{"id":15812,"date":"2009-11-27T08:14:52","date_gmt":"2009-11-27T13:14:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=15812"},"modified":"2009-11-27T08:14:52","modified_gmt":"2009-11-27T13:14:52","slug":"soviet-vs-us-comparison-in-astan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=15812","title":{"rendered":"Soviet vs. US comparison in A’stan"},"content":{"rendered":"

In this morning’s Wall Street Journal<\/a> (it may require subscription), Yaroslav Trofimov compares the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan to the current US operations there;<\/p>\n

There are major differences between the two conflicts. For one, unlike the isolated Soviet Union, America operates in Afghanistan under a United Nations mandate, part of a coalition of 42 allies. Allied dead, currently 1,528, are barely one-ninth the Soviet toll. Afghan civilian deaths are a small fraction of the estimated one million killed in the 1980s.<\/p>\n

Afghans who compare the two campaigns acknowledge the differences, yet argue that these aren’t always in America’s favor. An examination of this debate over the Soviet experience offers an insight into what American troops are up against — and the issues President Obama must weigh as he decides the course of an unpopular and costly war he didn’t start.<\/p>\n

Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev also faced a troop-increase request during his first year, for a war he had inherited. Soviet generals in 1985 asked for tens of thousands more soldiers to bolster their 100,000-strong contingent, roughly the same size as the current Western force in Afghanistan.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"us-vs-soviets-in-astan\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Trofimov tries to give cover to Obama and Gates for taking so long to make up their minds about troop increases, but it falls flat. There is no excuse for delaying the inevitable. Obama knows he can’t re-elected if he quits in Afghanistan despite the unpopularity of the war – Americans don’t tolerate quitting and Obama would get all of the blame, no matter what Americans tell pollsters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In this morning’s Wall Street Journal (it may require subscription), Yaroslav Trofimov compares the Soviet invasion … Soviet vs. US comparison in A’stan<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46,84,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15812","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-barack-obama","category-military-issues","category-terror-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15812","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15812"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15812\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15812"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15812"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}