Charlie Wilson's (HA!) War

[bluesmail]

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-01-08/my-charlie-wilson-war/ on edit by Fatima Bhutto

[TheWraith]

1. Ms. Bhutto overstates the causal relationship.

The guys who became the Taliban were one faction fighting the Soviets out of many. After the Soviet-backed government fell, the main body of the fighters ended up forming a government, which the Taliban then made war against.

[struggle4progress]

2. The US strategy, through the entire Reagan era, was to support

and arm radical fundamentalists (Jeane Kirkpatrick's so-called mujahideen) to fight in Afghanistan. The fanaticism of these recipients of US military equipment -- in particular, their violent religious intolerance and anti-democratic views -- was no secret throughout the 1980's, though predictably the US media did not dwell on such unpleasant matters. The geopolitical nature of US support was clearly shown by the fact that, following the Soviet withdrawal at the very end of the Reagan years, the first Bush administration chose to distance itself from the ongoing civil war and showed no public interest whatsoever in stabilizing the country. But as soon as the Taliban was clearly in control, Texas oil interests brought Taliban representatives to Texas for negotiations, a relationship that persisted when the second Bush brought his collection of oil company cronies to DC, in the form of a meeting of the second Bush with Taliban representatives at the White House in early 2001, with the Bush administration supplying millions of dollars of aid to the Taliban later in the year (but prior to 9/11). As the second Bush presidency was never known for original thinking but instead reflexively echoed the first Bush presidency, by promoting an agenda often based on themes from the 1980s (such as Iran) and early 1990s (such as Iraq) and by re-employing the same people (notably the Iran-Contra conspirators who were extremely interested in Middle eastern intrigues), there is some reason to think that the first Bush presidency had maintained contacts with the Taliban and that the second Bush merely attempted to resurrect that relationship

[sasquatch]

3. Ms. Bhutto is on a witch hunt and willing to prosecute anyone that might've associated w/the Taliban

Charlie Wilson was aiding the Afghans by fighting the Russians and had Herbert Herbert Bush pull the rug from underneath him before he could rebuild Afghanistan.