U.S. Ignores Lessons of Soviets in Afghanistan

Re “An Afghan Quandary for the U.S.,” Jan. 2: America’s Afghanistan policy shows that the current U.S. government has learned little, if anything, from the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. It flooded the then-U.S.S.R. with heroin and other opiates and funded the criminal and fundamentalist activities in Russia for years to come.

The U.S. policy and the occupation of Iraq have created “successful catastrophes,” predicted by so many. To call these “policies” idiotic would be an insult to Count Myshkin from Fyodor Dostoevsky’s “The Idiot.”

Dragan Kujundzic

Director of Russian Studies UC Irvine

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As a capitalist society, we should recognize the basic laws of supply and demand and should further recognize that, though the supply can be attacked, it is more logical to look at the demand.

Why support aerial spraying of potentially carcinogenic chemicals to destroy opium poppies? Why should poor Afghan farmers, seeing the potential for a lucrative crop, be made to suffer when they are simply responding to demand? Let’s examine some factors that influence that demand -- poverty, racism, crime and despair -- and turn our efforts to addressing these rather than punishing Afghan farmers who are merely trying to make a living.

Alison M. Grimes

Yorba Linda