The US armed regional proxies that later turned against it

Evidence

The Taliban succeeded in expelling the Soviets from Afghanistan and in preventing the spread of the Shi’i-inspired Iranian revolution to Central Asia. Saddam Hussein did the same (likewise heavily supported by the US and its allies) by engaging Iran in a war that lasted eight terrible years (1980-88), with Muslims murdering Muslims by the tens of thousands, much to the satisfaction of such observers as former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who quipped, “It’s a pity both sides can’t lose”. The two Frankensteins the US created—Mullah Omar in Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein in Iraq—succeeded at their assigned tasks, but they came back to haunt their creators. — Hamid Dabashi, Brown Skin, White Masks, 91

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘blowback’ pattern parallel’s Chalmers Johnson’s Blowback thesis and the Frankenstein metaphor in the reader’s knowledge of US proxy wars.