24th March 2003, 1:26 PM
Huh? Darunia, your post makes absolutely no sense... I can't really figure out your points, if you have any... you sure don't seem to have coherent, sensible ones.
Uh... give one place I said anything remotely resembling that and I'll believe you but you can't because I didn't...
Look. In the '80s, the Soviet Union attacked Afghanistan. It quickly took over. Then, the US did what it did in many nations -- tried to stop the Communists. We armed the Mujahadeen fighters who managed to get the Soviets into a very long war they never won... similar to Vietnam for us... and in the end they gave up. We won. However... at this point, for some idiotic reason, our government decided that they didn't need to help Afghanistan recover from the war. We did nothing after that to try to improve anything for the Afghanis... and what was the resilt? Years and years more of civil war... cumulating in the victory of the Taliban.
Now, if the US had only sent in stuff (economic aid mostly, maybe peacekeeping troops, etc), that would never have happened... but we thought a small, minor nation like Afghanistan didn't matter so we left them alone for years and let the extremists win... and the result? The Taliban and their full state sponsorship and support for terrorists. And a lot of people we armed in the '80s were among them... like Bin Laden. Just great.
But in those days (ie before the Soviet Union collapsed) it was US policy to support any group of terrorists or thugs there was, as long as they weren't commies or terrorists attacking us... thus we supported Sadaam very strongly when he was fighting the Iranians and the Islamic radicals in Afghanistan when they were fighting Soviets. It also led to stuff like supporting the Contras in Nicaragua (paramilitary army who tortured and killed lots of people) because they fought the left-wing government... we have a very dark history of overthrowing socialist and communist governments and killing people and supporting essentially terror states just to contain communism... suppressing democracy (by not letting people in other countries choose their government type -- whenever communists won a election somewhere, in came the US army or US-backed dictators...) to save the world for democracy? Umm... great...
(Note... Communism. Its a system that works very well on paper and in the mind, but completely fails when applied to the human race... you see, it relies on people being perfect to work, and people are far from it... like how everyone made the same amout of money. Great idea, right? Sounds like it at first... no unfair wages... but the result? Shoddy workmanship and FAR less drive to do well because no matter how poor your work (or how little you work), you knew you'd never lose your job... so why work hard? Oh, and the fact that applied communism has ineviably meant dictatorships sure doesn't help its appeal any...)
Well, the '90s came and Communism collapsed on itsself. The Taliban continued to support terrorism (and terrorize their own people) in full swing until 9/11 when we finally realized that leaving them like that wasn't such a good idea after all. The real tragedy is that we didn't realize that 15 years ago and cut this off before it ever happened... without Afghanistan to build big training camps in and the US abandonment of the country (and sometime later the Gulf War and US troops in Saudi Arabia), we'd have a SIGNIFICANTLY smaller terrorist problem now... but back then they only looked at how it'd cost a lot of money and not have a apparent direct benifit to us. Clearly flawed logic in hindsight...
Quote:Are you half Afghan or something, so ardently supporting Bin Laden, terrorism and Afghanistan like that?
Uh... give one place I said anything remotely resembling that and I'll believe you but you can't because I didn't...
Quote:How dare you blame us for only going "half-way" with Afghanistan...thats more than ANYONE ELSE ever did for ANYBODY in the middle east! Who are you to critique us; if you love Afghanistan and Iraq so much, why don't YOU go do something?
Look. In the '80s, the Soviet Union attacked Afghanistan. It quickly took over. Then, the US did what it did in many nations -- tried to stop the Communists. We armed the Mujahadeen fighters who managed to get the Soviets into a very long war they never won... similar to Vietnam for us... and in the end they gave up. We won. However... at this point, for some idiotic reason, our government decided that they didn't need to help Afghanistan recover from the war. We did nothing after that to try to improve anything for the Afghanis... and what was the resilt? Years and years more of civil war... cumulating in the victory of the Taliban.
Now, if the US had only sent in stuff (economic aid mostly, maybe peacekeeping troops, etc), that would never have happened... but we thought a small, minor nation like Afghanistan didn't matter so we left them alone for years and let the extremists win... and the result? The Taliban and their full state sponsorship and support for terrorists. And a lot of people we armed in the '80s were among them... like Bin Laden. Just great.
But in those days (ie before the Soviet Union collapsed) it was US policy to support any group of terrorists or thugs there was, as long as they weren't commies or terrorists attacking us... thus we supported Sadaam very strongly when he was fighting the Iranians and the Islamic radicals in Afghanistan when they were fighting Soviets. It also led to stuff like supporting the Contras in Nicaragua (paramilitary army who tortured and killed lots of people) because they fought the left-wing government... we have a very dark history of overthrowing socialist and communist governments and killing people and supporting essentially terror states just to contain communism... suppressing democracy (by not letting people in other countries choose their government type -- whenever communists won a election somewhere, in came the US army or US-backed dictators...) to save the world for democracy? Umm... great...
(Note... Communism. Its a system that works very well on paper and in the mind, but completely fails when applied to the human race... you see, it relies on people being perfect to work, and people are far from it... like how everyone made the same amout of money. Great idea, right? Sounds like it at first... no unfair wages... but the result? Shoddy workmanship and FAR less drive to do well because no matter how poor your work (or how little you work), you knew you'd never lose your job... so why work hard? Oh, and the fact that applied communism has ineviably meant dictatorships sure doesn't help its appeal any...)
Well, the '90s came and Communism collapsed on itsself. The Taliban continued to support terrorism (and terrorize their own people) in full swing until 9/11 when we finally realized that leaving them like that wasn't such a good idea after all. The real tragedy is that we didn't realize that 15 years ago and cut this off before it ever happened... without Afghanistan to build big training camps in and the US abandonment of the country (and sometime later the Gulf War and US troops in Saudi Arabia), we'd have a SIGNIFICANTLY smaller terrorist problem now... but back then they only looked at how it'd cost a lot of money and not have a apparent direct benifit to us. Clearly flawed logic in hindsight...
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