The City of Crumm Mountain, NY     |   home Should we thank Osama bin Laden for our freedom?   |   Things Get Messy When Wal-Mart Workers Try to Get Organized   |   By Sean Bennett   |   Union-Busting on the Dock of the Bay   |   Rifts On the Right   |   Operation Infantile Justice   |   Making Hay While the Smoke Clears   |   2001: A Chlymidia Mountain Odyssey   |   By Lisa James   |   Chairman Selleck: To dump or not to dump?   |   By Herbert Molzahn   |   Workplace Drug Testing   |   Bertha Vs. the unsung heroes of the Richmondville Road Crew   |   Alright Already   |   Make it out to CASH   |   Quigly Gulch pollution uncovered   |   Stan Grouke for Congress?   |   Defense appropriations bill passes   |   John McCallister: The man who would be Mayor   |   Whats Darlene La pixie up to?   |   Whats happening at the Pomegranate Valley prison?   |   Coup, Interrupted   |   What Is To Be Done with the Democrats   |   Terrorist Threat Eclipses Much Larger Healthcare Crisis   |   The Second International and the Collapse of German Social Democracy   |   The Economic and Political Effects of the Living Wage Movement   |   Rumsfeld's Rathole Should we thank Osama bin Laden for our freedom?      The question might seem quite ridiculous when posed without explanation.   But we must imagine what the world would be like today if the Soviet Union had not been defeated in Afghanistan, and the cold war never came to an end.   Think about all the lives that would have been lost in the event of thermonuclear warfare.   Billions upon billions would have been vaporized.  Here one minute, and gone the next.  But thankfully history chose another path.        Few will dispute that the defeat of the Soviets in Afghanistan from 1979-1989, played a major part in the downfall of the Soviet Union and in turn, the cold war.   Imagine for a moment, how many lives may have been saved the day the Soviet Union was dissovled?   Nobody will say that this wasn't a great day for freedom and democracy around the world.  So going back to the CIA-trained Mujahideen freedom fighters of Afghanistan.   In 1979 President Carter's Secretary of State Zbigniew Brezhinsky, watched what was going on in Central Asia, and quite wisely saw the oppertunity to involve the Soviet Union in a long, unwinnable, Vietnam-style war.   And throughout the 1980's, thats exactly what we did.   In 1981 President Ronald Reagan proposed spending _______ on the Mujahideens, some of whom may well be in Guantonamo Bay right now.    These radical Muslim Mujahideens were hailed throughout the western world as freedom fighters.   But it's not just the Afghan Mujahideen who helped to fight for freedom.  There were the Contras in Nicaragua, Pinochet in Chile, and for a long time we armed Saddam Hussein' forces.   Sure many innocent people may have been brutally murdered and disappeared, but since all of this was done in the context of fighting the Evil Empire, we should be grateful to Ronald Reagan, Ollie North, and the CIA.   Latin American dictators and death squads sure did their part to make the world safe for democracy, but paramount in the struggle was Afghanistan Mujahideen.   With their Korans and kalishnakovs, they fought back the invading Soviets and helped to rescue the world from the evil, wicked communists.   Can anyone actually think that we are not indebted to these men?         But now it seems the pyschotic murderers that we created and coddled have turned on us.  Who would have thought?  Osama bin Laden, todays number one terrorist threat, did in fact recieve training and weaponry from the US Government.  When liberals in the media try to point this out, suggesting that we might bear some responsibility for the 9/11 attacks, anyone with some sense is quick to point out that we had to support bin Laden.  We may not have had much of a choice, but we made the right one anyhow.    And no doubt the world is safer for having done so.  Right???         Following this line of reasoning might it be possible to suggest that instead of all the American lives Osama bin Laden and his terrorist network have taken, we consider how many he may have saved?  Just something to think about.