>Afghanistan "was successful"? Afghanistan is still going on!
>The USSR took the urban centers of Afgh. in something like 2 weeks, greeted
>by cheering crowds. That looked pretty damn successful at the time.
>I think Afgh. is going to be a nightmare.
A nightmare for whom? Unlike the Russians, the US is not deploying our own people there. Unlike the Russians, we don't care about avoiding chaos in Afghanistan, we just wanted to show to anyone in the world that any regime we didn't like could be taken out militarily.
The US miliatry won overwhelmingly in Afghanistan; that doesn't mean the Afghanis won over the long run. And whether the US population won over the long term, given the resentment against the US globally over all these issues, that may be less likely.
But Bush is fighting for US military dominance and on that score, Afghanistan was a raging success.
-- Nathan Newman