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by slashdev 1883 days ago
It was never about democracy really, it was all about containing Soviet influence and the spread of communism. Which had little to do with democracy directly and a lot to do with drawing battle lines and trying to keep the other side from gaining too much power.

In hindsight it is easy to say it was pointless, because the USSR imploded. However, at the time with the USSR looking strong and expanding influence rapidly internationally, that was not at all clear.

And I imagine you don't think it would have been best to allow the USSR to gain a strategic advantage over the West.
1 comments
1986 1883 days ago
I would urge you to read Legacy of Ashes, if you haven't, to get a sense of just how poor US intelligence on the USSR was at the time, and how that impacted policy. One gets the sense that the vast majority of these secret or undeclared wars were driven by a few die hard anti communists who manipulated or manufactured evidence to support their crusade - and to a large extent the USSR "looked strong" largely because it suited them for it to look strong, not because it really was.
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slashdev 1883 days ago
Whether that's true or not, the way they were spreading communism throughout Asia and Africa was alarming. The US policy of containment was definitely not the right one in hindsight, but it's very difficult to make the case that it was clearly the wrong thing to do at the time - and decisions are not not made with the benefit of hindsight, nor is it fair to judge them that way.

It's very common to say later, that decision I made was a mistake, but if I was in that same situation with the knowledge I had at the time, I'd still make the mistake.

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BelenusMordred 1883 days ago
And yet Wahhabism is being blatantly pushed across the globe by the Saudis with not a word from the US or it's allies?

I like to hope they are actually doing something in the shadows to stop the spread of such extreme ideologies but there's a part of me that thinks the Western world has no problem with it occurring. Just another war and another enemy to fight down the track.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_propagation_of_S...

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