Thoughts on the mujahideen?

Even you think USSR would have been a greater threat today than Islamic terrorists, you can't argue against the fact that America objectively created a worse situation for the people in Afghanistan and the rest of the region. And IMO it was a strategic failure for the USA because the Soviets would have collapsed anyways even without the invasion, while the after effects resulted in the formation of Islamic terrorists groups that did 9/11 and forced America in decades long quagmires around the Middle-East. Today Afghanistan's economy and development is in the gutter while their women aren't even allowed a basic education.

Mujahideen wanting to fight off foreign invaders was understandable. The Afghan people's anger towards the Afghan commies trying to push reforms in a rushed and sloppy manner was also understandable.

But the CIA funnelling money and weapons into the hands of religious extremists starting with Operation Cyclone was definitely evil and probably unnecessary. They literally just had CIA glowies hand weapons, money, and connections to other Islamic extremists to the Afghans that they then trained in the art of guerilla warfare (something that would never harm Americans down the line). In a supreme display of irony Aaron Sorkin made an entire movie sucking off Charlie Wilson and Joanne Herring for beating the Soviets by funding these extremists while supporting cool and progressive policies in America. Meanwhile many of those that fought as Mujahideen ended up becoming Taliban later and assisted other Islamist groups and terrorists around the world.

A big counterpoint to American involvement in Afghanistan has to be the state of Tajikistan. Tajiks are about a 1/3 of the Afghan population give or take but they made up a big part of the Afghan commies while the Mujahideen and later Taliban were mostly Pashtun. Tajiks and later Tajikistan was on the side of the Soviets for the most part, and today the country dwarfs Afghanistan in human development, literacy rate for both genders, and overall quality of life.

tl;Dr: America placed a banana peel to trip its aging arch nemesis that was going to fall and break it's hip regardless, and then proceeded to slip on its own banana peel for the next two decades.