I'm not saying that his theory is completely invalid. I mean, if Congress hadn't cut off funding for the South Vietnamese government during the Ford administration, I'm sure that they could have held off the communists for an indefinite amount of time.
In fact, it might have evolved into a North/South Korea situation, where the two sides eventually came to an uneasy armistice and a clear demarcation of borders.
Unfortunately, that never happened and we are left to deal with the consequences.
All I'm trying to convey is the fact that some of Bodansky's theories don't pass the smell test.
Even though I respect his work establishing the connection between the Sudanese and Iranian governments and the rise of UBL's Al Qaeda network, he wasn't the only terrorism expert-or even the most prominent-to have revealed these ties prior to Semptember 11th, 2001.
No, but the allies of the Soviets and then the Russians formed the Northern Alliance and held on until after 9/11/01 and we used Russia's Northern Alliance to take Afghanistan from the Taliban. The USSR did not win the Afghan war - but it did not lose it either (or if you want to make it easier to swallow - the USSR did not lose as badly as we in the West all assumed).