Quote Originally Posted by amat View Post
I'm not stupid Nameless and I don't need an article from the National Socialist Review to tell me about how we filtered weapons into Afghanistan to fight the commies. The guy who wrote it conveniently ignores the fact that the Russians were slaughtering the Afghans to get their pipeline to the sea, it was either us or them.

The article could have been deduced to the last paragraph, we fucked up in ignoring Afghanistan after the Russians retreated but that's the only way we we fucked up there. We needed someone to fight the Russians and only those people were willing to step up for us.
That's the thing. US didn't ignore them. They helped Talibans to stay in place and even invited them to Washington to promote their image as an allied regime. They knew what they were all about but it was very ok for them, as long as they deliver.

"In March 2001, several Taliban officials, including Sayed Rahmattulah Hashimi, Mullah Omar's personal advisor, were invited to Washington by their U.S. lobbyist, Leila Helms, the niece of former CIA Director Richard Helms. The agenda included discussions of extraditing bin Laden as well as facilitating American companies' access to oil reserves in central Asia. The delegation met with representatives of the Directorate of Central Intelligence (DCI) and the Bureau of Intelligence and Research of the State Department.

This visit provoked concern and criticism in Washington over how Hashimi obtained a visa, a plane ticket, security clearance and access to American institutions -- including the State Department and the National Security Council -- despite travel restrictions on Taliban leadership imposed by U.N. sanctions (the official answer was that Hashimi fell below the rank of senior official covered by the sanctions.)"

US - Taliban Oil pipeline negotiations. - Democratic Underground