Solomon2
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Who is "shifting blame", exactly?
If you'll take your blinders off for a moment, consider that you need not believe in what I write or what the U.S. gov't says, that there's independent information on this matter.
For example, I've been reading The Arabs at War in Afghanistan, mostly written by Mustafa Hamid, one of the primary Arab actors in the Afghan-Soviet and Taliban wars, and co-authored by an Australian counter-terrorism policewoman and academic. Hamid has first-hand knowledge of Taliban funding and training matters from the 1980s to 2001. After 9/11, he was under house arrest in Iran for ten years.
You do have to read with a discerning eye - what Hamid saw with his own eyes and did with his own hands there's likely no better account of, but when he recounts stuff second- and third-hand there's more room for doubt, and "facts" he writes that originate in ideology one can be entirely skeptical of. Nonetheless, some things you may consider eye-openers. For example:
- America was just an arms supplier to the Afghan rebels while the Saudis "no less than" the Pakistanis were involved with providing money, direction, and training.
- The leaders of what became the Taliban alienated both the U.S. and Pakistani I.S.I. in the early 1980s.
- Pakistan's perceived hostility to Israel empowered Osama bin Laden to plot the 9/11 attacks, pretending to the Taliban that Israel was al-Qaeda's target, not the U.S.
