It won't be too much longer before we see the first suicide bombers in the United States and Europe.

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My good friend Napalm wonders: "What I can't figure out is what the Soviet Union was thinking when they invaded. The Afghans, being farmers under a tribal (four major tribes, several smaller ones) structure weren't exactly a threat to the Soviet Union, so what was the deal?"

The Soviets (or, rather, the Russians) have been wanting to get into Afghanistan for a loong time. It puts them one step closer to achieving one of their prime strategic goals - a warm water port. They've never had one, and their global naval strategy has been severely hampered by that lack.

Furthermore, it would have put them in a position to threaten the Straits of Hormuz, with a quick hop and skip through southern Iran to grab Bandar Abbas.

This scenario was one of the nightmares of Western military planners in the early 1980's. I particiapted in several exercises that wargamed this exact scenario.

He then opined:

"If we thought Viet-Nam was bad, it's nothing compared to the mess that will be Afghanistan." That seems to be the common wisdom, but I disagree. Ground operations in Afghanistan are feasible, and can be successfully prosecuted. I know this contradicts all the conventional wisdom - keep in mind, however, that this wisdom is in many cases coming from the very same sources that swore that any ground combat during the war with Iraq would result in heavy American losses.

Certainly, in modern history, both the Brits (twice) and the Russians (thrice) have suffered defeats in Afghanistan. Not commonly mentioned in these citations is the fact that the Afghans have been successfully conquered several times.

Not commonly realized is the fact that the "victory" of the Afghanis over the Russians was a Pyrrhic victory, one that cost the Afghan people over one million dead. A third of the population left the country to become refugees in other countries. In return, the Soviets lost 15,000, and 50,000 wounded.

It is highly doubtful that the Afghans could have prevailed had not they been heavily supported with arms and the other outside aid they received from the US, Saudi Arabia, and China. Given the current state of affairs, it is unlikely that the Afghans could get anything like those amounts of aid into the country.

Finally on this topic, the US military is much better than the Soviet army (trust me on this one - explanation of why that is true would be a very lengthy post) that invaded Afghanistan, and has the benefit of the wisdom garnered from analysis of the Soviet experience there. I am quite sure that we would not have as difficult a time as they had, in the event that it came to widespread ground combat there.

I am not advocating that we conduct any extensive ground operations, or an invasion of Afghanistan, simply pointing out that they are not doomed to failure before they have begun, and that should not be included in the list of reasons as to why that is not an appropriate action. More to the point is the argument that it would not accomplish much.

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Placing blame on the US government for our past ties and use of Osama bin Laden to further our political aims, is a futile action, at best, fueled primarily by inadequate knowledge or recall of the global situation at the time we offered him aid, or perhaps a willful rejection of the realities of the bloodsport of global politics.

The Soviets invaded Afghanistan in December 1979 to buttress an Afghan Communist regime that had shortly before overthrown the previous government, a monarchy. The leader of that regime was replaced, (he did not survive the process) by a Soviet puppet named Kamal. He was besieged by any number of Afghani warlords that controlled the regions around Kabul, the only urban area in Afghanistan that matters. These warlords controlled loose coalitions built upon ties of kinship and religious belief, and were all primarily motivated by the Soviet attempt to stamp out religion, and convert the country to an atheist state. Bin Laden was among the many disaffected from all over the Islamic world that left their home countries to voluntarily join in the war against the Soviets, and recieved some American aid.

Here's the important part - all of this aid to the mujahideen was funneled through the intelligence service of Pakistan, the ISI. Pakistan had it's own issues with Afghanistan, primarily disputes over borders, and purposely pointed the largest amount of aid to the most radical Islamic groups, as they were not only the most staunchly anti-communist, but those least likely to be able to form a stable government when and if the Soviets finally packed up and left. The practical result of this was that the factions that had modernistic and/or democratic and/or pro-Western tendencies, and there were a good number of those, were effectively eradicated.

So, was it in fact a mistake to support these groups? To arm and support someone that may in the future turn out to be a foe is certainly not a unique tactic; it is, in fact, a time-honored and common one. We certainly supported the Soviets in WWII, despite our certain knowledge that their form of government and ours were destined to be at odds soon after the German defeat. The US error in Afghanistan may have been more a sin of omission rather than commission, in our neglect of the area after the Soviets left.

This was certainly exacerbated by the US tendency to ignore matters in countries that do not have much to offer in the way of important national interests; after the Soviets left, the area had little to demand our attention. Any interests we may have had were made more difficult to press after the Pakistanis conducted their first nuclear tests, and we imposed further sanctions and embargoes upon that country, (and began to enforce earlier ones we had pretty much set aside when we we needed their help against the Soviets) weakening our ability to communicate with and influence Afghanistan.

So, the question becomes, if our aid to bin Laden in that war eventually caused the deaths of the WTC victims, was it worth it? I think so, as the Soviet failure in Afghanistan was one of the primary causes of a surge of internal discontent that led to the fall of the Iron Curtain. While this fall of the Russian Empire allowed all of the ethnic, nationalistic and religious differences that Empire had smothered under to reawaken, leading to the bloody conflicts in places such as Bosnia and Chechnya, the greater boon of making a global nuclear conflict much less likely far outweighs those negatives.

So, now we are again faced with a similar question. The Northern Alliance is a loose group of Afghanis that are the remnant of the opposition to the Taliban. They can offer perhaps as many as thirty thousand fighters to operate on the ground there. Fighters experienced in combat in the terrain, and in the tactics of the Taliban.

Should we not use their aid because they may later, in the pursuit of their own interests, decide to break our alliance of convenience, or even eventually bite our hand? Or because they may have been guilty of actions, say human rights violations, or mistreatment of prisoners, or make their women walk around in head to toe tents, or some other behaviors that are common in their culture, but repugnant to ours? Perhaps to my detriment, I don't care what they've done - if by using them we can save one US citizen's life in the war, I say use them like a cheap whore.

To be totally ruthless, we can look to the example of the North Vietnamese and their relation to the the Viet Cong, their nominal allies against us in the Viet Nam war, and get most of them killed in the waning days of the conflict, so there won't be enough of them to matter at the end.

They too are mujahideen, and if they want to die for Allah, then let's be politically correct, acknowledge their religion as worthy as any other, respect their desires, and give them every chance we can. Strap a bomb to their back, and send them into bin Laden's next tea party.

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