Perhaps they include the count of their allied Afghan forces. If they included the US's ARVN allies, the Vietnam war would list "US" combat deaths in the millions.
Posted on 12/15/2001 4:59:04 AM PST by kattracks
Americans learned from painful lessons of Soviet experience
WASHINGTON — When the United States prepared to attack Afghanistan two months ago, experts looked back to the last time a military superpower invaded that country.
It wasn't a pretty picture.
After 10 years of bloody battles in the 1980s, with Afghan guerrillas killing an estimated 500,000 Soviet troops in gunfights and ambushes, the Red Army eventually limped home in a humiliating defeat.
It was the last thing U.S. President George W. Bush needed after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11: a long, Vietnam-type war with heavy American casualties.
Now, just over 60 days later, the United States has vanquished the ruling Taliban militia, controls almost the entire Afghan countryside — with the exception of a few mountains near Tora Bora in eastern Afghanistan — and has avoided mass casualties.
How did the Americans do it? Could there be that much difference in the military might of armies that, until not so long ago, represented the world's two reigning superpowers?
The truth is the Pentagon's success is due in large part to conclusions drawn from the Soviet defeat.
"Part of the secret of our success is that we've really learned from the lessons of the Russian war," said retired U.S. Navy Commander John Carey, president of the Virginia-based International Defence Consultants Inc., which advises foreign governments on the U.S. military.
"It's relatively simple," Stanford University Professor Peter Duignan said. "The Russians went in ill-equipped, ill-trained and unprepared on the ground, and stirred up all of the Afghan people against them.
"The Americans went in well-trained, well-prepared, not substantially on the ground and we united Afghan nationalist forces against the Taliban," he said. "We really didn't fight a war there. We had proxies fight a war for us on the ground and we battled from 35,000 feet in the air."
Experts say the first thing to understand about the U.S. military success is that the Pentagon's goals in this war were much different than those of the Soviet Union. The Soviets invaded Afghanistan with the intent of occupying the country. Bush's goal has been to bring Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda terrorist network in Afghanistan and the Taliban, which supported it, to justice for the Sept. 11 attacks which killed more than 3,300 people — not to occupy the country in any way.
Throughout history, the Afghan people have been willing to fight and die for their beloved soil even at the hands of rival tribal factions within their country. But what Afghans really detest — and rise up in unison against — are foreign invaders.
"When Russian troops invaded Afghanistan they became a lightning rod which united the rival tribal factions in fighting against them," said Carey, a Russian expert. "The Russian mission was to go in and hold the land, while we've avoided that like the plague.
"Instead, what we've done is unite the rival tribal factions against the Taliban and Al Qaeda ... we've gone out of our way not to be seen as an invading force, including by dropping food and supplies to the Afghan people."
The political climate today is radically different than the Cold War period of the Soviet invasion in 1979.
The Soviets turned most of the Arab world against them by invading Afghanistan. Those countries assisted Afghan fighters. The United States capitalized on the opportunity to discredit Moscow, providing Afghan resistance fighters with effective Stinger ground-based anti-aircraft missiles.
Rather than lashing out after Sept. 11 at bin Laden's home base, the Bush administration took a month to orchestrate an international coalition that included border countries, most notably Pakistan, and large international partners like Canada, Russia and Britain. Arab countries also supported the so-called "war on terror."
Ironically, said Russia expert and University of Indiana Professor Roger Hamburg, this time the Russians provided the intelligence about pitfalls to avoid in Afghanistan. Pakistan and Uzbekistan provided much-needed supply routes and essential temporary U.S. air bases. "The Russians had none of that kind of help," Hamburg said, "whereas we had a fairly permissive environment going in there."
He pointed out that the U.S. diplomatic effort successfully isolated the Taliban from outside support by convincing many Arab countries that in fighting terrorism, "we were dealing with a situation which could threaten all of them eventually," Hamburg said.
Bush's assurances that the U.S. would not abandon Afghanistan, but would help rebuild it with international assistance, also made the climate different. In terms of war strategy, there are also important differences between the technology available to the United States a dozen years after the Soviets quit Afghanistan in 1989. As well, the strategies of the two countries were completely opposite.
The Soviet Union set out to fight a ground war, with a huge troop deployment, tanks and low-flying helicopters — all of which were ripe for picking off by heavily armed Afghan fighters. Stinger missiles, provided by the United States, destroyed many Soviet helicopters. Stanford's Duignan also points out that the Soviet force was filled with conscripts who suffered "terribly abusive training" and were sent into Afghanistan where they knew virtually nothing about the terrain.
By comparison, he said, the volunteer U.S. army force is far better trained, more committed in the wake of Sept. 11 and much better equipped than the Soviets ever were.
I had always thought that the Soviets lost 13,000 men in the Afghan occupation. 500,000 casualties seems impossible. What's the real number (academic at this point, but I'm curious)?
Peshawar Kabul and Afghanistan historical background
... Carré. The Soviet mission in Peshawar has lately taken to verifying Russian casualties
in Afghanistan by buying back the dog tags that have been stripped from ...
Perhaps they include the count of their allied Afghan forces. If they included the US's ARVN allies, the Vietnam war would list "US" combat deaths in the millions.
Nonsense. Our total casulties in Vietnam were close to 400,000 and our dead outnumbered theirs by nearly 4 to 1.
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