afghanistan: the war that did in the soviets. we thought we could conquer it?

[unblock]

who are the idiots responsible for this crazy idea that the war that finally broke the back of the soviets, the war that finally did in a vast empire of 70 years, a war that finally bankrupted the "other" superpower... was something we, from the other side of the planet, could do ourselves with any better results?

:banghead:

[CanonRay]

1. Yeah, but we have God on our side!

:sarcasm:

[unhappycamper]

2. Unfortunately, history will probably repeat itself.

http://www.dutchintell.com/index.php/photo-gallery/project/196-russias-rusting-navy















































http://pics.livejournal.com/igor113/pic/007eez56/s1024x768

[izquierdista]

4. Nice pics

In my world travels, I've had a chance to look at lots of modern ruins. Factories and complexes of buildings that hint of a more vibrant day in the past when hundreds, even thousands of people worked there to produce or trade the goods of modern commerce. If you look closely, you can judge how long they have been abandoned. If the roofs are caved in with good size trees growing up in the middle, it might be twenty or thirty years past closure. If all the windows are still intact, maybe it was shut down last month. It's too soon for archaeologists to be crawling over these sites, trying to figure out what went on there, after all, it is within recent memory and somewhere, someone may even have video of these places in their glory days, when the economy was booming and they thought it would never end. But end it has, and there is an eerie quiet as you have all the time in the world to wander around, watching nature reclaim what was wrenched away from her.

As I said, I've seen hundreds of such places, but the best places to find them -- the U.S. and the former Soviet Union.

[spanone]

3. cheney & bu$h* and now President Obama

[tjwash]

5. Don't forget who armed and trained the Afghani people with stinger missles on the sly.

We had more to do with bankrupting the Soviets than the Afghan's did. It wasn't the region that killed the Soviets. The CIA and US defense contractors smuggled in, and handed every swinging dick in the region a bunch stinger missiles and a shoulder launcher to shoot down all the MI-17's the Soviets loved to fly around in. That was just for starters. They also armed and trained the Taliban, who are using those same weapons and training against us now.

After the Soviets withdrew, Reagan escalated the already insane arms race afterwards, and that drove them to bankruptcy, and has us currently on the brink.

Afghanistan is just a symptom...the real cause is unbridled and runaway defense spending.

[unblock]

6. but that's just the point. did we think that no one would help the afghans as we did?

or that it might be overly expensive?

even poppy talked about a "peace dividend". of course, it was all talk....