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

To: one_less who wrote (166418)	7/18/2005 1:16:49 PM
From: Sun Tzu	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

We did NOT just help liberate Afghanistan and only to leave it to self determination. That statement of yours is a complete and utter mischaracterization. I can only hope that it came from lack of understanding rather than wilful misrepresentation. The short answer is this: (1) Unlike many parts of the world, Afghanistan did not have a history of civil war or "warlordism". It is a nation with ancient history and great civilization. The ethnic and religious rivalries that I spoke of never burst into explosions until foreign involvement. So I think the US-Pakistan-Saudi coalition bears fair responsibility for the aftermath. (2) You make it sound like there was some home-grown resistance movement that US simply supplied arms to and later left them alone to self determination. In fact the people that US left Afghanistan to were either CIA imports from Arabia or Pakistani trained zealots. Did US policy makers think that Saudi or Pakistan were more interested in welfare of Afghans than their own agenda? (3) Why don't you educate yourself as to who Hekmatyar was and what he did to his own countrymen with US/Pakistani assistance before dismissing US responsibility. Here is a good resource: institute-for-afghan-studies.org The bottom line remains, Pakistan did and still does want to own Afghanistan in one form or another. Saudis do want to spread Wahhabism all over the world. At the time US did not care one bit about the who or the how of Afghanistan war so long as maximal damage was done to Russians. The problem with the "Right" wing is that they use (and I mean the term in its most derogatory sense) American principles to promote their own agenda abroad only to flip-flop the situation with "pragmatic" concerns when their profits come into play. There was nothing unpredictable about Afghanistan except the extent to which it came back to bite us in the rear. After this, I let you have the last word.