To the surprise of Thomas Seay about a week ago, I said I agreed with the Worker's Vanguard position, "Hail The Red Army!, " re; the '79 intervention in Afghanistan.
However, rough stats like the one on the last pg. of the first chapter of the Ahmad Rashid book on the Taliban, saying that 1.5 million died from '79 to the withdrawl of Soviet troops in '89, give one pause. Rashid, is a left-liberal. A more centrist academic, Larry P. Goodson in, "Afghanistan's Endless War: State Failure, Regional Politics and the Rise of the Taliban, " Univ. of Washington Press, just out in pb. sez nearly 2 million. (From pg. 5 of the Goodson)
Plus, the Soviets laid down 30 million landmines, unmarked and unmapped. Michael Pugliese