Why Did Two Republican Adminstrations Fund UBL?

Haximus wrote:

Glen Hallick wrote:

Why did TWO Republican administrations fund Osama bin Laden??? Seems to
me the GOP were the ones that created the monster. Not surprising GOP
lapdogs are trying to lay blame elsewhere.

Foreign policy during Reagan was "the enemy of my enemy is my friend." America trained and armed the Mujihadeen, along with bin Laden, to repel
the Soviets from Afghanistan. America also took Iraq off the list of
states sponsoring terrorism, and gave him billions of dollars, while Saddam
was fighting Soviet prospect Iran. I guess the big lesson America should
learn from this is "the enemy of my enemy IS NOT my friend."

I think you have a point there, in that it is a serious mistake
to say that the enemy of your enemy is your *friend*

But it is often clever strategy to help, cooperate with, or even
make a (temporary) alliance with a minor enemy against a major
one. A clear example of this is WW2, where USA+UK made a
necessary alliance with USSR against Nazi Germany.

Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda probably did much the same:
first to cooperate with the americans in order to throw the
russians out of Afghanistan - and then attack the enemy USA.

In order to calculate these things correctly, you need to
understand the world as it is. This is where Bush & co. is simply
incompetent.


--
Mogens Michaelsen
Dansk weblog: http://mogmich2.blogspot.com/
English weblog: http://mogmich.blogspot.com/