2 February 1983, Ronald Reagan welcomes leaders of the Afghan Mujaheddin into the Oval Office, and publicly praises them, saying, in 1985, “These gentlemen are the moral equivalent of America’s founding Fathers.”
One mustn’t forget that the US actively recruited, trained, armed and funded, the most radical Islamic ‘freedom fighters’ that could be found, from across the entire globe, Indonesia to Algeria. During this process, preference was given by the CIA (via the ISI) to fundemtalist doctrines. The more moderate groups were not supported because they were not seen as sufficiently anti-communist.
Sometimes this picture has the caption “Reagan meets the Taliban.” This is not accurate, because the Taliban was not founded until 1994, although there is extensive ideological overlap.
