President Trump cannot take credit for knowing what is obvious. He has the advantage of the Monday morning quarterback.Carter was the one who started this. Reagan just picked up where he left off.
If other Presidents would have known the danger that Afganistan was morphing in to, we would have probably aided the Soviets in quelling the rise of radical Islamic Factions.
Instead, we held onto the decades old dogma that said "the enemy of my enemy is my friend", not realizing that the very people we were helping hated us just as much if not more than they hated the Soviets.
The Soviet Union finally died of natural causes. A corrupt Thugocracy/Socialist State cannot survive forever. But Religions that have as part of their teaching the hatred of all who do not believe as they do is a far worse enemy than any corrupt political system.
It is easy for President Trump to say the Russia's were right back then, because like the rest of the World, he did not know untill now how dangerous Radical Islamist are. Originally Posted by Jackie S
now that said. at that time, they weren't called terrorists. they were referred to as rebels. at that time before the invasion, they weren't supported by any western interests not to any meaningful extend that I was aware of at the time. However they were getting funding, I suspect from Pakistan via the muslim oil rich states.
the govt of Afghanistan was a client state of the USSR and the USSR could not allow that govt. to collapse which was the reason for the invasion to start with.