Would you have supported Jimmy Carter arming the rebels in Afghanistan?

[ProSense]

Do you think Carter could get support for arming rebels in today's environment?

JIMMY CARTER: ...As of a matter of fact, I don’t think anyone could have moved more strongly against the Soviet Union when they went into Afghanistan than I did.

http://crooksandliars.com/2014/03/jimmy-carter-i-dont-pay-any-attention-criminal

Carter: Russian Invasion Of Crimea 'Inevitable'

NEW YORK (AP) — Former President Jimmy Carter says the Crimean annexation was "inevitable" because Russia considers the peninsula to be part of its country and so many Crimeans consider themselves Russian.

But he says Russian President Vladimir Putin shouldn't be permitted to go any further.

On the "Late Show with David Letterman" on Monday, Carter recounted when then-Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev invaded Afghanistan in 1979.

Carter recalled the U.S. ambassador declared an embargo and withdrew from the Olympics. Then, Carter said, "We began to arm the freedom fighters."

He says that was "successful at stopping them there."

Carter says he believes no matter how President Barack Obama or European nations tried to head off the takeover, Putin would have gone ahead with it, but he shouldn't be allowed to go further.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/carter-russia-invasion-of-crimea-inevitable

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

1. Nope. I didn't.

[Pholus]

2. One definition of insanity...

is doing the same thing over and over again thinking the results are going to be different.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

3. Probably not.

Violence begets violence. Arming people results in more people being shot or blown up.

And when 'freedom fighters' are done 'fighting for freedom', they generally turn around and become oppressors in turn.

[Jackpine Radical]

4. I don't know. I might have been dumb enough to at the time.

In some ways, it might have seemed like supporting the underdogs against the Russian Bear. The world was very different back in those Cold War days.

I really don't remember what I thought of it back then--or even IF I thought much about it back then, although Carter was always a little to the right of my political position (I had supported Udall in the '76 Primary). Knowing what I NOW know about Middle Eastern entanglements, I would have opposed it.

[otherone]

5. I trust Jimmy Carter to do the right thing..

[NuclearDem]

6. Not really.

Though where the US truly dropped the ball was after the Soviet withdrawal. We got our Cold War victory and left Afghanistan in a power vacuum.

[Scootaloo]

7. They weren't "rebels," they were not "freedom fighters," they were insurgents

We armed them against the lawful government of Afghanistan, with the intent of toppling that government, because it was soviet-aligned.

The Soviets did not get involved until eight months later, when the Afghanistan govenrment asked for help against the insurgents. The Tariki government collapsed around the Soviets' ears, and their intervention in a civil war became an effort to keep a country in one piece.

had it not been for US funding and arming of the Islamist right-wing psychoes whose major grievances with the government were things like schools for girls and tolerance for booze in Kabul, the Soviets would never have been asked to help.

President Carter helped put Afghanistan where it is now. I don't doubt that had he abstained, Reagan would have picked up the cause anyway, of course - but Carter didn't abstain, he sent money and weapons to the sociopaths in an effort to topple another nation's government.

[ProSense]

8. I don't think

"President Caeter helped put Afghanistan where it is now. I don't doubt that had he abstained, Reagan would have picked up the cause anyway, of course - but Carter didn't abstain, he sent money and weapons to the sociopaths in an effort to topple another nation's government."

...you can conflate Carter's involvement with Reagan's. The latter had many ulterior motives, and is largely responsible for the outcome there.

[Scootaloo]

10. Only because of the years involved, Prosense

As I told you before, it was Carter who signed onto funding and arming the Afghan Nutjobs - Operation Cyclone - in April of 1979. he would lose (...I'm tempted to put quote marks there) to Reagan in 1980.

Reagan continued the funding, which only ended when the war did, under Poppy Bush.

But it was very certainly the Carter Administration who got that ball rolling, and it did so prior to the Soviets entering Afghanistan (which, I can't point out enough, they were asked to do by the Afghan government, as an intervention against the very same nuts we were arming)

[newdemocrat999]

17. You have some serious hate issues to deal with

"but Carter didn't abstain, he sent money and weapons to the sociopaths "

[ProSense]

18. Welcome to DU. Become familiar with quotation marks,

and then read my response again.

[newdemocrat999]

20. sorry

[ProSense]

21. LOL!

No problem.

Again, welcome to DU.

[newdemocrat999]

22. thank you

[GiveMeMorePIE]

9. Absolutely. Doing nothing is often a bigger failure than doing something. nt

[ProSense]

13. Welcome to DU.

"Absolutely. Doing nothing is often a bigger failure than doing something."

Given the dynamics in today's environment, it's likely that arming any opposition would result in a "bigger failure."

This is where Presidential administrations need to have good judgment and intelligence. All the armchair quarterbacking in the world can't replace thoughtful action.

One of the lingering effects of Bush's illegal invasion is that every involvement, the entire U.S. foreign policy, is always being scrutinized through that lens: Is our Government lying, again?

[bemildred]

11. No, I didn't. nt

[Ron Obvious]

12. Not with the benefit of hindsight, no. n/t

[reformist2]

14. Probably. Given the Soviet Union's goals of world domination, they had to be opposed.

Once the Cold War was over, however, we should have actively engaged Russia and the other former Soviet republics in restructuring their government, their economy, their society. Instead we threw them to the wolves, Westerners flooded in to take advantage of the situation, and Russia plunged into plutocratic corruption and a decade-long economic depression that we could have helped prevent.

[newdemocrat999]

15. different time now

[JoePhilly]

16. He was a puppet of the MIC.

[Cali_Democrat]

19. IOKIYAWDP

It's Ok If You're A White Democratic President.