Cheat Sheet
The Best In Brief
The Taliban Is Using Our Weapons
The United States originally armed the Taliban when it fought against the Soviet Union in the 1980s. Today, though we may now be its enemy, the Taliban still has a way of getting its hands on our weapons, apparently: After discovering that the weapons on 17 or 30 insurgent corpses in Afghanistan were identical to weapons the U.S. had provided to the Afghan government, The New York Times reports that it is likely “that munitions procured by the Pentagon have leaked from Afghan forces for use against American troops.” The United States has failed to account for thousands of rifles issued to Afghan Security forces. “With only spotty American and Afghan controls on the vast inventory of weapons and ammunition sent into Afghanistan during an eight-year conflict, poor discipline and outright corruption among Afghan forces may have helped insurgents stay supplied.”
exploora
That is pretty awful but what did they expect was going to happen?
cregis
Not a surprise! Didn't we give arms and WMDs to Iraq during its war with Iran? When will we get some sanity in our government? Not until people stop making profits from war.
Kirbonicus
Reagan isn't dead. This current wars we are fighting... Reagan's wars.
Reagan armed Iraq to fight Iran... and now we are fighting a war in Iraq because the person Reagan funded, Saddam, went rogue.
Reagan funded the Taliban to fight Russia... and now we are in Afghanistan because those Regan funded, the Taliban in general and Bin Laden specifically, went rogue.
What did Reagan think would happen in a Russia without a strong government? Or did he even think?
We are still cleaning up Reagan's messes.
squiggy
I would be willing to go along with your thinking if you would add that Carter was a fiasco at foreign policy and Reagan needed to take the reigns and Clinton dropped the ball with follow through in foreign policy. It is more comforting that Obama has smoothly taken over with Bush left off. Changing strategy is one thing but ignoring problems altogether is quite another.
Kirbonicus
I agree that Reagan had some cleaning up to do because of Carter... but to leave the ultimate clean-up to future generations? To arm crazies to fight crazies... what did he think would happen, they would kill each other off?
Reagan's foreign policy was horrible. He ran it like there would be no '30 years in the future'... there was absolutely no thought into what MAY happen... just what he thought SHOULD happen.
But again, you are right about Carter. He was not a good President for different reasons than why Reagan was not a good President.
squiggy
I would rather look at it like continutiy, it is clean up but nothing is ever solved in a short period of time. The problem is Presidents see 4 or 8 years and then pass it on and we have no "American Foreign Policy" strategy per se, each admin. makes up their own, except for this pass from Bush to Obama. It's the only one I remember.
Issywise
"What did Reagan think would happen in a Russia without a strong government?"
Huh? Your faulting Reagan for the fall of the Soviet Union?
It is absurd that people claim he caused it--he had no more to do with it than the USSR had to do with our 1960s, but to both assume Reagan caused the fall of the USSR and to fault him for it is amazing.
squiggly:
Does every permissible point have to be balanced with a corresponding point directed against the other political party? Franklin Pierce sucked as a president, but Reagan still made his own legacy. What's the necessary logical nexus requiring a pairing of criticism of Reagan and Carter?
Are we so partisan that every comment must be bent to serve partisan purposes?
On Bush & Obama--to further make the point about the non-usefulness of partisan thinking, isn't it funny how reality imposes itself on the people actually governing the nation. GW Bush campaigned against "nation building" and spent hundreds of billions nation building. The day Obama took office, he started seeing realities that he just couldn't wish away. Carter may be the one president who believed his campaign rhetoric that love will conquer all, only to find out people with titles like General Secretary and Ayatollah were a reality he shouldn't ignore.
squiggy
Continuity issywise, nothing happens in a vacuum.
Kirbonicus
The US outspent the USSR in the 80's (as is evidenced by that being the begining of the current deficit). And we didn't just outspend them by a little... we outspent them by A LOT.
Also, by tyring to fight Russia by not directly fighting Russia (and making it so they had to spend more money than they had available), we sold weapons to the Taliban and Osama Bin Laden to fight Russia in Afghanistan. Great plan... until you consider what may happen after their war with Russia ends. What happens to the weapons? Do they just disappear? Do fairies pick them up and just float away? Or POSSIBLY, MAYBE would these militant people continue to be militant just against a different 'devil'? Does 'jihad' ever end?
All to make sure Russia had more to contend with then they could afford.
So, Issy, Reagan played a MAJOR role in making sure the USSR was too bankrupt to continue to reign and thus had to fold.
And our soldiers are being shot at and killed by weapons REAGAN sold the Taliban to fight RUSSIA.
Redhead5050
So many of our current problems can be traced back to Reagan. America always arms its enemys...good for the war business...
squiggy
yes and they tracked right on through to GH, Clinton, Bush and now Obama. The same old villains, different sides in different wars, interesting isn't it.
guiltybystander
war is hell, eh? and bureaucracy? even hell-ier
Martyz42
Hmmm, let me see, I am trying to remember the fellow with the German sounding name that worked for the Irish guy who the Pre of the US, you know the cowboy guy & the other guy with the heart problems, yeh I seem to recall all three of them worked in the same administration, yeh & I seem to recall the cowboy "B" actor guy when he was not cat napping during briefings telling all his guys like Hmm Oliver South or something like that to do whatever he wanted including breaking US law & this German sounding named guy, Rummmyyy or something going over shaking hands & all smiles with some dictator named Satin ot Sadom or somthing like that & giving this discator fellow things like bombs, bullets & OH yeh GAS that was used to kill people, yeh this Rummy guy gave him gas..
Now that was not enough for the "B" actor guy Ronny fellow so he also sent his posse over to a place that grew nothing but poppies that made that Oliver guy money cause he was using it for some other dictator to kill people in South America but that's another story, anyway this posse saw sent to Afghanistan & given to this big time buddy of a rich oil family called,Bush, let me see, it was something like Ben Lod something or other but anyway the "B" actor when not snoozing sent a bunch of bombs, bullets& missiles to this Ben Lod fellow & he took over this Afchan place & guess what, the next guy that took over, I think he was the VP for the Cowboy fellow, he & he son decided that all the guns, deadly gas, bullets, missiles they had given to these folks were already bought & paid for by US tax payers so all the Bush friends allready made tons of buckies in the stock they owned along with the oil so anyway the son of the VP of the Cowboy "B" actor decided his buddies in the war making biz needed more buckies soooooo he decided to go to war again, he just make up a bunch of BS along with his buddy who was giving that dictator fellow deadly gas n stuff & also invaded a country that we helped liberate a year or so before & then began to fight against the very guns n stuff he & his daddy & the b actor had given them in the first place & here we are today.
Almost half the people in this country think that the "B" actor is some sort of hero rather then a simple minded shallow man with no concept of reality having the abiity to do nothing that took thought other than "READ A GREAT SPEECH" & the first Bush guy kicked out cause he had no clue what a checkstand in a super market was & the second one that should be tried for pre meditated murder of hundreds of thousands of people by going to war on a LIE & conspiracy to commit treason & that pother little thing called"WAR CRIMES"...
Long story but I am old & I think it is about right, wonder why on earth the folks that now run Washington DC are so frightened to put the whole bunch into prison where they belong, you know along with the black guys that sold a dime bag of pot, I mean what is worse, a dime bag of pot or war crimes, well I guess the guys are all walking around free so maybe thats the anwser....
vulgrin
Forget these weapons. Every time you pump gas into your car, you are giving money to terrorists, their schools, and their lifestyles. Your money filters through Saudi Arabia which then often turns around and funds "humanitarian" projects the help create more hardline terrorists.
Read "Flat, Hot and Crowded" by Tom Friedman to understand how we are funding our own undoing, and what we can do about it.
Redhead5050
Well done, Marty...I remember that history as well...
Hawnzz
We trained Osama... we trained the forefathers of Al Qaeda. We armed Iraq. It's all history. It is a cycle. I hope we are learning our lesson.
squiggy
Absolutely. I hope there is no more an enemy of my enemy is my friend.
bezvodka
The same thing happened and may still be happening in Iraq. When you are dealing with a corrupt government in a country based on corruption, tribal loyalties, and where poverty is rampant, you must expect that what you give will be misused.
If we give more billions to Pakistan the same thing will happen. Money given to increase protection of their nukes will instead go to building more nukes. Weapons given to the Pakistani government will go to the Taliban because much of the Army and most of the SSI is sympathetic to the Taliban.
mattbenzor
BLOW BACK from the Reagan and Bush41 the skull and bone's man afghan policy .What a mistake that was ?
amapola101
No MORE of OUR money,going To anywhere.We lie in bed with our enemies, call them allies, and then they become our enemies. We teach, them,build them,supply,them and here we are.In never ending wars,throwing our finances, there.
democracyforall
duh, I'm not a military person, but at least I know the bad guys are going to try to get their hands on whatever. The Afghan army is corrupt? duh. Time to stop giving them weapons until we can shake out the bad guys and make sure their own army is fully committed.
shortcourse
Do they do gun shows in their flea markets? Any good deals?
slammyapple
The Taliban fought the Soviet Union in the 1980s??? Wow, is that statement revisionism, ignorance or just intellectual laziness? The Taliban did not exist in the 1980s -- they arose in reaction to the corruption of the mujahideen, aka the 'freedom fighters' the US armed to fight the Soviets and who then turned on each other to tear their country apart.
This is not a minor detail -- how does the US expect to guide the future of a country whose past it doesn't bother to understand, even as it sends in tens of thousands of more troops? The remnants of the mujahideen are still a dominant political force in Afghanistan, and (with the exception of freaks like Hekmatyar) are blood enemies of the Taliban.
Thank you.
As a first time user, your comment has been submitted for review. It can take anywhere from a few hours to a day or two for your comment to be reviewed, depending on the time of week and the volume of comments we receive.