[prairiebreeze]

Additionally, isn't it reasonable to expect that radical Islamists like OBL would have found weapons and training eventually anyway. I believe we accelerated that process, certainly. But OBL's hatred for the west made weapons acquisition an inevitability.

Prairie

[Cicero]

Probably so. From an excellent article I read many years ago by Claire Sterling, who was a big fan of Massood, it was evident that the two wild cards in the Afghan war were Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. The CIA probably would have backed Massood, but the Pakistani security agencies insisted that we back Hekmatyar, a huge troublemaker. The Pakistanis in turn were heavily influenced by the Saudis, who were pouring in money to support the radicalization of Pakistan and the region.

The worst threat at the time, however, was the Soviet Union, with its long history of expansionism and its 20,000 nuclear warheads. We had little choice but to work with what we had.