More than eight years after they intervened in Afghanistan to support the procommunist government, Soviet troops begin their withdrawal. The event marked the beginning of the end to a long, bloody, and fruitless Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.
In December 1979, Soviet troops first entered Afghanistan in an attempt to bolster the communist, pro-Soviet government threatened by internal rebellion. In a short period of time, thousands of Russian troops and support materials poured into Afghanistan. Thus began a frustrating military conflict with Afghan Muslim rebels, who despised their own nation’s communist government and the Soviet troops supporting it. During the next eight years, the two sides battled for control in Afghanistan, with neither the Soviets nor the rebels ever able to gain a decisive victory.
For the Soviet Union, the intervention proved extraordinarily costly in a number of ways. While the Soviets never released official casualty figures for the war in Afghanistan, U.S. intelligence sources estimated that as many as 15,000 Russian troops died in Afghanistan, and the economic cost to the already struggling Soviet economy ran into billions of dollars. The intervention also strained relations between the Soviet Union and the United States nearly to the breaking point. President Jimmy Carter harshly criticized the Russian action, stalled talks on arms limitations, issued economic sanctions, and even ordered a boycott of the 1980 Olympics held in Moscow.
By 1988, the Soviets decided to extricate itself from the situation. Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev saw the Afghan intervention as an increasing drain on the Soviet economy, and the Russian people were tired of a war that many Westerners referred to as “Russia’s Vietnam.” For Afghanistan, the Soviet withdrawal did not mean an end to the fighting, however. The Muslim rebels eventually succeeded in establishing control over Afghanistan in 1992.
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So which is the stupid country? The one that wastes 8 years getting their asses kicked and wasting billions, or the one who wastes 18 years (this October) doing much of the same?
Thank god the CIA has been getting lots of opium out of the country for their global heroin trade or this war would have been a complete waste.
1988. I remember it well. Stucky the Neocon was a diehard born-again Christian. Russia, Gog, was ruled by Satan. The Russian leader (insert any name here) was clearly the Antichrist. It’s all in the Bible. I secretly hoped Ronnie would nuke the Russkies. I needed to see Armageddon.
I was downright ecstatic that those goddamned filthy Russkies got their asses kicked. Hahahahahaha, I thought, how pathetic that the goddamned Commies couldn’t beat a bunch of ignerent ragheads after EIGHT years!!
Oh, my! How the worm has turned.
John Keegan, the war historian, said something about the tactic for winning a war not being how many tanks or planes you destroy, but overwhelming the enemy’s will to resist.
Funny how America had no problem destroying the enemy’s will when it came to German civilians in Dresden, Hamburg, Berlin and Japanese civilians in Tokyo, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, but when it’s Afghanis, Iraqis, it’s the velvet glove approach.
Muslims understand true force, and submit when they see who’s riding the strong horse. These are managed wars for some ulterior, sinister purpose. Most likely control of world commerce, oil, etc.
But of course neither the Afghan army, NOR the Iraqi army, nor either of their governments, did one goddamn thing to the US. Nearly everyone in military leadership knew that. Maybe that played a role. As for the slaughter of Germans and Japanese, those were just war crimes that were never prosecuted.