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Charlie Wilson's War was an interesting movie... but in reality, it was William Casey's War. Which created the Taliban and Osama bin Laden as well, leading to A
by photochemsyn 3y ago
Charlie Wilson's War was an interesting movie... but in reality, it was William Casey's War. Which created the Taliban and Osama bin Laden as well, leading to Al Qaeda and 9/11... and then Al Qaeda became an 'ally' in the effort to overthrow Syria's government. Weird, isn' it?
- vuln 3y ago_Weird_ indeed.
- newsclues 3y agoWeird like the CIA uses Hollywood for propaganda weird?
- gary_0 3y agoThe Mujahideen were not the Taliban, which did not exist until 5 years after the Soviet-Afghan War. Some of the US-backed resistance fighters did go on to join the Taliban, but others opposed it and later sided with the US when they invaded in 2001. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afghan_mujahideen#Relationship_with_the_Taliban https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afghan_mujahideen#Relationship... All that being said, obviously the US has failed repeatedly in Afghanistan, but the initial intervention against the Soviets was not the main factor. The Taliban's persistence is due to multiple US geopolitical blunders that happened in the decades after the Soviet-Afghan War.
- photochemsyn 3y ago[flagged]
- Convolutional 3y agoThe US backed radical Islamic jihadists to overthrow the secular government running Afghanistan. The US president invited them to the White House, then armed and funded them https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b8/Reagan_sitting_with_people_from_the_Afghanistan-Pakistan_region_in_February_1983.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b8/Reagan_s... . Trying to split hairs saying there was infighting and not all of them joined the Taliban does not change that. Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda also came out of all that. Now I'll go back to reading the mainstream media's encomiums to the Azov batallion in the Ukraine.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- mattigames 3y agoIts true that US army created the Taliban, but it quickly brings the "the road not taken" fantasy that is only that, a fantasy, as in people imagine the middle east would be peas and roses if only America had not helped create the Taliban, and thats probably far from reality. I don't think it would have been take long for any other faction to use commercial Airlines to attack infrastructure, it was a very attractive attack vector for any enemy faction, specially given the lack of security (this days one hijacked plane wouldn't last long mid air).
- jkeat 3y agothat’s a nice way to never feel guilty about stomping on peas and roses
- mattigames 3y agoI'm sure that increasing the feeling of guilt is what is missing for the Pentagon to have a change of heart.