Blame America pt 1 Afghanistan

There are those who believe that it was American support for the Mujahideen is the cause for the creation fo the terrorists. Their thinking goes that because America is a bad thing, its actions will have pernicious consequences. But its not American support for the Mujahideen that created Osama or the Taliban, it was the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan that did. When the Soviets invaded, Islamists from the whole Muslim world took action to support resistance and coordinate their actions. Networks formed, leaders built organizations, and a lot of Islamists got quite a bit of combat, weapons, and munitions experience. Had America done nothing, all of this would have occured.

Instead, America did get involved and hoped for the best. But as happens so often, American assistance didn't purchase friends. Those who suppose that allegience is for sale think everyone is a mercenary. Our purpose there, after all was not to "buy" friends, but to stop Soviet agression. This explains America's sudden withdrawl after the withdrawl of the Soviets. The forces on the ground were Islamist, we had no friends there to protect or to stay engaged with.

Like the terrorist networks themselves, built by the Soviets as a way to combat the West by other means, the Islamist networks were formed by the Soviets as an unanticipated consequence of their invasion of Afghanistan. The merger of these two Soviet creations, the state sponsorship of international terrorism and the Islamist organizations devoted to establishing Islamic governments and purging Islamic societies of non-Islamic culture proved to be the challenge of our current era.