Gorbachev says US, NATO had no chance of success in Afghanistan

The Hill ^ | 08/17/2021 | Cameron Jenkins

[ChicagoConservative27]

Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev on Tuesday said that he believes that NATO and the United States had no chance of garnering success from entering Afghanistan.

Gorbachev, who previously oversaw the withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan in 1989, said that while he now regards Soviet presence in Afghanistan as a mistake, Americans and NATO have mishandled their campaign in the country as well.

"They should have admitted failure earlier," Gorbachev, 90, told RIA. "The important thing now is to draw the lessons from what happened and make sure that similar mistakes are not repeated."

[ChicagoConservative27]

Where the hell did they dig him up from?? Last time I saw Gorbachev was when Bush senior was President.

[dfwgator]

Define success. If he meant in terms of nation building, he’s absolutely right.

[Skywise]

Wow - where did you dig up that old fossil.

[the OlLine Rebel]

Actually he was at the Reagan funeral.

anyway, I tire of this nonsense that Afghanistan is invincible. What a crock.

The key is how you approach it. If we stopped this wishy-washy concern about innocent civilians and surgical strikes, and being nice after by nation-building, we’d be ok.

[DIRTYSECRET]

The article was short and said nothing.

[mountainlion]

We the people had little chance in Afghanistan. The deep state made trillions of dollars off of us and Afghanistan. Us tax payers and Afghan people are the losers.

[Red Badger]

[Dilbert San Diego]

Why doesn’t he do some more PIZZA HUT commercials?

I wondered what kind of communist could do evil capitalist commercials.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

It’s not about the virus.

It is about conditioning the livestock to march willingly into the ovens.

[MGunny]

The problem is with the bureaucracy and the higher ups in the military brass. Our war fighters can do the job if allowed. The first couple of months in country had the Taliban all but defeated! A couple of tactical nukes would have sealed the deal and no further American lives would have been lost! It’s the politicians that need to pay a severe price for their doings!!!

[McGruff]

[Tell It Right]

Let's be honest. Part of the reason the large countries "fail" to takeover Afghanistan is there's not much there worth taking over -- as long as Afghanistan sells poppy at a reasonable price.

Otherwise any one of the big boy nations would have taken over Afghanistan easily if they had had the stomach for it. After 9/11 we should have killed as many people in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and maybe Saudi Arabia as needed for them to surrender. If they didn't surrender, they'd all die.

As it stands we did kill a lot of people in Afghanistan. I can't stand the messaging Bush gave (win over hearts and minds and all that garbage). But it is what it is and what we should do now is trumpet the hundreds of thousands of people who died in Afghanistan, that it's many times more than coalition forces deaths and 9/11 deaths, and that more of the same will happen in the middle east if we're attacked again.

So yes, complain about Biden's withdrawal strategy. Yes, complain about Bush. But the main message ought to be that the tons of deaths in Afghanistan is Exhibit A to never attack the U.S.

[woodbutcher1963]

Gorby, where have you been hiding?

The last time I saw you was at the beginning of “The Naked Gun 2”

Frank Drebbin was rubbing that birthmark off your head.

[woodbutcher1963]

I always thought when they initially had Osama cornered in Tora Bora they should have called in a special air strike.
Nuke the whole area. Kill everything in that area in one strike.

Osama would have never escaped to Pakistan.

[dfwgator]

That’s because we had a coked-up idiot in the White House then.

[woodbutcher1963]

I forgot:

THEN LEAVE AFGHANISTAN

It would have showed the world that if you attack the USA, you will die with extreme prejudice

[larrytown]

Well, if the United States was no better than the Einsatzgruppen that were unleashed on eastern Europe, I suppose we might have gotten a “win”.

Smart people pick their battles - and the US hasn’t been smart in a long time.

[peter the great]

The other thing I really don’t believe the MSM ever wanted us to win that war to begin with. Imagine a free Society succeeding where an Atheistic Communist Society failed and we had had help from our CIA to frustrate the Soviets.

[Tell It Right]

I respectfully disagree. I always hated the media's redefining of who our enemy is as being the singular person Bin Laden. It was always, "We took over much of Afghanistan. Killed many civilians. But Bush is a failure because he hasn't killed Bin Laden." For example, even with our fascination of the history of world war II most Americans can't today name the emperor of Japan because Americans for the most part weren't united against that singular person, but against Japan as a whole.

We should have defined our enemy as Afghanistan or the Taliban or Al Qaeda or Islam. We should have fought that group and killed as many people as it took to get them to surrender. If others next to them were killed because of miscommunication of our enemy's whereabouts, oh well. It happens in war. If they don't like it they shouldn't attack us -- especially killing thousands of our civilians.

[woodbutcher1963]

Our enemy was and still is Islamist Extremists. Bin Laden was the leader of the worst Islamic terrorist organization in the world. Killing him was akin to killing Hitler. IF you took out the rest of the Al Qaeda command structure with him, it would have sent a message to not attack the US for the next 50 years.

It would have also given all the other enemies the clear message that we were not afraid to use every weapon in our arsenal including nuclear weapons to defeat an enemy.