Quote (NetflixAdaptationWidow @ Jul 23 2021 01:53pm)
I can acknowledge that I don't know the full story, but we actively funded both the Taliban and Al Qaeda, and supported Saudi Arabia's proxy funding of radical groups. We were and remain an active player in radicalizing and maintaining the radicalization of the Middle East. "We were loathe to do it" doesn't mean we still didn't do it.
We do what we think is in the best interests of our country. Often it backfires, and we should hold ourselves accountable when we do stupid things and it doesn't work out. But that doesn't mean that we're responsible for every bad thing that happens elsewhere. We support Saudi Arabia because we consider the alternative to be worse. Is that the correct position? It's hard to say, but when we back "moderate rebels" (i.e. in the case of Syria), we often end up making the same sort of mistake. Should we support capitalist authoritarians? In the case of Japan and Taiwan, that was correct. In the case of some South American states, it probably did more harm than good. The world is far too complex to boil these decisions down to yes and no answers. We're trying to anticipate the results of actions that won't be felt for decades.
The other issue is a matter of agency. The Iranian fundamentalists played a long game, networked intelligently, built a durable constituency, formed alliances, and eventually ended up with absolute control over the state of Iran. That's impressive, and reducing it to "the United State did something" is really an insult to what the clerics did and how much effort it took to accomplish. The United States played an important role in the story, but the conflict was fundamentally Iranian. It's ironic that the left in the United States tends to be so universally Americentric.