Rand Paul:
“In the 1980s, the war caucus in Congress armed bin Laden and the mujaheddin in their fight with the Soviet Union. In fact, it was the official position of the State Department to support radical jihad against the Soviets. We all know how well that worked out.”
1. Calling Reagan and Congress a “war Caucus” is ignorant of the realities of the cold war and insinuated that the US was “war crazy”, as have other comments from Paul.
2. It is urban myth that we armed OBL...totally false and shows ignorance on the topic.
3. Arming the Afghan resistance had nothing to do with jihad.
Paul’s general comment’s that the US and Republicans needs to be less aggressive, implies US fault...and this in conjunction with his comments regarding backing off of social issues, lead me to believe he has a good bit of his father in him.
I understand that we did not arm OBL directly during the Soviet’s stay in Afghanistan. But to think that we did not enable jihad is absurd. Our people at the time may not have THOUGHT they were helping support jihad, but the reality is they were. The vast majority of Americans including those at State, DoD, and CIA didn’t even understand the term back then, and we are still not using the term now in State or DoD, as I understand it.
Not recognizing that we helped create the conditions for 9/11 by enabling the mujaheddin is no better than calling Hasan and Fort Hood “workplace violence”. It is a studied ignorance of the nature of what we are dealing with.
Note that this is not saying we were 100% at fault for 9/11 by supporting the mujahideen, and by being present in the Middle East, which is what the Left often does. Ultimately Islamics are responsible for their behavior, and their behavior largely hasn’t changed in 1500 years. And Paul seems to more than hint at “getting” this in his speech.
But glossing over the fact that we created some of the conditions that led to OBL being shacked up in Afghanistan does us no good. We must understand the past to better act now for improved future outcomes.