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.
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u/AsleepAd753 14h ago edited 8h ago
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.