>voting American here
>have never heard of anything even remotely similar
And therein lies the problem. What the parent said is something the USA has practiced in dozens of countries. For just a single example, operation cyclone had the USA arming separatist militias to fight against the Soviet afghan government. You may be familiar with one of these militia members:
>the most well-known Arab financier and militant of the group during this period was Osama bin Laden, who would later found al-Qaeda and mastermind the September 11 attacks on the United States.