If you prefer we can call them by another name but they are the same people. In retrospect we would have been far better off if we had helped the Russians in that particular episode.
For all of the hand wringing we did about the Cold War, fundamentist Islam has caused us more damage in the past 3 months than Russia did in 50 years.
Wrong. It's true that bin Laden and Mullah Omar fought the Russians, but the Taliban per se was something the Paks cooked up in Kandahar well after the war ended, in order to make Afghanistan an obedient Pak client state. Turned out they'd made something closer to Frankenstein's monster.
If the Taliban were "the same people" who fought the Russians during Reagan's administration, what about Cmdr. Massoud and Abdul Haq, both heroes of the war against the Russians and both killed by the Taliban?