Clarke is a Republican (2000) hawk who turned against Bush

The Road to Surfdom is blogging Clarke's book.

this is how Chapter 2 ends:

In the wake of their Afghan defeat (and, the Arabs believed, because of that defeat) the Soviet Union was now unraveling. Some Afghans and some Arab fighters pondered what you could do with money, Korans, and a few good weapons. You could overthrow an infidel government. More important, you could destroy a superpower. They just had. It was now 1990.