Cannoneer No. 4 said

“A case can be made that America used Afghans as pawns in a proxy war with the Soviet Union, then turned its back on them while they sank into chaos, so massive American assistance was a way to make amends”.

I have never understood why this idea has come to be taken as gospel about our involment in the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. It’s not like the U.S. set the Afghanis up to fight the Soviets. They made that decision all by themselves. We just encouraged them in their endeavors with material aid and training. I would contend that as far as that war went we helped them far more than they helped us. The USSR was bound to crash soon with or without a loss in Afghanistan. As to pulling out after the war, we did exactly what the Afghanis wanted. They wanted to be left alone to sort out their own affairs. Even though that turned out badly for us in the long run, in retrospect we had no other option at that time.

I think the idea that we abandoned the Afghanis after that war is really just an attempt by the American left to indict U.S. foreign policy and help justify the 9/11 attacks. After all everything bad that happens in the World is the fault of we evil Americans.