At some other threads there are some fantasists trying to white wash history and claim USA innocents in the nightmarish Middle East situation and in regard to the creation of deadly Muslim extremist.
Here’s a little history folks like that always seem to forget.
Not to mention the many follow up follies.
Nor our insane Shock’n Awe adventure for profit.
But, here let’s think about early days.
Reagan's Osama Connection How he turned a jihadist into a terrorist kingpin. By Fred Kaplan http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/war_stories/2004/06/reagans_osama_connection.html In early December, Gorbachev summoned President Najibullah, the puppet leader of Afghanistan, to give him the news: The Soviet troops would be leaving within 18 months; after that, he was on his own. Two months later, on Feb. 23, 1987, Gorbachev assured the Politburo that the troops wouldn't leave right away. He first had to foster a stable environment for the reigning government and to maintain a credible image with India, the Soviet Union's main ally in the region. The exit strategy, he said, would be a negotiated deal with Washington: The Soviets pull out troops; the Americans stop their arms shipments to the rebels. However, within days, Gorbachev learned to his surprise that Reagan had no interest in such a deal. In a conversation on Feb. 27 with Italy's foreign minister, Giulio Andreotti, Gorbachev said, "We have information from very reliable sources … that the United States has set itself the goal of obstructing a settlement by any means," in order "to present the Soviet Union in a bad light." If this information is true, Gorbachev continued, the matter of a withdrawal "takes on a different light." Without U.S. cooperation, Gorbachev couldn't proceed with his plans to withdraw. ... In his magisterial book, Ghost Wars {http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1594200076/qid=1086903870/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/102-1702016-6589764?v=glance&s=books} (possibly the best diplomatic history written in the past decade), Steve Coll recounts the fateful consequences: ...However, Reagan—and those around him—can be blamed for ignoring the rise of Islamic militancy in Afghanistan and for failing to see Gorbachev's offer to withdraw as an opportunity to clamp the danger. Certainly, the danger was, or should have been, clear. Only a few years had passed since the Ayatollah Khomeini rose to power in Iran—the shah toppled, the U.S. Embassy employees held hostage, the country turned over to the mullahs, the region suddenly destabilized. Reagan beat Jimmy Carter so decisively in the 1980 election in part because of the hostage crisis. Gorbachev had accepted that Afghanistan would become an Islamic country. But he assumed that Reagan, of all people, would have an interest in keeping it from becoming militantly, hostilely, Islamist.