Jihadists believed their Afghan war defeated the USSR and emboldened attacks on the US

Evidence

Others, notably Osama bin Laden, took a different view. As they saw it—and their view does not lack plausibility—it was they who, by the holy war they waged in Afghan­ istan, brought about the defeat and collapse of the Soviet Union. In their perspective, they had dealt with one of the infidel superpowers—the more de­ termined, the more ruthless, the more dangerous of the two. Dealing with the soft and pampered United States would, so it seemed, be a much easier task. — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 1787

Categorization

• FICTION: The self-attribution of Soviet collapse to holy war reads like a usable premise for a character’s deluded grandeur.
• XREF: connects to: Soviet defeat in Afghanistan legitimized Islamist militancy in the region — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 399; Islam served neocons as a substitute Cold War enemy when the USSR collapsed — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 675; CIA-trained Afghan militants constituted direct blowback against US empire (+2 more)