Afghanistan after Twenty
I don't talk about Afghanistan much. If you look at the news today you would be forgiven for thinking that our failure there is Biden’s fault. Or Trumps. This story didn’t start in 2021 however, or 2016. It didn’t even start in 2001. It started just before I was born, and I’m 42 this year. In the seventies (78, or 79, I believe), there was a coup in Afghanistan, and a group of political dissidents arose. A series of assassinations took place, and a communist party took over. The USSR backed it, whom we were in a cold war with. Without getting into a lot of details, we boycotted the 1980 Olympics which were being held in the USSR at the time over Soviet involvement in Afghanistan. Prior to that, the Soviets had a long history in Afghanistan, and a friendly relation with Pakistan, who has seaports in that portion of the world. Afghanistan is mineral-rich, and a victory in there would have allowed the Soviets (now the Russians) a clear path to Pakistan and thus the ocean. ...