It was certainly an interesting situation in Afghanistan when Brezhnev invaded. My geopolitical friend and I got our maps out and were estimating the chances of the USSR making it all the way to the sea, which would have been somewhat of a coup for them. < As for Afghanistan, recall that back in those days the Soviets were the the big imperialistic danger. They actually were. Btw, their leader in 1979 was not Gorby, it was... whatsis name... Leonid Brezhnev. He started the war. Gorby lost it. And yes, the anti-soviet fighters back then were the good guys, and they helped take down the Soviet empire. But - things changed. The war against the Soviet (imperialistic) invasion merged with the emerging global jihad, and they became one. Don't know about you, but I was unable to foresee this 30 years ago. >
Indeed the USSR was the big bad wolf in the late 1970s. But giving them their own Vietnam was not a good idea.
With the advent of Gorby, it was immediately clear to me that the world had changed for the good. I could scarcely believe it when the USA continued to maintain the same belligerent stance against them. Of course one Gorby did not make a summer, but there was clearly a geopolitical shift in attitude from mass murder expansionism to modern civilisation.
Keeping the lid on Islam was a good idea then. East Timor involved carnage thanks to Moslem insurrection.
It would have made more sense to stabilize Afghanistan then by backing USSR and Gorby to help ease up.
It was clear to me in the 1970s that the Islamic ideology was the grave danger, with a war against Israel, backing of the IRA [from Libya] [many in the USA thought the IRA a spiffing group of terrorists], the Iranian revolution and hostage taking of the USA embassy, and nowhere looking very nice in the Islamic world. Yasser Arafat was wielding his gun. Yvonne Fletcher was murdered: en.wikipedia.org The USA Beirut barracks were bombed with mass USA deaths: en.wikipedia.org
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