John Kelsey wrote: > > At 07:42 AM 3/20/03 -0800, James A. Donald wrote: > ... > >The story you are telling is part of a big commie lie -- that > >the US aided the bigoted Taliban against the elightened > >communists who created a constitutional democracy where every > >man and every women have a vote, and universal education and > >health care were guaranteed, etc. > > I guess the particular Commie lie I'd always heard along these lines was > more like "the US aided a lot of crazed, bloodthirsty bandit chieftains > who were nominally anti-communist, and deeply anti-invading-Russians, some > of whom later wound up being Taliban bandit chieftains."
US originally helped the kind of people who later became the "Northern Alliance" - a rather odd mixture of unreconstructed Stalinists, "liberals" in the European sense of the word, separationists, local bandit chiefs, drug growers, pro-Iranian Shiite Islamists and who knows what else. The Taliban formed later, in Pakistan, and was at least at first indirectly funded by the US through Pakistan and through material inherited from some other groups - and of course later by various Arabs (who may or may not have thought of themselves as "Al Qaida" before the US pinned the name on them while looking for a New Enemy for the New World Order). But there certainly was some assistance from the US to the Taliban. US They didn't buy those 500 Stingers in Kmart (though some of them might have later turned up for sale in Peshawar or wherever it is they sell such things)
