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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Win Smith who wrote (38647)	8/19/2002 1:11:33 PM
From: Ilaine	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Did we get it "right" in Afghanistan, where "the moral equivalent of the Founding Fathers" morphed into Al Qaeda? Are you ever going to quit making this misrepresentation of the facts? Do you not know better, or do you just not care? When a country is taken over by a different set of rulers, which throws the former rulers out, how is that "morphing"? Did the Shah of Iran "morph" into the Ayatollah Komeini? I'll break the facts down into teeny-tiny bites. You tell me where our understanding of the facts differ. 1. Afghanistan was ruled by a Soviet-backed government. 2. There were Afghanis who wanted to throw this government out. 3. The Soviets sent their own troops into Afghanistan to keep their puppet government in place. 4. We backed the Afghanis who were fighting the Soviets. We called them freedom fighters, aka mujahideen. 5. The Soviets gave up and pulled out. 6. The Soviet-backed government held on for a little while longer, then collapsed. 7. There was a power vacuum and no certralized power for a couple of years. 8. The Taliban was a group of young men who were "educated" in madrassas in refugee camps in Pakistan, funded by ISI, the Pakistani version of the CIA. 9. They started restoring order in Afghanistan, which made them welcome. 10. Then they started a very repressive regime, which made them unpopular among those who wanted to live in a more liberal atmosphere. 11. Many of the former mujahideen and their families became refugees themselves, many in the US. 12. At least 1 million Afghani refugees have now returned to Afghanistan to rebuild it. 13. These people are grateful to the United States. As for what you term "sarcasm and cynicism", to me it comes under the heading of childish, gratuitous insults. You're within a hair's breadth of being put on "Ignore." I don't have a lot of tolerance for petulant venting.