70 thoughts on “‘Russian’ Afghanistan”

  2. Why Soviet Union forces invaded Afghanistan? It proved a big mistake and after that Afghanistan fell into depths of fundamentalism and Pakistan is still paying the price.

    • Afghan’s good communist president got ousted by evil prime minister who started screwing up the country, USSR came to make it normal again.

  6. A. Bunka here. If Putin told this to Obama he did the USA a favor. Just as Charles de Gaulle told JFK, “stay out of Veitnam”, unfortunately, JFK didn’t listen. I hope Obama does. Many world leaders are saying Osama bin Laden is dead, I hope so. If he is truely dead, then why doesn’t Al Queda announce it?

    • Arch, I’ve never understood the bloated importance over the terror threat. The greatest enemy of any nation is ignorance. The government is always fooling it’s pop. by using fear. Just be informed and work for yourself. Forget all the propaganda we’re fed. Nothing matters except how we treat each other.
      Happy New Year to the Land of Immigrants. (But I still despise capitalism.)

      • You don’t understand many things. I was down at Ground Zero 3 days after the event, working, and if don’t understand why a government would seek to people from extremists then go visit a war zone and you will (maybe) understand.

        • C’mon, Arch. You know in your heart of hearts the Gov’t lies (about the threat). The same way Stalin used mythological “wreckers” to oppress workers into not speaking up about injustices. The threat is miniscule in reality. War? Come on! It’s an INCIDENT. Yeah, it was a big deal for NY for ONE DAY!! A WAR??

          • Maybe we value American lives and the sovereignty of our land more than you value Russian lives and land. I have to admit your response to the Beslan Massacre of children and the theatre attack have been pretty pathetic. Maybe your more worried about putting oil barrons in jail than finding true justice against evil people.

          • I knew one person at the WTC who did not come home. What asinine logic do you use? Terriorist attack a major city, kill thousands, and you think we should write it off as a natural disaster? More have died, total in the countries of the former USSR. They have blown Russian airliners out of the sky, attacked a theatre that resulted in hundreds of deaths, even a school. You are just plain twisted Sov, and I don’t believe I want to bother commenting here anymore.

        • Archie baby, you think this is about “terror”?

          You think the US spent HUNDREDS of BILLIONS of dollars in Afghanistan and Iraq, had thousands of its troops killed and tens of thousands maimed and injured, destroyed goodwill toward the US all around the world, to avenge 9/11 and bring freedom and democracy to the savages?

          Come on, you’re supposed to be one of the sane people here.

          This is nothing but the Great Game, in progress since man appeared on this planet.

          Don’t Accuse Me of Blaming America When I Blame the Government
          http://www.independent.org/blog/index.php?p=9049

      • It’s been my experience that those who despise things usually aren’t very good at them, just human nature I guess. So, my guess your a failure, SovMarx, and you,re lamenting the fall of birth to death career directives issued from the state? The USSR fell 22 years ago, get over it.

  8. Osama’s location while he is alive has to be the most fiercely guarded secret on earth: his survival is crucial to all of Al-Quaeda. The penalty if you revealed it would be a slow and painful death for you and all your family.

    Osama’s location after his death, not so much so. It would only be a matter of time before it was leaked, and his gravesite would become a pilgrimage site within a year.

    In other words, if Osama was dead, we’d know about it, even if Al-Quaeda never announced it.

  9. The Soviet Union went into Afghanistan to “liberate” it (Get it?). The U.S. imperialists invaded Afghanistan to topple a regime that was not a pliable, obedient consumer of American products. Both were wrong, but the Soviet way would have presented the Afghans with stability and equality. The Afghan social system is unequal and unstable; therefore, any attempt by outsiders is destined to fail. The Afghan system is tribalistic, paternalistic, theistic (therefore arrogant and narrow-minded) and anti-intellectual. Any attempt to modernize this country by outsiders will fail, so the U.S. will definitely fail here wasting billions of dollars and thousands of lives. If the American people are ignorant and believe they can fix this “hole” they all deserve to live in Disney World for eternity.
    We’ll all be better to leave this “hole”. What’s next? The Congo? Another lost cause (another tribalistic “hole”). Some things are lost causes…

        • They still would have taken over the country!How old are you Sovmarxist?Have you lived with socialism in the former USSR?Were you old enough to fully understand it?Are you even Russian?

        • A. Bunka here. American encirclement? Of the world’s largest country? The USSR invaded Afghanistan because the Left Wing government was overthrown. American encirclement? Sounds like Polish encirclement, or Finnish encirclement, or Chechnyian encirclement, or Hungarian encirclement, or Yugoslavian encirclement, or Baltic encirclement, or…Happy New Year to the Land of Emigrants.

    • A. Bunka here. American encirclement? Of the world’s largest country? The USSR invaded Afghanistan because the Left Wing government was overthrown. They intended to stay, the way they stayed everywhere else.
      American encirclement? Sounds like Polish encirclement, or Finnish encirclement, or Chechnyian encirclement, or Hungarian encirclement, or Yugoslavian encirclement, or Baltic encirclement, or…
      Happy New Year to the Land of Emigrants

      • Don’t waste your time w. 1min. attention span Americans. You were very clear about things in your comments, but Americans tend to only read one sentence before their attention gets diverted to s*x or something else. And then, being weaned on Rush Limbaugh or Ann Coulter, they start the insulting.

  10. The U.S.S.R. went into Afghanistan to bring Socialism to a neighbor but at it’s heart was a policy of surrounding itself with allies to insulate against itself against “American encirclement”, the policy of American imperialism that was designed to strangle/weaken the U.S.S.R. Doesn’t one see how the U.S. reacts to socialist Cuba?

    • A. Bunka here. Weaken the USSR? The USSR spent it’s way into oblivion. The USSR adopted a half-arsed form of economy that never produced one single commercial item, for general public use, worthy of export. (With the exception of Vodka). ANd let’s face it, not that hard to find a decent bottle of vodka, my Russian friends say, “vodka is vodka.” No tulips, no Volkswagens, no Microsoft. Weapons and more weapons, that was what your socialist wunderland produced. Gorby had to call it quits before the whole thing went kaputsky.

      • You might want to look at your own country Archy – not exactly economically healthy itself!
        How many trillion $$$ is it in debt – $14 Trillion?
        How much of your country is now owned by China? 20%?

        As sure – bury your heads in the sand & just print off a load more greenbacks & it’ll be alright!

        Renniks – Dublin, Ireland (also broke, but at least we’ve accepted it)

      • Too bad Gorby is seen as a traitor by Putlerites. It is too easy to imagine that another Brezhnew-style gerontocrate would be all-ready to unleash nuclear Armageddon to prevent USSR from losing the Cold War I.

  11. Cut this “heroic” horse manure. The admin should ask Afghan War veterans what they think about the war. I am sure a conscript who lost a leg at the age of 19 would tell a story very different from state propaganda.

    • Fair enough, but doesn’t the U.S. (at this very moment) call their Afghan vets heroes? What is the difference, CZenda? Both governments are wrong. The difference is the U.S. is holding itself up as “more just” than the Soviets were.

      • I don’t discount the sacrifice of the individual Russian Soldier. Like any soldier in history, he didn’t choose his war. He goes where he is told. Atrocities are unforgivable. However, Soviet colonialism is much different than the American invasion. America was retaliating to an attack. Not like the staged Polish attack on Nazi Germany. It was an attack that killed as many Americans as the Pearl Harbor attack. If you attack the US, you will get pounded. You don’t like it too bad. Maybe if Europeans had more spine and were more like Americans the world would be a better place.

  12. If the soviet union did take over Afghanistan and made it part of the soviet union I am sure there would be lenin monuments and buildings with hammer and sickles on them everywhere in Afghanistan!!

  16. I had a lot of horseradish vodka last night and I come to ER this evening looking for peace and love and get war…(groan)..

  19. This was definitely the Russian Vietnam. In some ways, this war resulted in the downfall of the USSR….looks like the big bear was taken down by the gun of the peasants.

    A lesson to be learned ; you cant force your ideology into another peoples without resistance

  25. Second to last photo shows the large Buddhist statutes that used to be a World Heritage Site. It took the Taliban about 2 weeks of continuous blasting to totally destroy them. I think they were near Kurdistan. Now they are lost forever by the actions of the advanced Taliban ideology!

  27. In ze Soviet Russia, government gets involved in a neverending quagmire of a war in Afghanistan, goes bankrupt, and collapses! But in America, we do the same damn thing twenty years later!

  28. For those who ask why USSR invaded Afghanistan – why not read wikipedia?
    Afghanistan was neighbor country of USSR, like Mexico for USA. That’s why Soviet’s interest was to keep that region stabile. All was fine until 1978 April revolution happened and Civil War started. One side requested support from Soviets, other got support from USA. It was good moment for USA to strengthen influence in this region while Soviet’s interest was to quickly stabilize situation and prevent USA’s influence. Soviet Army entered the Afghanistan to support Afghanistan’s new government. The united soviet-afghani army quickly got control over capital and main cities but failed to vanish mujahideen out of mountains. The Soviet Afghani war ended in military stalemate. Soviets got out of country. Civil war continued and still didn’t end today.

    • Yes it was a great move for the US to back Al Quida and it’s leader Osama Bin Laden who I’m sure will remain loyal to this day.

    • Russia and Middle East wouldn’t let Americans win current Afgan war like CIA prevented USSR of winning similar war in 80s
      Afghanistan is a very juicy piece of land and controlling it means a lot

      Too bad that people have to die for this

  32. Wow. We’re paraphrasing Chomsky now. He is such an unbiased, stick to the facts guy. He would never slant history or distort the truth to further his leftist political goals. You might as well quote Mein Kampf. It has more historial value. I think the cold in Canada has frozen your brain.

    • Testicles, there’s no such thing as an unbiased source, it’s meaningless. Two sides could be both correct and arrive at different conclusions.

      You’re also resorting to insults.

      Anyways, good conversation you guys are having here but as much as I respect you, Archie and SovMarxist, from many years of reading on geopolitics you and Archie are indeed a bit ignorant about what the US does abroad.

      I definitely don’t agree with everything SovMarxist writes but he’s more knowledgeable on geopolitics than you two.

      Also, SovMarxist is trying really hard to be reasonable and friendly.

      Also, learn to appreciate the value of different perspectives people have living in different cultures. Archy may have travelled but it takes some serious travelling before one can understand and appreciate the perspectives of another culture. Been there, done that, numerous times.

      One thing about SovMarxist, he knows English pretty well and neither of you know Russian (I do), SovMarxist definitely is aware of the American perspective but it doesn’t appear either of you are that appreciative of the Russian perspective, though I realize Archy has travelled in the area.

      We should all get together for coffee here in Vancouver! It’s not freezing here, only a day of snow so far, so that also shows a bit of your ignorance (we all are pretty much ignorant of collective knowledge).

      • Thanks for being so open-minded, Chris. I guess I’m too much the ideologue. I’d love to go to Vancouver but I’m an exploited (i.e. poor) worker so I’ll just have to read about Vancouver. LOL.

  33. It is amazing that everyone forgets what the Taliban is and does. They stone people. They chop off hands for using recycled paper. They blow up archeological sites. They kill people for unproven adultery. They blow up girls schools. They beat women because they can read. Wow these are nice guys. The U.S. should just pull out and give the country back to them.

    • Testicles, not sure you implied it but the US didn’t spend HUNDREDS of BILLIONS of dollars in Afghanistan and Iraq, had thousands of its troops killed and tens of thousands maimed and injured, destroyed goodwill toward the US all around the world, to get rid of the Taliban because they are bad guys. You do know that before 9/11 the US was funding the Taliban against the Northern Alliance. Though the Taliban was warned that it would be bombed if they did not do as the US demanded.

      PLEEEEEEEASE LEARN TO SEPARATE THE AMERICAN NATION FROM THE EVIL AMERICAN STATE, THE TWO ARE SEPARATE, THE PEOPLE AND ITS CULTURE ARE SEPARATE FROM THE GOVERNMENT!!

      PLEEEEEEEEEASE READ THE FOLLOWING ARTICLE CAREFULLY, TWICE!!!!

      Don’t Accuse Me of Blaming America When I Blame the Government
      http://www.independent.org/blog/index.php?p=9049

      Reply

  35. I have seen American soldiers and Russian soldiers your country soldiers are cool. Go Russia! Go United states of America! Your country is a winner and ours too. I don’t hate people hopefully maybe your country and our country could be best friend not enemy I hate wars! You are a smart people yes you and everyone let’s be friends not enemy. Someday united states will quit the war with other country. Yes some people are mean some are nice, but not everyone is evil not everyone is nice.

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