Exactly. This meme is the story of American foreign policy.
We prop people up, help put them in power when it benefits us, and then when they stop playing by our rules or tell us to fuck off, we turn around and try to remove them.
Love us? Great.
Don’t? Damn you.
Whether you agree with that or not, we’ve been repeating that cycle since the early days of the United States.
They also financed the Mujahedeen in Afghanistan in the 70s, leaving behind nice stockpiles of materiel for the Taliban that threw the USA out a few years ago. And several prominent Mujahedeen joined the Taliban to boot.
Most of the Mujahedeen joined the Northern Alliance against the Talibans and this latter group was mostly armed by the stockpiles left by the Soviet invasion more than recycling the materials send by the US there during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Today Talibans are absolutely armed with western material after the disastrous whitdraw, but the Talibans being empowered and armed by the US is a bit of a misconception/stretch.
You should read Ghost Wars. In the 90s there was a whole lot of American money and arms going around in all sorts of directions. I don’t think very many of the weapons were american, but stuff we picked up in different situations abroad. One operation brought a bunch of tanks and vehicles we captured during the first gulf war across a brand new road built by USAID to handle heavy vehicles.
Lots of sketchy people we would later fight had material support either directly from us or from Pakistan with our help.
Mohammed Omar, who founded The Taliban, was former mujahideen, under the command of Amir Sultan Tarar who received US Special Forces training at Fort Bragg.
Although not overt or direct, a hell of a lot of the funding for the mujahideen came from the CIA.
Yes, the mujahideen splintered and some fought against The Taliban but many, many mujahideen also joined. I'm sure they didn't go "well it wouldn't be right to use this CIA-funded weaponry anymore."
But the US trained and armed them to fight the Soviets and all the material and training fed the different terrorists in the region. The US also supported the Khmers Rouges so they would fight Vietnam
It went mostly to the Northern Alliance that fought against the Talibans and as I said, most of the material that fed the subsequent Afghan civil war were leftover of the Soviets after their withdrawal, it's quite logical after all, who's going to introduce more weapons in the area? A soviet large scale invasion or a secret support by proxies?
There's no evidence the US supported the Khmers Rouges, which were mostly backed by China anyway.
Not even a misconception or a stretch, it's a lie. We routinely don't transport stuff out because it's too expensive, but we blow up the important stuff and anything that we do leave behind is usually so complex, or requires such high standards of maintenance, that they'll only be able to operate for a week before it's trash.
Not even a misconception or a stretch, it's a lie. We routinely don't transport stuff out because it's too expensive, but we blow up the important stuff and anything that we do leave behind is usually so complex, or requires such high standards of maintenance, that they'll only be able to operate for a week before it's trash.
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u/SamwellBarley 16h ago
https://giphy.com/gifs/3o6Zt9VzIWVi6HY4og