In hindsight, should we've supported Afghanistan's Marxist Democratic Party, not the Islamic fundamentalists?

Question

[ The Soviet war in Afghanistan also known as the Soviet-Afghan War was a nine-year conflict involving Soviet forces supporting Afghanistan's Marxist People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) government against the largely Islamic fundamentalist Mujahideen insurgents. The latter group found support from a variety of sources including the United States, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and other Muslim nations in the context of the Cold War. ]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_war_in_Afghanistan

Answer 1

Yes, and we also shouldn't have overthrown the democratically elected Iranian government to put the Shah in control of Iran, either.
Boy have those chickens come home to roost.

Answer 2

Looking ahead was not one of our strong suits during the cold war. If the Soviets were on one side, we automatically took the other. So, there was no way we'd be helping the Marxists, but if we had stayed out of it completely, the Soviet would have maintained their control, at least until the fall of the USSR, which may have taken longer if they hadn't spent so much time, money and lives in Afghanistan. So, had we stayed out, the USSR would have lasted longer, but there may have been no Taliban and Al-Quaeda. History's funny that way.

Answer 3

who's denying this? the U.S. invaded Afghanistan in an attempt to make it area of their empire, a very diverse schedule than we've right this moment. helping them replaced into the final element to do, forsaking them, although, has led to us problems. those human beings have been scuffling with a Russian military reason on conquest. right this moment, a small group of zealots are scuffling with the U. S. military reason on offering Afghanistan freedom from the Taliban and their ilk. the liberty to pick who runs their u . s .. yet lower back, i prefer to comprehend who's denying we offered the human beings of Afghanistan weapons to combat off an invading enemy. it extremely is in no way conservatives, who supported the attempt to halt the era of Bolshevik enhance.

Answer 4

No, because we supported the Islamic fundamentalists to combat communism. In those days, the US could not support communism: it was launching a global campaign to crush that form of government. Keep in mind that prior to that war, Afghanistan was one of the most liberal countries on the planet, in a general sense. Their was no reason to believe the Islamicists were going to revert society and clamp down on their freedoms. They were an ally of convenience and history judges them as a bad choice.

Answer 5

Yep. As someone from an ex-communist country (Bulgaria), communism was never actually a threat to the world. By the 70s and 80s, very few people were actually fully convinced by their government, and the system ended up dissolving peacefully, eaten by its own flaws. Can't say that for fundamentalist regimes, can we?

The difference is that most communists are still rational (no fights you can't win, no suicide bombings) and the ideology calls for surrendering religion. It's much harder to fight an enemy who thinks that they'll go to heaven as soon as they die.

Too bad that people were so irrationally paranoid about communism that they didn't fully appreciate how scary religious fundamentalists (of all denominations) can be.

Answer 6

Actually, our strategy during the Clinton years was to fund and support Afghanistan's Northern Alliance, a group of "freedom fighters" struggling with the entrenched Taliban militia. By funding and supporting them with weapons, the NA was able to keep the Taliban and its al Qaida copatriots so busy fighting in Afghanistan, they wouldn't be able to terrorize other countries.

Of course, that all stopped in February, 2001. Bush's cabinet de-funded the Afghani Northern Alliance, which allowed al Qaida to plan attacks on foreign soil, leading to the attacks on Sept 11.

Answer 7

If we would have supported them, and the USSR won in Afghanistan, the USSR would still be around and the wall would still be up. The lose of the USSR in Afghanistan did nothing to help the Afghans. It did free over 300 million people in Eastern Europe.

Answer 8

In hindsight, yes.

Presently, we should discontinue our alliance with Saudi Arabia. The Wahhabis, who dominate Saudi culture, are extremely radical and rank as the world's largest exporter of Islamic terrorism.

Doing so would be classified as foresight.

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Answer 9

I can't imagine Reagan supporting Marxists

Answer 10

Back in those days, anyone who said that they hated communism we backed, regardless of the wisdom in doing so.