Bush's Vietnam?/More like his Afghanistan-A dream scenario for Bin Laden

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http://www.startribune.com/stories/1519/4720519.html

Last week, Sen. Ted Kennedy angrily described the war in Iraq as President Bush's Vietnam. His point is taken, but there is a more cogent analogy: Iraq risks becoming Bush's Afghanistan. Not present-day Afghanistan -- a failed state which the United States justifiably invaded following the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 -- but the Afghanistan of 1979, when it was invaded by the Soviet Union. The parallels aren't exact, but they are instructive, especially in deciding the best route for moving ahead in Iraq.

The Soviets gave various reasons for their invasion, but a prominent one was that its southern borders had become "insecure." Pakistan was unstable, and Iran had just undergone the Khomeini revolution, which it might export. Soviet officials said they feared the United States also was "counting on stealthily approaching our territory through Afghanistan." Thus they had "no choice but to send troops."

In a word, the invasion was a preemptive strike against a developing threat, justified by the Brezhnev Doctrine first used to invade Czechoslovakia in 1968. snip

They did not, and from all across the Muslim world, young radicals flocked to Afghanistan to fight the godless Soviets and drive them from the country of their Muslim brothers. One of those radicals was Osama bin Laden. Rich Arab states poured funds into the fight, as did the United States, to the tune of more than $2 billion.

Over the course of the next 10 years, the mujahadeen bled the Soviets dry. They were determined that this invasion of Muslim territory would not stand. Hundreds of thousands of young men from across Islam became fighters in the radical forces fighting the Soviets. Finally, in 1988, reeling from internal political unrest, from world pressure and from the military pressure of the mujahadeen, the Soviets withdrew. The Islamic radicals had succeeded in humiliating a world superpower.

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