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Old 05-29-2005, 02:07 PM   #11
Mike
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I don't know who really viewed the Soviet Union as divine from the exterior ... because out of the four East Asian countries to have battles with Communism (Korea, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Laos), none of them were looking to resemble Soviet Communism. Most of the elites who led the revolutions were educated in France, towards more of an egalitarian socialism ... that was impossible to be implemented, unfortunately, for the hundreds of thousands who starved and were eaten because of it. China was the only prominant Asian country who seeked to capture Soviet Communism, on account of Mao's fascination with Stalin. But, by the time of the second Great Leap Forward, and Stalin had been replaced and villianized by Kruschev, so they went on their own path. Mao, continued though, to use failed Stalinist agricultural and economic models ... for whatever reason.

There's also a slight myth with how the United States aided Osama Bin Laden... and I don't fault you at this because it's often overlooked when information sources cite how we aided Bin Laden and encouraged the 70's and 80's Jihad movement. We sent most of the money to Pakistan who then funnelled it to the Mujadideen (sp?)... The Pakistanis had most of the control as to who got more money, and considering that Bin Laden and what would later form the widest terrorist network in the world were the most effective at defeating the Soviets in Afghanistan... Pakistan funnelled more towards those sources.

We're looking at this, though, in a retrospect that sees the Soviet Union for what they were. We view the Gorbachev years as after Pandora's Box had been opened ... and it seems like it was an inevitability, but at the time it wasn't. You didn't know what could have happened ... Gorbachev could have been replaced, the coup in 1991 (or 1990, I forget) could have been a success... And they could have been run by a military oligarchy. And, even today, facing the terrorist threat that the world faces, the Soviet Union was more a threat to global stability than terrorism is. When ever one of the largest arrays of nuclear weapons is at the disposal of any unstable government, it is a great risk. Finally, the weapons that Bin Laden is using now are mostly weapons that they've bought long after the funelled money from the US ran dry... from former Soviet bloc countries, funded by majoritively Middle Eastern (but some Western) networks.
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