RPRNY
Member
Charlie Wilson says "I told you so..."
And here we are at war with the muj, barely a decade later. Very well thought out foreign aid there. It is the kind of thing our government specializes in.
I don't see much problem at all with our hooking up the muj back then and letting them kill Soviets troops at the same sort of healthy clip that the Soviets had done to us via the VC/NVA about a decade before.
Where we screwed up was then closing up shop once the Russians went home and the country continued to tear itself apart and sink further and further into the mess it became. Doesn't even have to have been the US trying to help get the place back on its feet back then -- circa 89, Afghanistan would have been a great project for the UN to park a bunch of (primarily Muslin nation) peacekeepers, broker some elections, end up with a coalition government, bring refugees home and then declare victory and walk away.
Afghanistan would have still fallen apart from there (like it's going to do as soon as we and the rest of ISAF go home) but stretch that out over a few years and you seriously soften the apocalypse and probably don't make it into the live action role playing game of The Road Warrior with al Qaeda doing whatever the hell they want, etc.
I don't see much problem at all with our hooking up the muj back then and letting them kill Soviets troops at the same sort of healthy clip that the Soviets had done to us via the VC/NVA about a decade before.
Where we screwed up was then closing up shop once the Russians went home and the country continued to tear itself apart and sink further and further into the mess it became. Doesn't even have to have been the US trying to help get the place back on its feet back then -- circa 89, Afghanistan would have been a great project for the UN to park a bunch of (primarily Muslin nation) peacekeepers, broker some elections, end up with a coalition government, bring refugees home and then declare victory and walk away.
Afghanistan would have still fallen apart from there (like it's going to do as soon as we and the rest of ISAF go home) but stretch that out over a few years and you seriously soften the apocalypse and probably don't make it into the live action role playing game of The Road Warrior with al Qaeda doing whatever the hell they want, etc.