How bad could it be to arm and train people in the Middle East to help fight our current enemies?

[LexVegas]

That hasn't turned out bad before, that I know of.

[leftstreet]

1. No one in the Middle East is my enemy n/t

[NightWatcher]

2. It guarantees the next war, that way there will always be a war

The Mujahideen turned into Al Qaeda.......

[Maedhros]

3. Are you really this misinformed?

Or did you leave out the tag?

[MattBaggins]

12. Has to be sarcasm

Has to

[uppityperson]

4. decisions, decisions. k&r for well done satire or make sure you don't really mean it?

[msongs]

5. we train them, give them our weapons, they are isis plants, and isis/assad thank us nt

[seveneyes]

6. Do not arm religious fanatics

The world needs to move beyond fairy tale reasons for what happens in human life.

[spin]

7. I seem to remember that during the Carter and Reagan administrations ...

we helped to train and finance the mujahedin guerrillas in their effort to fight the Russians in Afghanistan. They succeeded and the Russians left but unfortunately for us there might have been some unintended consequences.

Operation Cyclone

Operation Cyclone was the code name for the United States Central Intelligence Agency program to arm and finance the Afghan mujahideen prior to and during the Soviet war in Afghanistan, 1979 to 1989. The program leaned heavily towards supporting militant Islamic groups that were favored by neighboring Pakistan, rather than other, less ideological Afghan resistance groups that had also been fighting the Marxist-oriented Democratic Republic of Afghanistan regime since before the Soviet intervention. Operation Cyclone was one of the longest and most expensive covert CIA operations ever undertaken;[1] funding began with $20–$30 million per year in 1980 and rose to $630 million per year in 1987.[2] Funding continued after 1989 as the Mujahideen battled the forces of Mohammad Najibullah's PDPA during the Civil war in Afghanistan (1989–1992).[3]

***snip***

With U.S. and other funding, the ISI armed and trained over 100,000 insurgents[citation needed]. On 20 July 1987, the withdrawal of Soviet troops from the country was announced pursuant to the negotiations that led to the Geneva Accords of 1988,[23] with the last Soviets leaving on 15 February 1989. Soviet forces suffered over 14,000 killed and missing, and over 50,000 wounded.

***snip***

While there is no evidence that the CIA had direct contact with Osama Bin Laden[38][39] and US funding was directed to Afghan Mujahedin groups,[40] critics of U.S. foreign policy consider Operation Cyclone to be substantially responsible for setting in motion the events that led to the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001,[41] a view Brzezinski has dismissed.[42] William Hartung argues that the early foundations of al-Qaida were built in part on relationships and weaponry that came from the billions of dollars in U.S. support for the Afghan mujahadin during the war to expel Soviet forces from that country.[43] According to Christopher Andrew and Vasily Mitrokhin, there is "no support" in any "reliable source" for "the claim that the CIA funded bin Laden or any of the other Arab volunteers who came to support the mujahideen."[44] Peter Bergen writes that "[t]he real problem is not that the CIA helped bin Laden during the 1980s, but that the Agency simply had no idea of his possible significance until the bin Laden unit was set up within the CIA in January 1996."[38]...emphasis added
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Cyclone#Criticism

[mrdmk]

9. There is a link from that time to the present, need to examine a point.

From the responded too post:

"William Hartung argues that the early foundations of al-Qaida were built in part on relationships and weaponry that came from the billions of dollars in U.S. support for the Afghan mujahadin during the war to expel Soviet forces from that country."

From my reading and understanding of the matter with Afghanistan, need to disagree. The idea was to keep the Russians in Afghanistan bleeding the economy and their armed forces of resources. Afghanistan has a written history of wars that cannot be won starting at the time of the silk road. Many of armies got sucked into an endless war.

[spin]

10. It seems to me that the people who live in Afghanistan view war with invaders ...

much as we do the Super Bowl.

[ieoeja]

11. Afghanistan has a written history of wars in which they were repeatedly conquered.

The Greeks ruled for centuries. As did the Persians. And the Arabs. And the Mongols and Indians. Even the Brits ruled it fairly peacefully for most of a century before the people living there decided to try their hand at running their own country.

For the first time in literally thousands of years.

And they were, contrary to the imaginings of some poet, getting their asses handed to them until the Czar stepped in to support them.



As to "bleeding the Soviets" first time I heard that theory expounded was several months after the Soviet Union collapsed. The first few months after the USSR's collapse, the media was full of national security "experts" talking about how everyone in the community was caught completely by surprise. It made the experts look pretty bad. And the Reagan military buildup look pretty useless.

Then the "Reagan bankrupted the Soviets" theory arrived. The experts were experts again. And Reagan was a hero.

Why pretend confusion instead of bragging? Maybe because, even if they didn't do it intentionally, it fits their world view on how things works. And if it so happens to make them look like fucking geniuses in the bargain ... well, who are they to deny that they are so awesome they were even accidentally awesome?


The other explanation would be that Detente dropped the Iron Curtain. Plenty of Russians have said they knew they had it hard, but thought things in the West must be a hellhole in comparison. They were shocked to see how much better off we had it. This made anti-communist a populist position in the Soviet Union.

Then the Soviets decided to dip their toes into the global marketplace by letting Pizza Hut open up on Red Square. The Reagan administration, recognizing that a conversion to capitalism might make the Soviets more powerful, tried stopping it**. When Reagan lost in the US Supreme Court, he even turned to the World Court to try and overrule the US courts***. But lost there as well. So the Pizza Hut opened and Cronkite or Brinkely led off their nightly news programs with "Lenin is turning over in his glass coffin" and "communism is dead".

It was, like, a really big story at the time. But I again find myself living in George Orwell's 1984 since I seem to be the only human being in the world who remembers that story. Seriously. It was fucking huge at the time.

Presumably, the Russian investors in the Pizza Hut venture started gaining more money and power. Others seeing this would have wanted in on the game. But there was a problem. Pizza Hut could not bring the money home as the ruble was not traded in the market place. They solved this problem by using rubbles to buy vodka which they then exported to Europe where it could be sold for hard cash. The Vodka Exchange, as it came to be called, was essentially a global barter system.

But you can do only so much in a barter system. Cash is a lot easier. So many of the rich and powerful now wanted to convert Russia to capitalism. While Josef Two Liters wanted to open up Russia to the western ideas. The change in Russia was brought on by elite leaders of a populist movement.

That, or Reagan bankrupted a communist country that owed no money to no banks but went bankrupt anyway because ... Reagan!


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** This, of course, could not possibly be true since we all know it was about stopping the scourge of communism, and not about empirical power.

*** This also could not be true. No way would St Reagan have let a World Court overrule a US court. More likely he used this as an excuse to send a SEAL team disguised as lawyers to the court so that he could have them all executed****. Can you even name a single member of the World Court? Of course, not. Reagan had them all killed.

**** But they came back as zombies. So all those stories about Obama letting the World Court take over the United States are still true. Being zombies they do not, of course, have names.
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[mrdmk]

8. "An Enemy of my Enemy is a Friend of Mine"

Is an old Arabic saying and just a saying, unfortunately it does not fit today's hi tech world...

Here is the updated version:

"An Enemy of my Enemy is NOT a Friend of Mine"

Some people tend to like nobody and come up with stupid reasons to support their positions. I what I have gathered, it has been that way in the Middle East for a long time. Simply said, 'It is a rough neighborhood!'