Russia made Afghanistan a huge roach motel. It didn’t stop attacks on our African Embassys, or the Cole. Lebannon’s roach hotel didn’t stop the attacks against Israel. I don’t believe the roach motel theory works at all.
But you nuke a few islamic cities and tell the rest of islam they are on the short list and they will .....as you say.... given the opportunity to leave that onerous religion, they take it. Unless we can replace nuking them with quick covert government overthrows that guarantee FREEDOM OF RELIGION, many will have to die.
And although it true that many are in fear of speaking out against islam in mulah controlled countries, the same comportment of moslums is seen in places where moslums live in complete freedom. England and the USA and France. Did anyone see even one single moslum on the face of the earth cheer the death of Osama?
The vast majority like being feared by and protected by Freedom loving people. They need to learn to respect U.S. as well........and right now they only see us as infidels....every last one of them.
It is estimated that the Russians killed between 150-180,000 fighters, but the overwhelming majority were either Afghans or Pakistanis. There was no worldwide push for jihad to free Afghanistan.
In large part this was because the US sponsored the northern Afghans to do most of the heavy lifting. They were more nationalist than Taliban, and were both ethnically and religiously different. For the most part, the Taliban just stayed in Pakistan, hoping, with some justification, to flood in and take power once the Soviets were kicked out by the northern alliance.
At the same time, OBL was building his organization parallel to, and friendly with the Taliban, likely headquartered in Quetta. So when the Taliban took power, it was a natural outgrowth that al-Qaeda would move in.
So the bottom line is that to some extent, Afghanistan was to the Soviets what Vietnam was to us, but with roles reversed. And while the Soviets tried to use some US Indian Wars tactics, that was about the end of the parallels.