US Involvement in Afghanistan and the Soviet Union

In a struggle with the Soviet Union, they invaded

Afghanistan, and we did not wanna see them

control Central Asia,

and we

went to work. And it was President Reagan, in partnership with the

Congress, um, led by Democrats, who said, "You know what?

Sounds like a pretty good idea. Let's deal with the ISI and the

Pakistani military, and let's go recruit these mujahideen,

and that's

great. Let's get some to come from Saudi Arabia

and other places, importing

their Wahhabi brand of Islam, so that we can go beat the Soviet

Union." And we-- guess what? They retreated.

They lost billions of dollars, and it led to the collapse of the Soviet

Union. So there's a, a very strong argument, which is,

wasn't a bad

investment to end the Soviet Union, but let's be careful what we

sow because we will harvest.

So we then left Pakistan. We said, "Okay, fine.

You deal with the Stingers that we've left all over your country.

You deal with the mines that are along the border.

And by the way, we don't wanna have anything to do with

you.

In fact, we're sanctioning you."

So we stopped dealing with the Pakistani military

and with ISI, and we now are making up for a lot of

lost time