Posted on 03/23/2006 12:08:14 PM PST by quidnunc
No.
We weren't wrong to help the Soviets defeat Hitler, and we weren't wrong to help the Afghans defeat the Soviets. We weren't wrong to help Saddam defeat the Ayatollah, and we weren't wrong to clean Saddam's clock.
You don't have the option of fighting every enemy at once, you deal with the wolf that is closest to your door, and you help your enemies defeat themselves.
Its not a steady state world. One of the great unsung fights of the Cold War was the fight over the muslim world, between ourselves and the Soviets. Had we conceded this fight, we would have faced both muslim fascism and the Soviet Bloc, together at the same time. Egypt, Syria, Libya, Iraq, were all soviet clients, as were Arafat, Abu Nidal, and most of the muslim terrorists of the day. The fact that we managed to keep Iran under the Shah, the Saudis, the Pakistanis, and Morocco with us during that time was a real coup.
The Soviets had their muslim strategy, and we had ours.
We later managed to pull Egypt away from the soviets, and we were working on Iraq at the time the Soviet Union collapsed.
Its easy, in retrospect, to question it in the light of what has happened in the middle east. But the alternative was a Soviet Union still standing, with the largest muslim states effectively part of the Soviet Bloc.
A mistake many people make is to view the Cold War as 50 years of stability. This is a complete misreading of history. Millions of people died during the Cold War, wars raged on every continent. This is above and beyond the further millions that died directly from Soviet repression. The fact that Russian and Americans weren't trading potshots directly doesn't in any way reduce the death toll. The Cold War was fought using proxies, puppets, false flags similar to Bin Ladin, and the result was a death toll that is staggering. Since they are mostly third world citizens, its easy for journalists and politicians to pretend they didn't happen.
The Cold War was one of the bloodiest wars in history. We won. Thank God.
Gotta love that old-time religion.
While this sanctimonious gabfest was going on...
Muslim clerics can wring their hands to pieces...
Someone needs educating all right, and it's not just the infidels.
Second, if Islamic law is cited as the basis for killing a man for converting to Christianity, then, according to our way of looking at things, it is our right — indeed, for some their Christian duty — to criticize, condemn, or mock Islam, or at least that particular interpretation of Islam.
I remember seeing a show about 5 years back where Zbig was laughing with a condescending attitude about how they suckered the Russians into getting stuck into the quagmire that Afghanistan became.
No russians in Afghanistan, no Mujihadeen, no Osama, no Al Queda.
Friggin idiots!
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