Tag: Mikhail Gorbachev

Gorbachev, Obama, & Afghanistan

The Soviet war in Afghanistan, also known as the Soviet-Afghan War, was a nine-year conflict involving Soviet forces supporting the Marxist People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) government against the Mujahideen resistance.

In 1989, ten years after a little more time, a lot more money, and a lot more lives lost, the USSR finally was forced to give up it’s dreams of domination of Afghanistan and withdrew… and collapsed.

Mikhail Gorbachev had a few words of caution for Barack Obama in the wake of indications that Obama is planning another escalation of 20-35,000 troops to Afghanistan

HuffPo on Sunday:

The former president of the Soviet Union spoke to CNN’s John King Sunday on State Of The Union and after talking about the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Gorbachev suggested that the US revisit the Kremlin’s efforts to control Afghanistan as the US plans its next move.

“I think that what’s needed is not additional forces,” said Gorbachev. “This is something that we discussed, too, years ago, and we decided not to do it. And I think our experience deserves attention.” McClatchy has reported that President Obama is leaning toward sending as many as 34,000 more US troops to Afghanistan. The Soviet Union fought for nine years in Afghanistan in a war to support Afghanistan’s then-communist government. The USSR ultimately lost the war and 13,000 of its soldiers died.

Gorbachev concluded that for the US, “withdrawal from Afghanistan should be the goal.”

The Soviet Withdrawal 20 Years Later

This fits, for further study, especially with Brandon Friedman’s posts on Afghanistan, over at Vet Voice, which can be found here and here and the present to future of.

In my opinion we lost there already, when they pulled out to destroy Iraq.

Memories don’t die, and we, as well as many others, made promises we didn’t keep in not filling the vacuum after the Soviet pullout in helping that country rebuild. That vacuum was filled which led to this present!!  

Aristotle, Shakespeare, and Dickens Set Free in China

Crossposted at Daily Kos and also at Truth & Progress

Lost in the hoopla and frenzy of the 2008 Presidential Campaign over the past couple of weeks was an overlooked (though important) anniversary in the Peoples Republic of China.  In February 1978 — a year or so after Chairman Mao Zedong’s death — the Chinese communist government lifted a ban on the writings of three of the greatest minds the world has ever seen.

This was a critical development for from their graves, three men long dead — Aristotle, William Shakespeare, and Charles Dickens — were finally free to peddle their ‘subversive’ ideas about the complexity of the human condition.




Aristotle, William Shakespeare, and Charles Dickens