The CIA were supporting the jihadists until 1991 ish (After Soviet union), they even gave them textbooks!
“Look how that turned out” is a reference to the fact that after the soviets left the jihadists in power then targeted Americans, specifically on 9/11
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In the twilight of the Cold War, the United States spent millions of dollars to supply Afghan schoolchildren with textbooks filled with violent images and militant Islamic teachings, part of covert attempts to spur resistance to the Soviet occupation.
The primers, which were filled with talk of jihad and featured drawings of guns, bullets, soldiers and mines, have served since then as the Afghan school system’s core curriculum. Even the Taliban used the American-produced books, though the radical movement scratched out human faces in keeping with its strict fundamentalist code.
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“Look how that turned out” is a reference to the fact that after the soviets left the jihadists in power then targeted Americans, specifically on 9/11”
Incorrect. The statement shows ignorance of history by Paul.
First of all, we supported a “Northern Alliance” of Afghans. Afghans being the important word. The Taliban are a group consisting of foreigners, primarily. We never supported the outside jihadists..
In fact, a guy named Massoud, who was the leader of the Afghans we supported was assasinated by either a foreign Taliban or Al Qeada spy, a few months prior to 9-11.
9-11 had nothing to do with the Afgans we supported. Actually, even the Taliban were only indirectly involved in allowing the AQ faction to base and train in Afghanistan.
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They supported the mujahideen, and the mujahideen even sent a small contingent to the 1991 Gulf War. But few in the West were referring to those groups as "Jihadists" from the early '80s during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan to the early '90s. They were the mujahideen in those days.
Jihadist is a fairly recent term in Western vocabularies used to refer to Islamic fighters, and it still is not used by our State Department. They mostly used specific names like Al Qaeda or other less general terms than "Jihadists". And we still get the PC definition of "Jihadists" as only some inner religious struggle engaged in by Muslims.
To throw the "Jihadists" term back on the mujahideen the US supported against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan is getting pretty loose with the facts, or the common use of terms to describe Muslim fighters of various eras.