re: A what if and question about Iraq

From the late 1950's through the 90's, we operated under the old "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" theory, and our number 1 enemy was communism. We fed the Islamists money, weapons and training to fight off the Soviet Union so that our military didn't have to be involved (except for Viet Nam) and didn't seem to realize that they would someday turn on us.