…Except that the Neo-con empire builders in the US never had ANY interest in Afghanistan. THEY were all excited to invade Iraq because OIL! and “remaking the Middle East.” Their reaction to Afghanistan was more "Okay, I guess so long as it doesn’t distract us from the invasion that we’ve wanted all along. The Soviets (and the Russians before and after them) were interested in Afghanistan because that gets them one country closer to a warm water port. The only UK and US interest in Afghanistan was denying it to Moscow. Once the Soviets were kicked out, we dropped all support for and interest in Afghanistan in a hot minute. Indeed it was that power vacuum mixed with all the weaponry that we’d given out to fight the Soviets that allowed the Taliban to take control and Al Queda to thrive in the first place. Other than Opium, there is just about no resource in Afghanistan to interest the West. And frankly the Taliban had been far worse for Opium farmers than we were.
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