Soviets’ Afghan Record Not a Model for Iraq
Re “Surprise! The Soviets Nearly Won Afghan War,” Opinion, Dec. 26: After nine years of brutal warfare in which more than 2.5 million Afghans (mostly civilians) were killed or maimed and 14,453 Soviet troops were killed, Mark Kramer has the audacity to claim that the Soviets “almost” won their war in Afghanistan.
Though the Soviet experience may demonstrate that close does indeed count in hand grenades (especially when deployed against civilians), the real lesson is that even the most drastic and damnable practices will not lead to victory over a stubborn insurgency. Besides, is the massacre of 2.5 million Afghans by Soviet communists really a model that the United States wants to follow?
John Levine
West Los Angeles
According to Kramer, all we have to do to “win” in Iraq is emulate the Soviets in Afghanistan: kill or maim 2.5 million people (mostly civilians) and displace millions more, while losing only 1,600 of our sons and daughters a year for nine years.
Looks good on paper, provided you’re not family to any of those casualties.
The comparison falls apart, though, because all the Soviets wanted to do was impose a communist regime in Kabul. Dictatorships are routinely created at the point of a gun, so Moscow’s cruel goal was at least rational. However, the avowed aim of President Bush’s little war is to install a democracy in Baghdad -- a much more tricky and delicate undertaking, like nursing a baby bird that’s fallen out of its nest.
Kramer is tragically wrong, as is Bush, to propose that it’s simply a matter of killing more of their people than they kill ours.
Jim Houghton
Encino
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