The Taliban was only put in place because of American anti-Bolshevism, and now that the Soviet Union is no longer around and the Afghani government is not giving us heaps of oil and their strategic location in Central Asia with which to put pressure on the Middle East, India and Pakistan and China, we are doing an invasion of our own to institute a more US-friendly régime. Disgusting.
And what’s even more disgusting is that the media is deliberately hiding from the populace that the US is the only reason the Taliban got into power in the first place. The US doesn’t like its child so it’s killing it to have a new one.
Oh, and Palve, just so that there are no more surprises in your future, let me add that the US put Saddam Hussein in power, along with Manuel Noriega, Ferdinand Marcos, and a whole host of others. And you know what? Its entirely possible that whomever replaces the Taliban in Afghanistan may just decide to bite us on the ass. These things happen.
(Oh, BTW, you might not want to buy Ford’s either, seems Henry Ford was a big fan of Hitler before WW II.)
Or, more precisely, knowing this, what are you going to do about it?
Pull out of Afghanistan?
Throw Bush out of the White House?
Find his father and bitch-slap him?
Promise to have nothing to do with anyone who cannot demonstrate a moral purity the equal of ours?
Yes, we supported the Taliban. The Russians were in Afghanistan. We wanted them out. They were there and willing to fight, and they did.
You can castigate the US for not keeping a closer eye on them. For not helping the country enough after they threw the Soviets out (assuming they wanted our help). Unforunate. There are 130+ countries in the world, and only so many hours in the day, so much money in the budget. And do we really want the United States to be this benevolent dictator over the world? Or is your rant another case of “damned if you do, damned if you don’t,” in which nothing the US will do will ever satisfy its critics.
Palve, try rereading that quote a little more critically.
I disagree. There’s been plenty of coverage of the background of the Talib, at least in the media I’ve been following.
Oh, it’s a conspiracy. I see.
Well, I guess that’s the point the writer still has to make. Does he ?
True. There was this thing called a cold war. Plans for instant nuclear annihilation, Warsaw pact tanks ready at the Fulda Gap, a place called East Germany, a wall though Berlin, a regime that killed its citizens for trying to escape and landmined its borders to make the point. Undermining the Soviet Union wasn’t a bad idea. Ask the inhabitants in the former DDR, the Czechs, the Poles, etc. etc.
The US didn’t exclusively fund the Mujahedin, although they supported them. Money and fighters came from the Arab nations, as well. But the rank and file come from Afghanistan itself.
And the regime was seriously “Moscow-backed” - to the point that the Red Army sustained 50.000 casualties trying to pacify the Afghans. There’s a word for that: Occupation. It wasn’t just your run-of-the-mill puppet regime, it was open war.
However, what the text kinda glibly passes over is that when the Soviets left in February 1989, direct US support was cut off, and the Mujahideen promptly started fighting among themselves. Years of chaos and civil war.
The Taliban didn’t emerge until 1994 and weren’t in control until 1996. So - ehm - that’s five and seven years, respectively, after the US support stopped.
Ah, good choice of words. The US “turned a blind eye” (IOW, didn’t intervene) in what two US allies did. Ehm. Isn’t the chain of responsibility getting just a little long here ?
So the US is to blame for what Pakistan and Saudi-Arabia are doing in Afghanistan. Call me a buffo traditionalist, but what about projecting the blame at, you know, Pakistan and Saudi-Arabia ?
Nope, the Taliban emerged victorious in a civil war seven years after the fall of Communism. If you want me to believe that the US Gvt. was heavily involved 1994-1996, put up some cites.
The only reason ? IIRC, the US only got involved because the Soviets decided that Afghanistan needed scientifically proven communism. If the locals wanted to fight the Red Army, the US was happy to hand over weapons. You may question the morals of that, but we’re back in 1979, and Communism was not fun for those who lived under it. Fighting the Soviets without starting WWIII was not a bad idea.
However, the Talib gaining power was the result of a long chain of events, arguably starting with the Soviet invasion. If you want to point that US aid to the Muj was the determining factor that made the Talib emerge victorious in 96, make a case for it. There’s no way in hell it’s the only reason.
As to the media deliberately hiding it, well - I read a few newspapers and they’ve all been running “Afghan history 101”. Besides, books are media too. As is the Internet. There’s no media conspiracy to keep the facts secret - except for the conspiracy against facts that takes more than a soundbite to communicate. And “the US funded the Taliban” is just that - a soundbite, masquerading as information.
I would just be satisfied with the assurance that the US government is doing its best not to make such mistakes in the future (destroying dictatorships it doesn’t like with the help of dictatorships it does like, which then become dictatorships it doesn’t like, ad nauseam).
However, such assurances are neither forthcoming, nor believable, at this point.
I think the US government will try to prevent another outbreak of anarchy in the area. Alliance leaders are seriously trying to set up a stable government in the area. No guarantees that it will be a democracy, though, and no guarantees that we won’t have to go to war with them in the future. Stable democracies are extremely hard to create unless you have domestic leadership committed to it. And I’m not sure there are that many people in positions of power who are interested in a democratic regime in their country.
By the way, your accusation of destroying dictatorships it doesn’t like with the help of dictatorships it does like, is inaccurate. That almost never happens. It’s much much much more common for democratic regimes destroyed with the help of dictatorships. Dictatorships are usually overthrown with the help of democratic regimes.