From the Annals of U.S. History: America’s Role in Creating Islamic Extremism
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This is a refrain that has been played before, but some Americans might need yet another refresher. In response to one of the inevitable questions—“Why did this happen?”—following events like Friday’s terrorist offensive in Paris and the 9/11 attacks in the U.S., Salon’s Ben Norton has helpfully laid out a detailed answer.
The whole article merits a close read, but here is a key passage designed to correct the country’s collective short-term memory problem on the issue:
Throughout the 1980s, the U.S. government supported and armed bin Laden and his mujahedin in Afghanistan, in their fight against the Soviet Union. President Ronald Reagan famously met with the mujahedin in the Oval Office in 1983. “To watch the courageous Afghan freedom fighters battle modern arsenals with simple hand-held weapons is an inspiration to those who love freedom,” Reagan declared.
Those “freedom fighters” are the forefathers of ISIS and al-Qaida. When the last Soviet troops were withdrawn in 1989, the mujahedin did not simply leave; a civil war of sorts followed, with various Islamist militant groups fighting for control in the power vacuum. The Taliban came out on top, and established a medieval theocratic regime to replace the former “godless” socialist government.
There are extremists in every religion, but they tend to be few in number, weak and isolated. Salafism, in its modern militarized form, has its origins in the 1920s, and even before. For decades, this movement remained weak and isolated. Yet, in the 1970s and ’80s, Western capitalist governments, particularly the U.S., came up with a new Cold War strategy: supporting these fringe Islamic extremist groups as a bulwark against socialism.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
