And I agree with your post.
Prior to 911, the Saudis saw an opportunity to build the caliphate in Central Asia on the bones of the old Soviet Union. Since the Soviet Union wasn’t quite dead, it looked like something we could also support as we assumed that anything the Saudis backed would be naturally our ally (especially in the last days of the Cold War).
So Bin Ladin’s camps trained jihadists from all the ‘Stans and sent them back.
I don’t think they knew he was doing side-work for Saddam, which is what I think 911 was. Or that he had his own agenda which I also believe 911 was. They (and maybe we) believed he could be controlled and focused in a useful direction. This is maybe similar to our recent attempts to re-direct Al Qaeda jihadists against our enemies. Neat trick if you can wean them off of the whole beheading-Christians thing.
“Al Qaeda” looked at Bin Ladin as their guru, but once home in their home countries they were receiving visits from Saddam’s intel agents with bags of money. So the exact lines of control of Al Qaeda become a bit murky. They are designed to be semi-autonomous anyway and look for opportunities.
Another thing: the Saudi royals have their own internal dissension. While the elite may be comfortable with the US as an ally, and even cooperate with the Israelis, there are other factions who want to be the elite and are sympathetic to Al Qaeda. And would gladly use them to bring down whichever faction has control at a given moment.
And the Saudi government is I believe trying to exert control over Al Qaeda, to get it back under their control so they can direct it against their enemies, while taking care to keep them outside the country. So recent operations using jihadists against Khadafi and Assad are in keeping with this idea. It was probably a brilliant idea if they could have kept them from committing horrors that wound up on page one.
I haven’t been in tune with Laden’s training activities.
I do understand the CIA’s use of Afghanis in the Russian invasion there. It was a wise way to give Russia grief for it’s adventurism.
There wasn’t a known down side to it. We helped a people to defend themselves. That’s a reasoned course of action.
Then you get a guy like Laden who goes postal and hates the U.S. who was his ally. I don’t see our nation at fault. I see a rogue idiot whose thanks was to turn on his benefactors.
Let’s look at other areas we tried to help. Did the Vietnamese move across their borders to create trouble elsewhere? Did the Contras in South America turn against us and cause trouble?
It seems to me, we help who we can and do a fairly good job of it. The Islamic think went against us, but trying to build inroads into them trusting and working with us was worth the effort. Not everything turns out like you’d wise.
Thanks for your comments. I appreciate hearing about the Laden training and the Saudi funding of that.
BTW: We should not be cooperating with al Qaeda, the Taliban, the Muslim Brotherhood, or ISIS.
These people have an anti-Western drive that makes them unwise to cooperate with.
Frankly, I think Russia is on the right track, IF it limits it’s operations to ISIS. Coming to an agreement with the anti-Assad faction in Syria would be best. I am not sure that will come to fruition.
The U.S. has screwed up so bad that I don’t see an easy out for it now. I’m not convinced working with Russia is in our best interest.
The situation over there could go very south in a hurry,
This ALL thanks to Obama and MC CAIN.