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peepeesmellslikepoop t1_j16xwrf wrote

Reply to comment by OutrageousMatter in Saudi Arabia and Qatar urge Taliban to reverse girls’ education ban by -Ima-Phat-Cookie-Ho-

The CIA didn't support the Taliban or Bin Laden against the USSR in Afghanistan because the Taliban didn't exist at the time and Bin Laden and his Middle Eastern foreign fighters hated the West and didn't want their money. The CIA did support the Afghan Mujahideen. The Mujahideen consisted of seven major factions, one or two of them had members that became parts of the Taliban, Pashtuns in the south. Most became part of the Northern Alliance and worked with the US when we invaded the country in 2001.

I see this whole "the US started/supported the Taliban" trope getting thrown around a lot on reddit and it's simply not true.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afghan_mujahideen

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PMmeserenity t1_j17bpxo wrote

You're not wrong about the timeline, but it's also true that the US made common cause with a lot of terrible warlords and elevated their status and abilities, and that that support was important to the development of both the Taliban and al Queda. The chain of events is more complicated than "US supported the Taliban", but the connections are there--US foreign policy was (and still is) stupid and shortsighted.

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peepeesmellslikepoop t1_j17ftun wrote

That's a vague claim. Who are all these alleged warlords that changed the course of the Global War on Terror? You're implying that there's all this behind the scenes smoke and mirror stuff but look at the reality of the situation. Here's what the US did to the Taliban and Al Qaeda as a matter of fact: We relentlessly hunted the leader of the Taliban, Mullah Omar, until he turned up dead from diabetes in Pakistan. We imprisoned most of the Taliban leadership in 2001 and put them in Gitmo, but we let them go in exchange for one of our dipshit soldiers that ran away from his base. For Al Qaeda, we killed their two leaders, Bin Laden and al-Zawahiri, and we killed the third guy in charge more times than I can count. We may have turned a blind eye to some drug trafficking and small arms trading. That's not cool, but it's a drop in the bucket compared to all the people we killed and detained during our 20 year occupation of Afghanistan. The US military and government aren't great at making good things happen in foreign countries, but they're good at what they do. Look at Ukraine. Look at all the dead Russians and their destroyed equipment. That's US technology and information at work. You can call it stupid and shortsighted, but you're wrong.

Our biggest mistake in Afghanistan was after we killed Bin Laden, that we didn't declare victory, and then leave that godforsaken place.

e: I in no way mean to discredit the bravery of the men and women fighting in Ukraine. I'm pointing out that the US is their prime supplier of arms, equipment, and information.

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PMmeserenity t1_j17gkt9 wrote

I'm talking about stuff that happened in the 70's-90's, that led to men like Bin Laden and al-Zawahiri becoming powerful. And I'm not "implying that there's all this behind the scenes smoke and mirror stuff", I'm stating it as fact. The CIA and other special ops were active in Afghanistan for decades, and we funneled money and arms to all kinds of radical, Islamist warlords who also happened to oppose the USSR. I'm not going to write a history essay here, but there are literally hundreds of books on the subject, from every point of view and ideological angle. But nobody sincerely argues that the US wasn't active in Afghanistan, and armed/funded shitty warlords for decades. The US was giving hundreds of millions of dollars annually to all kinds of militant factions in Afghanistan in the 80's. A lot of that ended up training and equipping the dudes who became the Taliban--not just the famous leaders, but the thousands and thousands of men who followed them too.

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Rizla_TCG t1_j17ihpw wrote

I think we go back as far as 58 with the meddling...

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OutrageousMatter t1_j19ipu0 wrote

Meddling, way way farther, started before the spanish-american war basically when america entered the second industrial revolution, the one that turned america from a little small known nation into an economic superpower. Turner was the one who kinda kicked started the event in which corporations will use america for it's own interest.

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Sarcofaygo t1_j17rvcq wrote

Operation Cyclone is the name of the program

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OutrageousMatter t1_j18cyyo wrote

Of course we supported the mujahideen freedom fighters but lets ignore the fact the leaders of the taliban were mujahideen fighters. The taliban didn't exist but the leaders existed and leaders went on to form the taliban and start a war. You need to ask yourself, how could the taliban start a war, where did they get weapons from? We may say we didn't but we gave the leaders the weapons to use against their own nation. We allowed them to kickstart with the weapons we gave to them to fight against the soviet union.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taliban#Soviet_intervention_in_Afghanistan_(1978%E2%80%931992) Looks under soviet intervention we gave the leaders weapons.

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