Quote:
Originally Posted by dmek25
Osama bin Laden was allegedly among the recipients of U.S. arms, [15] although this view has been disputed. [16][17][18][19]
Under Reagan, U.S. support for the mujahideen evolved into an official U.S. foreign policy, known as the Reagan Doctrine, which included U.S. support for anti-Soviet movements in Afghanistan, Angola, Nicaragua, and elsewhere. [20] Ronald Reagan praised mujahideen as "freedom fighters".
first, what do you think about this? |
Reagan was out to destroy the USSR, my enemy's enemy is my friend, is simply what was at play there. Reagan's support of the mujahideen in Afghanistan brought tremendous "bang for the buck" in terms of hurting the USSR financially and militarily, with minimal risk to US military personnel (not including covert ops folks of course).
I'm not sure what the correlation with Reagan's actions vs. Obama's actions is. Outside of taking out Gaddafi, which as I mentioned before could be fairly easily accomplished with an "off-course" cruise missle or a covert op assist to the rebels, what is our goal here? What are we accomplishing in the sense of a Mid East or global strategy? I think arming the rebels sends a very bad message and is the wrong thing to do. Again as I mentioned before, we need to get to the background of this quickly and let NATO, the Arab League, the French or Brits take point on this one.
If this was Iran and we're talking about arming rebels against that regime, maybe there's an end-game that benefits US interests a great deal and it's worth the risk (but I certainly don't do it publicly). In Libya, I don't see it.