> Trouble is the U.S. lying machine built the whole Cold War arms race with
arguments similar to yours regarding the Soviet and communist "threat".
There were movies about Cuban and Soviet troops invading the U.S.etc, etc.
Don't recall the Cubans flying passenger planes into packed buildings, hoping for the biggest body count they could create. Indeed, Castro has for years made peaceful overtures to the USG, as well as the populace at large, unlike bin Laden and friends who've made their contempt rather clear, contempt that is largely (but not wholly) independent of US policy in the Middle East.
> I wonder what you were arguing when the U.S. was supplying proto-Al Qaida
with armaments against the socialist Afghan > government and Soviet troops ?
What was your position on the Soviet and communist threat to our peace and
safety ?
At that time I considered myself a revolutionary socialist, defending Cuba, Nicaragua, etc., so I didn't take the Soviet bogeyman too seriously. As for the Red Army in Afghanistan, I was agnostic, but then I was very young and not politically filled out.
> Shall we Marxist-Leninists say we told you so ?
Why not? That's about all you got left.
> Talk about kneejerk. Anti- Marx and Lenin is a real kneejerk response to
this situation, because, Najibullah, having reached > for his Lenin and
Marx, was fighting Al Qaida when the Americans were building them up.
> So, before we form a leftwing of the current U.S. crusade to save us from
Al Qaida, it would seem we should be more
> skeptical than you are of the U.S. militarists' promised path to peace and
safety, less they create the next "Al Qaida", like
> they literally created the first Al Qaida.
> I mean how , really , do you respond to that ? Do you deny that Al Qaida
is largely the result of the last U.S. "strategy" for > our peace and safety
in that area. ? Why do you trust the U.S. to get it right this time ?
I am very skeptical about the US "crusade," and made that clear in the posts you selectively quote. I think the unilateral approach to war was and is wrong, and that the thousands of Afghan dead could have been avoided. That said, this argument that "Well, the US created al Qaeda, so it's getting what it deserves," is utterly vacant, indeed borderline obscene. US business interests helped to build-up Hitler in Germany; and when he used the military technology he was freely allowed to develop and test on his enemies, I don't remember the left (apart from some obscure groups, that is) saying "Well, the capitalists helped create Hitler, so there you go!" They recognized the threat as early as Spain and fought against it. They didn't cease fighting it when the US state got involved, a state, the left then could have said, that prospered from slavery and imperialism. Leftists fought alongside and for an imperial state against a common enemy. If you don't see a theocratic terrorist network openly devoted to mass murder and the repeal of progressive gains as an enemy, regardless of how you feel about the US, then I don't know what to tell you.
DP