Doing the same thing again and again but expecting a different result each time defines insanity, some say. But we can still ask what makes the repetition necessary. One answer: Repetition emerges when we subconsciously aim to learn something that is beyond our conscious grasp. We repeat mistakes in the dim hope of overcoming them in the next iteration.

In the spring of 1979, I wrote a term paper on the ethnographic codes within Afghan cultures. Seven months later, the Soviet Union would invade, occupy and devastate Afghanistan. The collateral damage to Pakistan continues unabated. But these two states — separated by a British mapmakers’ pen — were not the only ones to suffer. As Afghan warriors — the Mujahideen — proudly claim, their eight-year resistance led to the disintegration of the USSR itself.

In a pre-9/11 interview, President Jimmy Carter’s national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, boasted about his role in what has come to be known as the “bear trap” (the Soviet “bear” versus the U.S. “eagle”). As Brzezinski tells it, in July 1979 he initiated a policy in which the CIA and the Mujahideen provoked the Soviets into invading Afghanistan. Here is Brzezinski assessing his decision:

“That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap. … I wrote to President Carter [that] we now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam War. [The] conflict brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.” The interviewer asks him if he regrets having “supported Islamic fundamentalism [and] having given arms and advice to future terrorists?” Brzezinski’s response is cold but candid: “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?” Today, eight years after 9/11 and the subsequent U.S. occupation of Afghanistan and 30 years after the Soviet invasion, we continue to calculate the costs and benefits unleashed by Brzezinski and Carter’s “bear trap.” The gift bequeathed to the Soviets — “their Vietnam” — has returned to the U.S. as Vietnam redux. The trap snared the bear and the eagle.

After 9/11, I was repeatedly invited to give talks on Afghanistan. I would read late into the night, devouring everything I could find. My hosts badly wanted to know something or anything about this remote and then largely unknown place. I accepted the invitations, naively thinking that I might bridge a divide. But they turned a deaf ear when I pointed to the U.S.’s overt and covert interventions in Afghanistan. And they became belligerent when I spoke about U.S. complicity in the events that led to the ill-fated alliance between the Taliban and al-Qaida. I left those presentations rather dispirited. I repeatedly wondered why I accepted the invitations when I knew my audience wouldn’t listen. Finally, I began to decline requests.

Today, I am being asked to speak again. I am saying “yes” again. But I wonder if anything has changed? The mood of the audience seems different; they now want to hear about how to get out of Afghanistan. Perhaps I am merely witnessing the natural cycle of invasion — an eight-year rotation in which the idealism of “changing them for their own good” turns into the weary realism of “they are not really capable of change, and we need to spend our money and blood within our own borders.”

Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan — to focus just on some of the major hits in the Asian continent — are within my lifetime. Within your lifetime, the U.S. will devastate other third world places. Shall we count the repetitions?

Naeem Inayatullah is an associate professor of politics. E-mail him at naeem@ithaca.edu.