I'd just like ask a question, and I know that this will be controversial but I really am curious what your views on this will be: Given the current state in Afghanistan, now that we can all see what these people are like, would you be willing to rethink what Reagan did in helping them fight the Soviets? Because here's the thing, I have always thought that was a mistake. I think that Reagan was wrong. I think that the world would be better off if we had left them to the soviets. This - in addition to the fact that arming them covertly the way Reagan did was potentially illegal.
Welcome to FR.
No.
We weren't wrong to help the Soviets defeat Hitler, and we weren't wrong to help the Afghans defeat the Soviets. We weren't wrong to help Saddam defeat the Ayatollah, and we weren't wrong to clean Saddam's clock.
You don't have the option of fighting every enemy at once, you deal with the wolf that is closest to your door, and you help your enemies defeat themselves.
Its not a steady state world. One of the great unsung fights of the Cold War was the fight over the muslim world, between ourselves and the Soviets. Had we conceded this fight, we would have faced both muslim fascism and the Soviet Bloc, together at the same time. Egypt, Syria, Libya, Iraq, were all soviet clients, as were Arafat, Abu Nidal, and most of the muslim terrorists of the day. The fact that we managed to keep Iran under the Shah, the Saudis, the Pakistanis, and Morocco with us during that time was a real coup.
The Soviets had their muslim strategy, and we had ours.
We later managed to pull Egypt away from the soviets, and we were working on Iraq at the time the Soviet Union collapsed.
Its easy, in retrospect, to question it in the light of what has happened in the middle east. But the alternative was a Soviet Union still standing, with the largest muslim states effectively part of the Soviet Bloc.
A mistake many people make is to view the Cold War as 50 years of stability. This is a complete misreading of history. Millions of people died during the Cold War, wars raged on every continent. This is above and beyond the further millions that died directly from Soviet repression. The fact that Russian and Americans weren't trading potshots directly doesn't in any way reduce the death toll. The Cold War was fought using proxies, puppets, false flags similar to Bin Ladin, and the result was a death toll that is staggering. Since they are mostly third world citizens, its easy for journalists and politicians to pretend they didn't happen.
The Cold War was one of the bloodiest wars in history. We won. Thank God.
I remember seeing a show about 5 years back where Zbig was laughing with a condescending attitude about how they suckered the Russians into getting stuck into the quagmire that Afghanistan became.
No russians in Afghanistan, no Mujihadeen, no Osama, no Al Queda.
Friggin idiots!