What I just saw

[Lobster]

Imagine the media fallout if the US Army knowingly worked with some people that grow opium poppies in afghanistan. It simply wouldn't happen. There is no military on earth that would be stupid enough to do that.

US, Pakistani and other financing and support

It has been suggested that this section be split into a new article titled Soviet war in Afghanistan. (Discuss) "To watch the courageous Afghan freedom fighters battle modern arsenals with simple hand-held weapons is an inspiration to those who love freedom."

— U.S. President Ronald Reagan, March 21, 1983 [38] The mujahideen were significantly financed, armed and trained by the United States [Central Intelligence Agency] (CIA) during the administrations of Jimmy Carter[39] and Ronald Reagan, and also by Saudi Arabia, Pakistan under Zia-ul-Haq, Iran, the People's Republic of China and several Western European countries. Pakistan's secret service, Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), was used as an intermediary for most of these activities to disguise the sources of support for the resistance. One of the CIA's longest and most expensive covert operations was the supplying of billions of dollars in arms to the Afghan mujahideen militants. The arms included Stinger missiles, shoulder-fired, antiaircraft weapons that they used against Soviet helicopters and that later were in circulation among terrorists who have fired such weapons at commercial airliners. Between $3–$20 billion in U.S. funds were funneled into the country to train and equip troops with weapons, including Stinger surface-to-air missiles.[40][41] Some media reports claim up to $40 billion.[42]

Osama bin Laden was allegedly among the recipients of U.S. arms,[43] although this view has been disputed.[44][45][46][47]

Under Reagan, U.S. support for the mujahideen evolved into an official U.S. foreign policy, known as the Reagan Doctrine, which included U.S. support for anti-Soviet movements in Afghanistan, Angola, Nicaragua, and elsewhere.[48] Ronald Reagan praised mujahideen as "freedom fighters".

According to the "Progressive South Asia Exchange Net," claiming to cite an article in Le Nouvel Observateur, U.S. policy, unbeknownst even to the Mujahideen, was part of a larger strategy of aiming "to induce a Soviet military intervention."[49] The article includes a brief interview with President Jimmy Carter's National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, in which he is quoted as saying that the US provided aid to the mujahideen prior to the Soviet invasion for the deliberate purpose of provoking one. Brzezinski himself has denied the accuracy of the interview.[50] According to Brzezinski, an NSC working group on Afghanistan wrote several reports on the deteriorating situation in 1979, but President Carter ignored them until the Soviet intervention destroyed his illusions. Brzezinski has stated that the US provided communications equipment and limited financial aid to the mujahideen prior to the "formal" invasion, but only in response to the Soviet deployment of forces to Afghanistan and the 1978 coup, and with the intention of preventing further Soviet encroachment in the region.[50] Two declassified documents signed by Carter shortly before the invasion do authorize the provision "unilaterally or through third countries as appropriate support to the Afghan insurgents either in the form of cash or non-military supplies" and the "worldwide" distribution of "non-attributable propaganda" to "expose" the leftist Afghan government as "despotic and subservient to the Soviet Union" and to "publicize the efforts of the Afghan insurgents to regain their country's sovereignty," but the records also show that the provision of arms to the rebels did not begin until 1980.[51][52]

EDIT: I do hope those Rheinlanders in-front of Manhattan were indies. Please let me know if any of them were BDM. If so, we will need to have a long talk about who assaulting a nation's most fortified planet in two or three gunboats is unacceptable.