The Establishment Clause violates the Establishment Clause?
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A liberal blog on the slowly emptying churches.
Info on Pakistan's war for survival against the Taliban. If this isn't the modern example of why appeasement sucks, I don't know what could be...
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4 comments:
I know that your specialty isn't history--to put it mildly--but you might want to brush up a little on the history of the Taliban, and of al-Qaeda. See, both did not exist prior to the Reagan Administration--because the CIA poured large amounts of money into Afghanistan (and into the Pakistani ISI) to build them, with help from Saudi Arabia's intelligence services. If Pakistan has been "appeasing" the Taliban (and the open support that the ISI has been giving them for the past two decades is more than appeasement, it's lifeblood), we provided the means for that appeasement. We also let 'em go at Tora Bora, but again, I realize that history is not your strong suit.
So by all means, poke a finger at the ISI--but please remember that behind it all is Ronald Reagan.
Carter started the CIA's funding of the jihadis after the USSR invaded Afghanistan. It was based out of the CIA's Pakistan office. For years, up until a DEMOCRATIC representative known as Charlie Wilson (read the book) increased the budget from pocket change to a billion dollars (that's if you include the Saudi's matching funds). While the Democrats and liberals were crying foul over Iran-Contra, they were sponsoring jihadis with the same passion as a nubile young college student walking in her first protest. You're right about our hand in fermenting the pot of terrorists, but you kindly (make that ideologically) forget that it was Carter, NOT Reagan, who started the fire. And it was LIBERALS that threw on the gasoline.
BTW, I was NOT pointing the finger at the ISI, if you must know. I am pointing the finger of appeasement to the entire Pakistani establishment for not taking on the monster they helped create. Just because its your fault does not mean you must listen to naive kids and give the Taliban some "breathing space".
Doc, your comments show that you are the one with no specialty in history. In fact, it pretty much shows that your entire grasp of the past may be limited to recalled what you had for lunch yesterday.
In theory, posting a comment on a political blog means that, in theory, the commenter is going to be informed. Considering that you managed to get Reagan and Carter confused, you may want to hit the library to look some things up. Like the definition of "fact," or "timelines."
Ah, here comes the fun part.
First, let's dispense with Charlie Wilson being "liberal"; he was of the Scoop Jackson wing of the Dems--a doughty Cold Warrior to the right of most Republicans for most of his career. You couyld, as they say, look it up.
Second, you are absoplutely correct; funding the Afghan mujaheddin did begin under Carter and Zbigniew Brzezinski. Then Reagan came into office, and the funding increased more than tenfold, until it was the CIA's biggest operation in history up to that point (again, you could look it up). So we go from trickle to flood, but that's not all. The internationla brigades raised by the Saudis (the nucleus of al-Qaeda) was a specifically Reagan-era project; Stinger missiles to the mujaheddin were a specifically Reagan-era project. We could, of course, go on and on. The only opposition to the arming of the proto-Taliban came from the Democrats--again, matter of record. (Yes, Charlie Wilson was a Texas Democrat. He did not represent the party as a whole, any more than Olympia Snowe is the voice of the Republicans.)
But please, keep plugging. You bring me many giggles.
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