And the operative word there is WE! And it is absolutely true that WE betrayed General Chang in favor of the Communists under Mao in China. WE also put Castro in power in Cuba along with Daniel Noriega in Nicaragua. Not to mention cutting the legs out from under the South Vietnamese government and allowing the Communist takeover there.
Almost forgot to add that while Lenin and Uncle Joe Stalin were annihilating MILLIONS of their countrymen WE were propping them up!
And BTW: It was Jimmuh CAATA who allowed the Mullahs to return to Iran and take over the government there! There is MUCH blood on our hands!
Either that, or it was a setup all along to provide neverending contracts for the "Military/Industrial Complex" Eisenhower warned us about. The 'Peanut Farmer' was a nukulur enginere, not just some goober rube.
The Noo Yawk Times and the State Department went against the CIA who had said Castro was a Communist and, between the Times and State, convinced JFK to pull the air support assets from the Bay of Pigs invasion, with the result that the freedom-loving Cuban Expatriates who wanted to return Cuba to a more Democratic Government enough to pick up a rifle were killed off.
There would have been no missile crisis if a few sorties had been flown against Cuban air and armor, and more of Miami would speak English. Elian Gonzales could have grown up at home with a mommy and a daddy instead of get nose to nose with an MP-5 in a closet.
Many years later, we supported the Mujaheddin against the Soviets in a place called Afghanistan. Just another out of the way proxy war, and through back channels more than not, but now are facing many of the same folks or their sons and daughters there ourselves. Like building up Saddam to fight the Iranians, then having to take him down, when after all, 15 of the 19 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia, whom we defended against Iraq when we chased the Iraqis out of Kuwait.
I have read an analysis of the attempted rescue operation that went up in smoke at Desert 1, and as a lifelong civilian can see the combination of interservice rivalry and perfusion of Murphy opportunity so severe that it is a testament to the quality and determination of our service personnel where the rubber meets the road that the operation even got as far as it did. Imho, the mission planners needed some coherent and cohesive leadership from the top, which was apparently just not on the same page. Lessons learned have hopefully improved that situation. The politicized Pentagon of today seems little better, and needs to quit playing at sociology class and get back to business: kicking our enemies' asses and breaking things.
Failure to support Chiang (who was no saint, either) led to Mao and the communists in power in China (and a slaughter that made Adolf Hitler and Stalin combined look like pikers), and a Communist Chinese Army my Father faced in Korea after they had pushed the North Koreans to the Yalu.
But all in all, and I'll admit my knowledge is limited to what I see and read, it seems that the more we meddle, or in some instances through the failure to intervene, the more we create our next adversary. The 20th century would at least make that a viewpoint that could be argued, especially since WWII when the pols just can't seem to get behind winning a war, period, or lack the foresight to anticipate the results of their actions.
