Gotta admit, here’s a culprit I hadn’t really thought of before. But after reading this, I can’t really say it’s all that much of a stretch.
So who is to blame for the current Afghanistan fiasco?
There is plenty of blame to go around. President Biden, for sure. President Obama, yes. And the second President Bush, yes, for the insane mission of nation-building, trying to install a Western-style democracy in a land that was wholly unsuited for it.
But here is a name nobody is mentioning but should. That name is…Ronald Reagan.
Yeah, I know, I know. Just slow your roll a little, and hear this guy out.
I hate saying that. I supported the sainted Reagan rabidly back in the day, and I still do in many ways. But now, in retrospect, I see Reagan as the ultimate culprit for the current fiasco. History may yet look to Ronald Reagan’s decision to intervene in Afghanistan as his biggest mistake.
But, gee, Reagan’s decision sure seemed like the right decision at the time. I certainly supported it.
The Russian war in Afghanistan consisted of three phases. Phase 1: The Russians invaded with a classical WWII army — and promptly got their backsides handed to them. The USSR lost Phase 1.
But the Russians learned their lessons and for the next phase used a modern strategy of helicopters and other air assets to obliterate the Mujaheddin. It worked. The USSR won Phase 2 and, as a result, completely controlled the country. The Mujaheddin were exiled across the Khyber Pass in Pakistan, licking their wounds.
Phase 3 can be summed up in one word: Stinger, as in Stinger missiles. With Stinger missiles, which Uncle Ronnie gave them, the Mujaheddin took air control away from the Russians, drove them out, and the rest is — not only history, but now current events, too.
For a short time, the USSR had built a classical Marxist state in Afghanistan. So what are the hallmarks of such a regime?
A police state — yes. Brutal suppression of dissent — yes. Lots of suppression of human rights, lots of imprisonment, lots of executions, lots of corruption — yes, yes, yes.
But now think of what else it means.
Suppression of organized religion. In this case, this isn’t gentle, harmless Christianity we’re talking about. Rather, this is jihadist Islam. This would have been suppressed savagely, not least because, unlike Christianity, such an Islam really is a threat to a secular, atheistic state.
So, inside this classical, secular, atheist Marxist state, there’d have been no room at all for al-Qaeda or the Taliban or ISIS. Afghanistan would never have become a world base for Islamic terror. There never would have been an attack on 9/11.
Here are other hallmarks of Marxism, and these are positive, at least in the context of a medieval Islamic nation: universal health. Universal education, and for girls as well as for boys.
If Marxism had been allowed to prevail in Afghanistan, its women would have been immensely better off than what actually happened to them.
It might sound ugly and cruel, but at this stage of things I can’t honestly say I give much of a shit about what might happen to women in ANY Moslem shithole. And while we’re being brutally honest here, I also can’t say I care much more about the fate of the thousands of American State Dept personnel who are stuck there, either. Same goes for “our Afghani allies”—translators, ANA soldiers, etc.
Yes, I do agree that they’ve been stabbed in the back—betrayed and ruthlessly abandoned by a faithless, heartless “ally.” So stipulated. But see, those poor, hapless Afghanis made the same mistake a goodly number of Normal Americans here at home still make: their conception of what the USA—specifically, the US government—is and what it actually is are, shall we say, at variance. WIDE variance.
Tens of thousands will die horribly at the hands of some of the most vicious, barbaric monsters the race is capable of producing because of all this. I’m sorry for that. I wish it wasn’t happening. But there’s also not one damned thing I can do about it. For those doomed souls who acted on their misplaced faith that the wholly-evil US government would have their backs and honor its promise to protect them, the sad fact is this:
There is a silver lining to this whole clusterfuck, however tarnished. If nothing else, after Biden’s Big Afghan Adventure, there can be NO excuse for not recognizing the true nature of the US federal government—what it is; what it does; what its intentions are; what it actually gives a shit about, and what it doesn’t. The mask has been ripped away for good; there’s no longer any way to conceal the ugly truth. The more people awakened by the revelations of this past week, the more likely that corrective action will be taken, and the sooner it will happen. If so, we’ll all be better off for it.
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Heh. I was thinking of that exact clip as I read the first part, then I scrolled the page and there it was.
As for blaming Reagan…eh, maybe. I still think his greatest mistake was choosing Bush the Elder as veep. But maybe that was necessary to win. Trusting Tip O’Neill to keep his word was also a huge blunder. Arming the muj…maybe, maybe not. Afghanistan was not the cause of 9/11 even if (some) of the personnel and planning came from there. Wahhabist money and fanatacism caused 9/11 and a whole lot more trouble besides. Look to our “allies” in Saudi Arabia for the root of the problem.
Yea, I agree Haz. It’s quite a stretch to blame Reagan. Hell, even Pakistan in the early 80’s wasn’t rabid sharia yet.
And I’m not one of Reagan’s biggest fans. I’m not underestimating Reagan’s contributions to the cause of America, but he failed in several important ways. Still, he was the best president since Eisenhower before Trump came along.
Reagan was flawed (as all humans are) and made some serious mistakes. But on the whole he was a quite good president, and far better than the alternatives. It is possible to look at Obama, as terrible a president as he was, and still think the US dodged bullets in his GOPe opponents. But a second term of Carter, with the Iran hostage crisis still ongoing and inflation raging and “malaise” and the USSR still on the world stage? Or Mondale, for heaven’s sake? Count me firmly in the Reagan camp!
I think it safe to say Carter has lost 1st and 2nd place as worst ever.