Gorbachev, leader who pulled Soviets from Afghanistan, says U.S. campaign was doomed from start

[Uncle Joe]

(snip)

Gorbachev was cited by Russia's RIA news agency as saying that NATO and the Americans had no chance of success and had badly mishandled their own Afghan campaign.

"They (NATO and the United States) should have admitted failure earlier. The important thing now is to draw the lessons from what happened and make sure that similar mistakes are not repeated," Gorbachev told RIA.

"It (the U.S. campaign) was a failed enterprise from the start even though Russia supported it during the first stages," he added.

"Like many other similar projects at its heart lay the exaggeration of a threat and poorly defined geopolitical ideas. To that were added unrealistic attempts to democratise a society made up of many tribes."

https://www.reuters.com/world/india/gorbachev-leader-who-pulled-soviets-afghanistan-says-us-campaign-was-doomed-2021-08-17/

I agree with Gorbachev, particularly the bolded part.

Mountainous geography and virtually no roads for a nation that size are major impediments against Afghanistan having a strong central government; particularly one imposed from the outside. The Afghanis; being more a loose coalition of tribes particularly outside Kabul have no strong sense of nation and that combined with rampant governmental corruption led to fast food chain turnover in their military.

For better or worse Afghanistan's government has to be homegrown and given time to catch up with societies that didn't have those geographical limitations not to mention PTSD from almost half a century of continuous wars' effects.

[JoeOtterbein]

1. K n R ! Thanks for posting!

It was obvious from about a month after we arrived, that we should never have gone in.