Why would the Russian government think it could get away with paying bounties to the Taliban to kill American soldiers? One answer to that question may be the extraordinary response that Moscow received when the Trump administration learned of a precursor to the bounty operation. From mid-2017 and into 2018, Pentagon officials became increasingly confident in intelligence reports that the Kremlin was arming the Taliban, which posed a significant threat to American and coalition forces on the ground in Afghanistan.
President Trump’s actions in the face of the Russia-Taliban arms program likely signaled weak US resolve in the eyes of Putin and Russian military intelligence.
Three dimensions of Trump’s response are described in detail in this article, based on interviews with several former Trump administration officials who spoke to Just Security on the record.
First, President Trump decided not to confront Putin about supplying arms to the terrorist group. Second, during the very times in which U.S. military officials publicly raised concerns about the program’s threat to U.S. forces, Trump undercut them. He embraced Putin, overtly and […]
While you will get no argument from me regarding trump’s vile behavior in really all areas of life and leadership I remind you that during the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan the CIA poured in billions to kill Russians. A quote from Wikipedia; Operation Cyclone was one of the longest and most expensive covert CIA operations ever undertaken. Funding officially began with $695,000 in 1979 was increased dramatically to $20–$30 million per year in 1980, and rose to $630 million per year in 1987 described as the “biggest bequest to any Third World insurgency.” Funding continued (albeit reduced) after the 1989 Soviet withdrawal as the mujahideen continued to battle the forces of President Mohammad Najibullah‘s army during the Afghan Civil War (1989–1992).
While the idea that Russian intelligence was paying a bounty and arming the taliban is offensive how is that different from what we did to them? War is war and a soldiers duty is to follow orders and kill the enemy usually without additional payments. To me this is just another example of the power games that humans have played since we were able to organize ourselves into warring tribes. But it does serve a political purpose showing another reason the be rid of trump. I haven’t needed another reason since he took power.
As I recall, we actually gave money to Osama Bin Laden at the time when Russia was fighting the Taliban, to try to weaken their chances to defeat the Taliban and because we abruptly stopped paying Osama Bin Laden, that is when ISIS was started in retaliation against the USA because of that decrease in money from the USA; now look at what is happening. So, it would appear that we are responsible for starting ISIS who we now claim to be the world’s worst enemy, and the Russians have turned around 180 degrees and are supporting the Taliban. What a mixed up world we live in. We need a department of PEACE, to try to stop all of these awful waste of lives no matter who is to blame, even if it was the USA in the beginning. We need to bring the world together to stop the wars and to combat Global Warming, and now to stop the Corona virus, too.
Here is, actually, a history of the U.S. Department of Peace – efforts have been made to create it since the inception of this country:
https://threadsofspiderwoman.blogspot.com/2019/07/the-us-department-of-peace.html
They vote for Trump because they dont know any of this – they only know what they hear on Fox News or worse. If they knew what Trump was doing they wouldnt vote for him (but I’m pretty sure they dont read the Schwartzreport!).