headlines in 1998 Paul and Liz started collaborating with
Afghan human rights expert Sima Wali. Along with Wali, they
contributed to the Women for Afghan Women: Shattering Myths and Claiming
the Future
book project published by
Palgrave Macmillan
(2002). In 2002 they filmed Wali's
first return to Kabul since her exile in 1978. The film they
produced about Wali's journey home, The Woman in Exile Returns, gives audiences the
chance to discover the message of one of Afghanistan's most
articulate voices and her hopes for her people.
In
the years since, much has happened to bring Paul and Liz's story
into sharp focus. Their efforts at combining personal diplomacy with
activist journalism are a model for restoring a necessary dialogue
to American democracy. Their book, Invisible History: Afghanistan’s Untold
Story,
published by City Lights (2009), lays bare why it was inevitable
that the Soviet Union and the U.S. should end up in Afghanistan and
what that means to the future of the American empire. Their book,
Crossing Zero The AfPak War at the Turning
Point of American Empire, published by City Lights (2011),
lays out the paralyzing contradictions of America’s AfPak strategy.
It clarifies the complex web of interests and individuals
surrounding the war and focuses on the little understood importance
of the line of demarcation between Afghanistan and Pakistan called
the Durand line. Their novel The Voice , first published in 2000, is the
esoteric side of their Afghan experience.
Gould
and Fitzgerald’s articles and blogs have been published in numerous
online and print journals and newspapers such as The Boston
Globe, The International Herald Tribune, Huffington Post, The New
York Times, GlobalPost World News, Middle East
Institute’s Viewpoints, CounterPunch, Sputnik News and
OpedNews. They have been
interviewed by major media outlets such as MSNBC,
RealNews TV,
Democracy
Now
and numerous commercial and PBS radio stations from Boston to
LA They have also made presentations that have aired across the
country on C-Span Book TV and the Cambridge Forum (WGBH Forum
Network). Their presentation-Afghanistan
and Mystical Imperialism: An expose of the esoteric underpinnings of
American foreign policy- is viewable here
A
review of the presentation titled Afghanistan bedeviled
by 'Mystical Imperialism' is
available here. For
more information visit their websites at invisiblehistory and grailwerk.
Liz and Paul's novelized memoir,
The Valediction-Three Nights of Desmond, will
be published this September. A major focus is on the most Russo
phobic operative of all time, President Jimmy Carter’s National
Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski! It’s been amazing
looking back and remembering how we figured out that Brzezinski was
using the February 14, 1979 assassination of the
U.S Ambassador to Afghanistan to undo détente and draw the Soviet’s
into their own Vietnam quagmire. For Brzezinski Afghanistan
was an American crusade to win the war against the “Evil Empire.”
This telling reveals Brzezinski’s active role in planting the poison
seeds of Russo Phobia deep inside the White House that are still
flowering today. As America attempts to extricate itself from
its own Afghan quagmire, it is clear why Afghanistan is known as the
graveyard of Empires. Their memoir
delivers a revelatory
look at how that happened through encounters we had with many
fascinating people along the way.
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