STING2 said:
I question that the mindset in Japan was really significantly different than in much of the Arab world today.
The connecting logic i can see in japan is their will to be superior and they were also willing in the times of their dictator to get western knowhow.
Since they found out that democracy works better it was their will to become a democracy to improve, when they compared their economy to the us and the russian economy they could see that free market was the superior thing.
But you're right, Japanese people loved their country much more and because of that also their leader than anything we can see in the arab world.
We can see that logic in europe and the US too - if our country is attacked we rally behind our leaders no matter if we supported them before.
The United States sent minor support to Saddam because they did not want to see the Iranians overrun Iraq and then push into Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. The support though was so minor that its questionable whether it actually had any impact on the war at all.
Well i wouldn't call this minor also the USSR sent more conventional weapons to Iraq there was strong support of the western world (not only US) to stop the evil commis from their march to the oilfields.
Saddam played his West vs. East game pretty good and got support from all sides.
Bin Ladin was inspired to go to Afghanistan by his own beliefs and play a minor role if any during the war there.
It is reported that Bin Ladin wasn't verry religious when he was young. Later he became religious but not political. We (the western world) thought we could instrumentalize this man and use him as a weapon against communism.
The Arab world is not a monster. Certain people in the Arab world are monsters
Yes, i agree with you here, sorry for that sentence
and they have benefited from the heavy supply of weapons from the Soviet Union.
let's say they benefited from the cold war.
Name the conflict and just look at what types of weapons the arab military's are armed with.
Following that logic Stalin was never supported by the US.
There are tons of documents which show us that there was support of these men but:
I don't think that the US government supported any of the men we mentioned because they love to support dictators but because of rational reasons.
And you're not able to see how it ends.
There were hundreds of dictators supported either by USSR or the US in the cold war just for strategic reasons.
After the fall of the communist block there's some of this mess left, some of them are gladly history.