Quote:
Originally Posted by vacoder
I mean just wow. I do not know if this was posted already but is Trump trying to get on Putin's xmas list? Either Trump is suffering from later stages of syphillis or he is just incredibly corrupt.
|
The Soviet Union didn't invade Afghanistan.
Afghanistan wasn't a country, it was a no-man's land, literally.
It was a buffer-zone created by India, China, Russia and Iran to prevent conflicts between those countries. In 1942, one of the tribal leaders, and there are about 109 tribes in Afghanistan, became king and created Afghanistan. It later converted to a constitutional monarchy in the 1960s.
The government was very corrupt, and one member of parliament, Mohammed Daud, overthrew the government in 1974.
He was not pro-Soviet nor pro-US, but he was pro-Western and did a lot of business with France and Canada, and to a lesser extent with Germany. The first thing he did was expand the airport at Kabul so the runways could handle cargo aircraft. At that time, there were no roads or railroads leading into Afghanistan, and none within the country, so the only way to get anything into Afghanistan was by air.
He imported construction equipment like bull-dozers, back-hoes, graders, earth movers and the like and started building the infrastructure around Kabul.
Unfortunately, Daud committed the heinous crime of Being Neutral While Non-White/Non-Christian, and he was over-thrown in a coup in 1978 that has every indication of US-backing (remember the US repeatedly attempted to assassinate Prime Minister Nehru of India for the heinous crime of Being Neutral While Non-White/Non-Christian and assassinated Prime Minister Ali Khan of Pakistan for the heinous crime of Being Neutral While Non-White/Non-Christian and attempted several times to assassinate Nasser of Egypt for the heinous crime of Being Neutral While Non-White/Non-Christian as well as overthrowing Shishakli (1954) and al-Azm (1963) of Syria for the heinous crime of Being Neutral While Non-White/Non-Christian).
Daud and about 100 of his followers were summarily executed and their bodies buried in a pit dug ironically by the construction equipment he imported.
The new government lasted only a few months before being overthrown by a group of military officers (who were Left-wing but anti-Soviet).
They were overthrown a couple of months later by another group of Leftists who were pro-Soviet.
The US-backed group attempted a counter-coup, but failed, and then the military group attempted a counter-coup which also failed.
Although the government successfully beat back the counter-coup attempts, it lost a large number of men, weapons, equipment, vehicles and supplies doing so.
There were now three armies marching on Kabul: a coalition of northern tribal groups, a coalition of tribal groups from the northwest and a coalition of tribal groups from the south, whom you would later come to call the Taliban.
Whoever got to Kabul first was going to be the next government of Afghanistan.
There was no way the existing government could defend against one army, much less all three armies, so they asked the Soviets to intervene on their behalf, and the Soviets agreed.
That is not an invasion, unless you want to also claim the US invaded Vietnam.
The Soviets annihilated all three armies.
Note that in 1976, the US Army had concluded that Soviet war-fighting style was superior to the US Western-style of war-fighting and had begun to create the Air-Land Battle 2000 doctrine, which it finally implemented in 1986 with the Division '86 Program.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
