Americans are supposed to have short memory spans. But I remember.
In 1985, US President Ronald Reagan introduced a group of six visiting Afghan mujahideen warriors to reporters on the White House lawn. Reagan proclaimed, "These gentlemen are the moral equivalents of America's founding fathers."Those warriors were, of course, leaders of the groups that became the Taliban and al-Qaeda. Neither of those groups would exist today if not for the help of the US, which was determined to hand Russia a defeat in Afghanistan as humiliating as the American defeat in Vietnam. The Americans were driven by egoism. By hurt pride. Osama bin Laden wasn't in that group of six at the White House that day, but he was one of those mujahideen leaders, and he was an ally of the United States, trained, armed and funded by the Americans. Oh, the irony of it is so rich.
And, oh how we laughed when Leonid Brezhnev's soviet army suffered a shameful defeat at the hands of those mujahideen warriors in 1989. Tucked tail and fled.
Listen. Yeh, I hear it, too. That's the sound of Russian laughter, and I can't help thinking, "he who laughs last, laughs best."
That is what happened, 36 years ago. The wind was sown ...
And, in case you don't remember, and you need to be reminded, neither the Taliban or ISIS existed before the US got involved in Afghanistan, funding and training and supplying weapons to the mujahideen freedom fighters who were determined to expel the Soviet Union from their country.
Remember the Khmer Rouge?
In 1970, Richard Nixon and then National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger sent US troops on secret missions into Cambodia to clean out Viet Cong sanctuaries and destroy their supply lines and started bombing Cambodia (a war crime of the first order). The Khmer Rouge communists, who were very few in number, with very little popular support, used the heavy American bombing as a recruiting tool among the common people in the countryside, which is exactly what happened in both Afghanistan and Pakistan (if not in much of the Muslim world).
It took a scant five years for the Khmer Rouge to grow from a few scattered camps numbering an estimated 4,000 into the guerrilla army of 70,000 that seized the Cambodian capital in 1975 and began their "purge" of the population, which was basically a purge of anyone who supported or worked with the foreigners who invaded their country. You know, traitors. Mostly they killed the people who lived in the cities and who cared more about making money than in making a patriotic defense of Cambodia's sovereignty.
Isn't that what's happening, right now, in Afghanistan?
The Khmer Rouge did not come to power because the US stopped bombing Cambodia ... they came to power because the US started bombing Cambodia.
By the same token, it has been the US occupation of Afghanistan and the propaganda value of its indiscriminate use of aerial and drone bombing that has strengthened the Taliban for the past 20 years. And, it was certain that when the US tucked tail and left the country in defeat, that the Taliban would "purge" the infidels in their country; it is not because the US failed to "stay the course." It is because the Americans made the enormous mistake of trying to do what no military power has done in 1,000 years: conquer Afghanistan, the "Graveyard of Empires."
That is what happened, 36 years ago. The wind was sown ...
And, in case you don't remember, and you need to be reminded, neither the Taliban or ISIS existed before the US got involved in Afghanistan, funding and training and supplying weapons to the mujahideen freedom fighters who were determined to expel the Soviet Union from their country.
Remember the Khmer Rouge?
In 1970, Richard Nixon and then National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger sent US troops on secret missions into Cambodia to clean out Viet Cong sanctuaries and destroy their supply lines and started bombing Cambodia (a war crime of the first order). The Khmer Rouge communists, who were very few in number, with very little popular support, used the heavy American bombing as a recruiting tool among the common people in the countryside, which is exactly what happened in both Afghanistan and Pakistan (if not in much of the Muslim world).
It took a scant five years for the Khmer Rouge to grow from a few scattered camps numbering an estimated 4,000 into the guerrilla army of 70,000 that seized the Cambodian capital in 1975 and began their "purge" of the population, which was basically a purge of anyone who supported or worked with the foreigners who invaded their country. You know, traitors. Mostly they killed the people who lived in the cities and who cared more about making money than in making a patriotic defense of Cambodia's sovereignty.
Isn't that what's happening, right now, in Afghanistan?
The Khmer Rouge did not come to power because the US stopped bombing Cambodia ... they came to power because the US started bombing Cambodia.
By the same token, it has been the US occupation of Afghanistan and the propaganda value of its indiscriminate use of aerial and drone bombing that has strengthened the Taliban for the past 20 years. And, it was certain that when the US tucked tail and left the country in defeat, that the Taliban would "purge" the infidels in their country; it is not because the US failed to "stay the course." It is because the Americans made the enormous mistake of trying to do what no military power has done in 1,000 years: conquer Afghanistan, the "Graveyard of Empires."
