Victory Point - Ed Darack [17]
Afghanistan would descend once again into chaos in the years after the Soviet withdrawal, as the seven mujahideen parties and various ethnic groups moved from warring against the Red Kafir to attacking one another, further destroying an already crippled, destitute country. From Pakistan’s standpoint, Afghanistan no longer stood as a base of a foreign threat, and they had their “strategic depth” once again; both Pakistan and Saudi Arabia would continue to provide limited amounts of foreign aid, but not enough to rebuild a nation. The United States, however, pulled its support from the fighters completely, not so much because they had achieved the desired end state of a demoralized Soviet withdrawal, but because U.S. leaders had learned that a disproportionate allotment of American money had been funneled by the ISI to Gulbadin Hekmatyar, whom they regarded as a potentially severe threat to the United States—possibly another Ayatollah Khomeini—should he ever gain national power. Hekmatyar, who spurned the Reagan administration by refusing an invitation to the White House in 1985 to celebrate the mujahideen freedom fighters, openly decried the Americans as infidels—although he was more than happy to accept ISI-routed American funds. The warlord would go on to kill untold scores of civilians in the power struggle that ensued after the Soviet withdrawal, and then continue to vex American interests into the next millennium.
America seemed to have forgotten about Afghanistan by 1990; the internal conflicts of the country would reduce the crushed state to ashes in just a few years. But out of those ashes would rise yet another threat to the United States, one that would require not secretive international maneuverings, but direct action by American forces.
2
THE BATTALION
While the Fourth of July stands as the most hallowed date on the historical calendar of the United States, for many Americans the less conspicuous date of 10 November ranks in the same echelon. Some actually consider this autumn day to be the most important of the year, eclipsing birthdays, religious holidays, even wedding anniversaries, as on 10 November 1775, at Philadelphia’s Tun Tavern, Captain Samuel Nicholas, under decree of the Second Continental Congress, established what would arguably become the most venerated, the most feared by America’s enemies yet beloved by its citizenry and allies, the most tireless, brave, and selfless, and the most daring yet professional family of war fighters in history: the United States Marine Corps.
Captain Nicholas, the Marine Corps’ first Commandant, who would designate the Tun Tavern as the Continental Marines’ headquarters and recruitment center (Nicholas appointed the Tavern’s owner, Robert Mullan, to undertake the recruiting operation), quickly stood up two battalions of Marines, who quenched their thirsts with the Tavern’s beer and feasted at the adjacent eatery, Peggy Mullan’s Red Hot Beef Steak Club at Tun Tavern. Not four months after their fateful birth, the Continental Marines entered battle for the first time, immediately establishing what would become an enduring tradition of fortitude and decisive victory at the Battle of Nassau, where Captain Nicholas and 230 of his Marines (accompanied by twenty Continental Navy sailors) stormed onto the shores of the Island of Nassau and captured the British stronghold of Fort Montague. Then, on 3 March 1776, these “soldiers of the sea” took all of the island, seizing a large cache of British cannons, mortars, and rifles—later to be used against their onetime owners.
In the centuries that would follow that christening expedition to the Bahamas, the U.S. Marine Corps would indelibly burn into historical records as well as the psyches of millions—if not billions—chronicles of virtually unimaginable travails pitting spirit, skill, courage, and camaraderie against malevolent adversity and often overwhelming odds throughout the globe, in all climes, from scorched desert, to dripping jungle, to piercingly cold alpine heights. Throughout