Even before the Soviet military intervention (and the People's Democratic Party's overthrow of the Mohammad Daoud government in 1978, for that matter!), the U.S. government was involved in attempts to shape the Afghan politics, economically, politically, and militarily, encouraging reactionary elements in Afghanistan and in the region (not to mention elsewhere). You have to understand that U.S. imperialism is not a sporadic response to this or that development here and there; it's a comprehensive vision of hegemony (economic, political, and military) all over the world, including quiet interventions in such important "allies" as Japan (do you know that the CIA funded the LDP -- an enemy of all that is progressive, including feminism -- in Japan? Do you remember an article in the _Nation_ several years ago that documented the history of the U.S. collaboration with the Italian mafia to counter communists there?).
***** from William Blum, _Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions since World War II_
[F]or decades Washington and the Shah of Iran tried to pressure and bribe Afghanistan in order to roll back Russian influence in the country. During the Daoud regime, Iran, encouraged by the United States, sought to replace the Soviet Union as Kabul's biggest donor with a $2 billion economic aid agreement, and urged Afghanistan to join the Regional Cooperation for Development, which consisted of Iran, Pakistan, and Turkey. (This organization was attacked by the Soviet Union and its friends in Afghanistan as being a "branch of CENTO" the 1950s regional security pact that was part of the US policy of "containment" of the Soviet Union.) At the same time, Iran's infamous secret police, SAVAK, was busy fingering suspected Communist sympathizers in the Afghan government and military.... Most important,...Daoud gradually broke off his alliance with the PDP, announcing that he would start his own party and ban all other political activity under a projected new constitution....
...Two months after the April 1978 coup, an alliance formed by a number of conservative Islamic factions was waging guerrila war against the government. By spring 1979, fighting was taking place on many fronts, and the State Department was cautioning the Soviet Union that its advisers in Afghanistan should not interfere militarily in the civil strife.... This while the Soviets were charging the CIA with arming Afghan exiles in Pakistan; and the Afghanistan government was accusing Pakistan and Iran of also aiding the guerrilas and even of crossing the border to take part in the fighting.... *****
As a leftist in the USA, your primary duty in international solidarity is to stop American interventions everywhere, and I'm not talking about just invasions & 'covert actions' either. I mean all American interventions -- economic, political, and military -- for they are primarily responsible for the destruction of communists and serious secular leftists everywhere. It has been and still is American imperialism that is the creater of fundamentalism and all things reactionary -- including anti-feminism -- on this planet.
On the other hand, it is correct for leftist governments -- even as lackluster a government as the USSR at that time -- to aid communists elsewhere, including militarily. (It is tragic that the Soviets were not very interested -- or perhaps couldn't afford to be interested -- in doing so, except for their own national security reasons. The Soviets, for instance, sacrificed the Greek communists to the interests of the Allied powers near the end of the WW2. They could have helped the Greek communists fight the British, though I understand it would have been unwise to do so, for the USSR was seeking peaceful coexistence with imperial powers.) Don't you think it was an honorable thing for Cubans to go all the way to Angola and to fight against the South African attacks on the MPLA?
Yoshie
P.S. The only columns by Alex Cockburn still worth reading are those about imperialism.