The U.S.

What I love about the whole America, Soviet Union (Communist/Democracy) Cold War, is the massive demonization of Communism and the widespread fear of the apparent “threat” of a communist world take over.

The amazing Lengths that the American Government was willing to go to in order to prevent countries from allying with the Soviet Union, or the groups and governments that they supported and armed. The United States literally threw countries into chaos, supported Authoritative and totalitarian regimes that were oppressive and violent as long as those regimes would oppose a communist government. (Afghanistan is a perfect example of this)

In Afghanistan the U.S. supported a group of rebel fighters called the Mujahidin forces. These were a band of rebels who opposed the Soviet invasion and the government forces that supported the Soviets. It is believed that the United States was hoping, by using the C.I.A. to support the Mujahidin forces with weapons (such as the Surface to Air Missile called the “Stinger) and tactical info and training, to turn this into the Soviet Union’s “Vietnam”. The U.S. succeeded in a way because due to their support the soviets ended up being dragged into a 10 year war with the rebel fighters, but like almost all wars where an army is not on its own soil in the end both sides must go home. The problem for the Soviets was that the Mujahidin fighters were already home and the Soviets were not. So after 10 years of fighting the soviets ended up withdrawing from Afghanistan. But unlike the Vietnam War which had a death toll of 58,000 American soldiers to approximately 900,000 North Vietnamese Viet Cong soldiers (it is approximated nut poor evidence to support either way that 220,000 VC KIA may have actually been innocent bystanders.) Afghanistan only cost the Soviets approximately 14,500 deaths to approximately 1,000,000 civilian deaths.


Now where this all gets amusing to me is when the same people the U.S. armed, trained and funded turn around and use the training and funding for terrorist attacks against the U.S. (Attacking the Trade Center in New York twice, and succeeding the second time in taking down both towers) Now don’t get me the wrong I am not saying that all the people that received training etc. from the U.S. during that time turned into terrorists that wanted to attack the U.S.

And as if that is not bad enough, to add insult to injury when the U.S. invades Afghanistan in retaliation for harbouring terrorists who helped plan and fund the September 11th attacks on the twin towers the Afghan’s use the same S.A.Ms (U.S. Stinger missiles) supplied to them by the U.S. during the Soviet War to shoot down American Blackhawk and Apache helicopters.

Now that is Irony! :)