bin laden

[monsivais]

did the US give bin laden money or military training to defeat the Soveit Union?

[jump82]

Just the training, he was born wealthy.

[whiffey]

Possibly, probably, almost certainly, but so what ? That was then, now is now. Remember that Italy was an ally in WWI but an enemy in WWII. Things change over time.
Germany is now a staunch Western ally of ours (I hope!) against the most implacable and dangerous foe the world has ever seen.

[Llamatron]

Most dangerous and implacable foe? Would that be the US then?

[whiffey]

No Llamatron, radical Islam.

P.S. Are you sitting in a comfy Western armchair protected by the forces of the Western world, or are you writing freely from, well, somewhere else.

[jno]

this is still disputed. The USA certainly armed Muslims fighting against Soviet occupation but I don't think there's ever been proof that bin Laden was one of them. He had his own money, as jump82 says.

Whiffey asks 'so what?' The answer to that is that you should be careful who you give aid to, for fear they turn your weapons against you. Military intelligence exists to do this sort of thing, but it doesn't appear the CIA knew much about people like bin Laden at the time - and perhaps they should have. It must be quite galling for US soldiers to be shot with US guns provided to their enemies by the CIA, and then see whiffey, safe in his armchair, saying 'so what?'

[Clanad]

Except the weapon of choice throughout the Middle East and especially the insurgency is the ubiquitous AK-47. This weapon is usually supplied through international arms dealers who obtain their supplies form the Russian, Chinese and in some cases the French. Iran, of course is a major supplier.. (Discovered, by the way, by our CIA)
So, by jno's reasoning, the U.S. should never have armed the U.K. before, during and certainly after WWII... heck you guys might be on our door step demanding the return of Virginia or New England... had we only known...

[jno]

the Brits would be torching the White House again, Clanad... but I wasn't saying don't do it, just exercise some sensible long-term strategic planning first. I'm not sure that the benefits the CIA saw in aiding the Afghan mujahideen outweighed the eventual drawbacks when the latter turned against the USA, but you could argue that they did so by contributing to the Soviet Union's downfall. The USA did come close to sorting out Afghanistan, which had eluded both the British and Soviet empires, and which would have been a historic success for Bush; but alas it lost its focus and went for Iraq instead - another strategic error, and I personally think the world today is the worse for it.

[whiffey]

Let's hope George W gives Iran a walloping while he still can. It won't make the Middle East a nicer place, but I'm not too concerned about that from my Western armchair, and I would prefer not to see a nuclear explosion over Tel Aviv in my lifetime. I hope the US is constantly arming and assisting Israel.

[Llamatron]

Nice to see Whiffey has such a sensible, balanced and well informed world view.

Dubya would be proud.

[jno]

that's the trouble, whiffey. Iran could well be a far greater cause of instability than Iraq (which was pretty stable before, being an autocracy) - but now the USA has got so many men tangled up in Iraq and Afghanistan, I doubt it has enough left over to go to war with Iran. That's what I mean about long-term strategic planning. Washington doesn't always think clearly enough about where its real enemies are.

[jump82]

The fact is USA has always created wars or funded them for its own interests. It would even back dictators like Sadam which it did at one point.

[Neilzulu1]

Its all about oil, plain and simple.