Well we really shouldn’t be resting on our laurels, not even those of “least bad.”
Alright. Good advice.
Yet as thought exercise if you will, when second-guessing what has happened in the past, we do need to open our eyes for why whatever happened the way that it did existed, and then extend thought towards what would have been likely outcomes had "we" (The United States, as expressed through the words and deeds of our elected representatives) done differently.
My own father, (now deceased) back in the early 1980's, when I remarked to him "what about those brave mujahideen", himself having long before recognized that Islamic radicalism was more of a long-term fundamental existential threat to American representative democracy than was even the then-Soviet Union, replied "son, we should be helping the Soviets".
Yet if we had, then what?
Wouldn't that have helped led to expansion of Soviet influence, eventually playing out against us if (or when) whoever was came to power in the Soviet Union decided they would like to use Islamic nations to do their dirty-work against the USA?
The Soviets at that time were well-programmed to view the USA as the source of all their problems (when the truth was communism doesn't work, because of the inherent flaws of human nature -- to which there is only one known, effective cure-- which is to be born again, as Christ is attributed to saying documented in the gospel of John, chapter 3, verse 5).