There were no Soviet-Afghan or Taliban-Northern Alliance Wars:

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

To me the title of this, which I have no doubt will attract some attention as well they should reflects an odd question that's propped up with regard to the original US intervention in Afghanistan in 2001. The presumption seems to be if the USA didn't invade that there would be no refugee issues and Afghanistan was perfectly peaceful and lacking refugees and bombed-out cities beforehand. The thing is that this must be people who have forgotten the entire duration of war which brought us this image:



The USA did not begin war in Afghanistan, the first superpower war there began in 1979 when Soviet generals, afraid that the revolution in Iran would mean the Muslim peoples of the USSR like the Azerbaijanis, Chechens, Tatars, Kazakhs, and so on would spread north into Soviet territory, where Muslims were treated rather horrifically, there being all of one Madrassa in the entire USSR by the time it fell apart (there were rather more than that in the 1920s). Naturally when Khomeini came out of fucking nowhere in 1979 the Soviets were concerned that the fall of their puppet regime in Afghanistan meant that might start spreading onto Soviet soil.

So the Soviets go in and Mujahideen found out that an Enfield Rifle and guerrilla tactics don't work on guys who burn entire cities to the ground and have Hind helicopter gunships. The USA starts intervening later on, backing both Saddam Hussein against Khomeini himself and the Mujahideen against the Soviets (including my favorite Rambo movie as part of the propaganda for that). This changed the war and it became a Soviet Vietnam, the Soviets unable to force an actual victory. Then they withdraw....and surprise, surprise their puppet state almost unified all of Afghanistan before the USSR falls apart.

*Then* it's back to the races with the Afghans chasing out the Communists and the Mujahideen started fighting amongst themselves when the Afghan Bolsheviks (backing a culturally hostile ideology propped up by a lot of foreign cash) start fighting and this was what was going on in 2001. The USA didn't start that war, and the guys Reagan backed were the Northern Alliance, not the Taliban, who were some of those refugees.

The USA did not invent the refugee crisis, during the Soviet invasion somewhere around one in every four refugees was from Afghanistan in the 1980s. So where did it happen that people forgot the Northern Alliance even existed and pretend that the USA caused the first 20 years of warfare in Afghanistan? And that if the USA did not intervene that this would never happen? In my opinion this kind of criticism is blatant Anti-Americanism and part of the version of history that forgets there was a Soviet Union and it was a formidable state.

Comments

[mrsilence.livejournal.com]

Well I mean derr.

Didn't anyone watch Rambo?

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

The thing is that people in this community and elsewhere on the Internet are making claims like "Bullshit. It was about being gung ho and killing someone in response to 9/11. Satisfying the monsters that US military culture creates. Those monsters are now dancing in the streets."

If those people have suddenly erased Afghan history from 1979 onward, what do they think 1979 and the civil war in the 1990s were? Tea parties with elder stalk squirts charged with rose water for entertainment?

[mrsilence.livejournal.com]

Might I suggest that the talk of "the monsters that U.S. military culture creates" is simply a reference to U.S. military support for "insurgents" during the Russian occupation?

Rather than a denial of the past Russian impact and how that createsdterrorists (although as a comment it certainly overlooks that, unjustly) I think it's more a statement about the ongoing American impact and how that continues to create terrorists.

[blue-mangos.livejournal.com]

Wait, who thinks that Afghanistan was a peaceful happy place before the US invasion? There is an entire generation there that have known nothing but fighting. Isn't all this common knowledge?

I was actually just talking about this the other day with a cab driver, who was from there. He was telling me how his uncle was a member of the mujahideen during the Soviet invasion and how he taught him how to fire a gun at the age of 5.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

To judge by comments on this community people like Anfalicious and I've seen some other people on Livejournal and quite a few of the Russo-trolls and Juche fanboys I've met elsewhere on the Internet pretend this was so, who seems under the impression that the USA was the one that leveled Afghanistan and that the refugee crisis began in 2001, not the 1980s (and the Taliban was an instance of that biting back).

You'd think it'd be common knowledge but if your approach to that is this: "Bullshit. It was about being gung ho and killing someone in response to 9/11. Satisfying the monsters that US military culture creates. Those monsters are now dancing in the streets."

Either US military culture exterted mind-control in 1979 or frankly *some people* forget that people outside the USA can fight civil wars without Washington's involvement.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Also Lubezeiro as an example of the kind of people who seem to think that nothing happens in Afghanistan without Washington's manipulations.

[blue-mangos.livejournal.com]

The US certainly did not create the problem in Afghanistan or Bin Laden (although you all did help train him) but let's be honest here, the killing of him and the Afghan invasion was about nothing else but 9/11. If it wasn't the US would have intervened years before when reports were coming out about women there having the highest suicide rate in the world, drinking drain cleaner to escape living under the Taliban's regime. The world sat by and did nothing.

If it makes you feel any better, at least it had a positive impact. My cab driver told me he left in 99 and went back last year and he was amazed at how much better life was there now.

[a-new-machine.livejournal.com]

Juche has fanboys?

[anfalicious.livejournal.com]

No one is saying that. Underlankers is misrepresenting the words of others, along with History, in an attempt to justify a barbarian bloodlust.

[whoasksfinds.livejournal.com]

killing bin laden is a barbarian bloodlust? spare us the drama.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

No, I'm asking you if you're aware that there was a refugee problem preceding the US invasion, and that the Taliban were products of this preceding refugee wave.

[oportet.livejournal.com]

For you to even suggest that the US isn't responsible for every problem in the Middle East is crazy.

(Correct, but still craaaaaaaaaaaaaaazy)

[anfalicious.livejournal.com]

So, US not responsible for any of their actions overseas, nor the way anyone responds to those actions. Got it.

Gotta go, gonna live by your morality and go fuck my neighbours wife and wipe my arse with his dog, but it's totes OK cos he has some Pepsi in the fridge that I really want.

See how I used hyperbole there to set up a strawman against your argument. Fun huh?!

[whoasksfinds.livejournal.com]

by your standard, wouldn't al qaeda be responsible for how we respond to their actions?

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Not in this specific case with the war there having begun in 1979 as a result of Soviet political issues and the Taliban having held only parts of Afghanistan preceding.

[oportet.livejournal.com]

I think you missed the point of the original post, or would rather invent a version of history that suits your opinion best.

The US didn't take a peaceful, prosperous land of happiness and sunshine and turn it into shit - it was already shit.

You can argue that we are continuing the problem as much as you want, but it didn't start with us.

(To use your analogy - yes, it is like you fucking the neighbors wife and wiping your ass with his dog - only you're the 3rd or 4th guy on the block to do it)

[anfalicious.livejournal.com]

So imperialism fucked up a country and it therefore should be fixed with imperialism? Pfft.

This post is just revisionism trying to write in the US as heroes when all that happened was people got used as pawns in a geopolitical power struggle. It seems to me those frothing at the mouth over bin Laden's death are the ones who have forgotten history. His motives never changed. His motives were the same when the US were financing him as they were when the US were looking for him. He didn't change from freedom fighter to terrorist, the US changed the narrative.

You seem to be ignoring the entire interaction between the West and Islam. The war has been going on for 1000 years and both sides have plenty of reason to hate each other. After 9/11 there was potential for a real discussion between the West and Islam about fundamentalism and imperialism; instead the US got all imperial under the guise of chasing fundamentalists, whilst at the same time necessitating painting all Islam as the enemy to maintain popular support for two occupations of Islamic countries. Why do these people hate America? This is why.

To quote myself: "Bullshit. It was about being gung ho and killing someone in response to 9/11. Satisfying the monsters that US military culture creates. Those monsters are now dancing in the streets."

Nothing you have written here contradicts that. In fact, if, as you are hilariously trying to posit, the war in Afghanistan has something to do with the Soviets or the conditions in Afghanistan, then why did the US sit around for over a decade and only invaded in direct response to an attack on US soil. I'm actually quite shocked that you've bought the "freedom" bullshit fed to you by your government.

This is the thing that has surprised me most; seemingly reasonable and compassionate people dancing in the streets because someone was killed. I understand it's an emotional issue; but vengeance is such an ugly emotion. Fine, you need your closure, but for me it just reinforces that American culture is barbarous, violent and evil.

[whoasksfinds.livejournal.com]

He didn't change from freedom fighter to terrorist, the US changed the narrative.

the US didn't fund the mujahadeen in support of bin laden or so that the taliban could take charge of afghanistan. they did it to kick the soviets out.

whilst at the same time necessitating painting all Islam as the enemy to maintain popular support for two occupations of Islamic countries

I also want to speak tonight directly to Muslims throughout the world. We respect your faith. It's practiced freely by many millions of Americans, and by millions more in countries that America counts as friends. Its teachings are good and peaceful, and those who commit evil in the name of Allah blaspheme the name of Allah. The terrorists are traitors to their own faith, trying, in effect, to hijack Islam itself. The enemy of America is not our many Muslim friends; it is not our many Arab friends. Our enemy is a radical network of terrorists, and every government that supports them. Our war on terror begins with al Qaeda, but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped, and defeated.

Bush - 9/20/2001

[mahnmut.livejournal.com]

the US didn't fund the mujahadeen in support of bin laden or so that the taliban could take charge of afghanistan. they did it to kick the soviets out.

That's the funny thing with doing things while planning for the short-term and totally neglecting the mid- and long-term implications from your actions.

[anfalicious.livejournal.com]

The first point has been answered elsewhere.

If you really think there hasn't been a war on Islam in the last 10 years in the West then you have some serious delusions. You act like people didn't go batshit crazy over a mosque being built in New York, or people haven't been burning Korans, or that security the world over hasn't started profiling Muslims, just to give three examples because lists look nice in threes.

Also, you may be interested in learning about the Dog Whistle (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog-whistle_politics).

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Erm, your posts keep pretending that the USA was the only one to ever invade Afghanistan and that we are the cause of the refugee crisis. I will ask you again: do you or do you not realize that there were 20 years of prior warfare there?

The West has not been at war with Islam for 1,000 years. Some dynasties of Western and Eastern Christianity have been at war with some Muslim dynasties but that's not the same thing. They hate American not for this but for propping up the Mubaraks and King Abdullahs and calling it freedom.

Actually what I've written *has* contradicted it by telling you that the USA was not the one to originate it, so don't blame it for creating what was already there. The USA doesn't intervene there'd still be a refugee crisis and bombed out cities. Bush and Obama aren't supervillains.

[whoasksfinds.livejournal.com]

but for me it just reinforces that American culture is barbarous, violent and evil.

im sure you made the same self righteous moral judgemnts about iraqi culture when they celebrated saddams death right?

[airiefairie.livejournal.com]

Sharbat Gula is absolutely stunning <3

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

They did a follow-up on her in a later issue during Bush's Administration.

I can't quite remember the specific year they did so but it was one of the most interesting ones that National Geographic's done lately.

[meus-ovatio.livejournal.com]

The irony is how quickly and easily the liberal bourgeois dehumanize their political counterparts. They watch the news and come away with a totalistic narrative about "barbarians". The irony, of course, is that they think they're accusing others of dehumanization. Plus, "barbarians". Lol... racism defined.