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

To: Sun Tzu who wrote (166434)	7/18/2005 2:58:17 PM
From: one_less	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

"I am saying that US' single-minded pursuit of inflicting the most damage to the Russians at the lowest monetary cost and its later lack of appreciation for the people who fought its biggest foe was immoral." We seemed to have gotten a pretty good chew on this morsel of fat. I started off by declaring that neither economic interests nor noble cause could be justified to completely trump the other. I will concede the we did not consider the our efforts in Afghanistan in the 1980's was overly weighted with economic interests. We backed the mujahideen forces who were anti-Soviet and appeared, at the time, to be the only force willing to go anywhere and stand up for the rights of their fellow Muslims to claim their independence from oppressors. They were highly regarded by the Afghanis, as heros who had helped them to win their liberty. That seemed noble to me at the time. Remembering back to 1989, I don't see how any of us could have for seen the resulting Al-Quaida world terrorist network of modern times, let alone the brutal oppression of the Afhani people by the Taliban government. It would not have made sense to any one in 1989 that we should go to war with the Mujahideen of Afghanistan. If you can find scholarship of that time that says we should have I would be very interested in seeing it. OBL is not your typical evil despot. He has succumbed to the tyranny of mind that is brought about by extreme loyalty to dogma. He sees him self as a savior; unlike Saddam who just wanted to stand higher up on the dung heap. It makes me sad that the term that should identify a person who would put his life on the line to struggle for good, has been corrupted to label a person willing to terrorize innocent human beings(mujahideen).