[Snipey]

More like a horrendous article that cannot get its facts straight:

"One could not have designed a military less well-prepared to deal with such a conflict than the Red Army of 1979. The Soviet military had not fought a war since 1945. Soviet company, battalion, brigade, division, and even army commanders had no experience in combat."

If you fought in the war from 1944 - 1945, you would be roughly 19 in 1945. In 1979 you would be 54 or 55. You'd be leading the army, and would still have experience, you don't retire at 55. Vyacheslav Borisov commander in the 2008 South Ossetia War at the age of 54. In addition, the Soviet divisions did fight in Hungary, Vietnam, parts of Africa, etc.

"Soviet conscripts were notoriously brutal, drunk, and unprofessional." - that just sounds like a pointless Ad Hominem that's unsourced.

"But SPETSNAZ units were not equivalent to our Special Operations Forces." - that's odd, and not true. Even this game points out it's not true.

"There was no Soviet doctrine for counter-insurgency because Soviet ideology could not foresee the USSR fighting against a revolution." - oh really? What about counter-revolution? What about Hungary in 1956? What about Nazi insurgency in 1944?

"The Red Army had recognized the limitations of its soldiers since the 1920s. It addressed them by requiring operational-level headquarters to design missions that would be relatively easy at the tactical and sub-tactical levels." - yet another fallacy, for instance see Operation Bagration.

It's a common myth I see, where the Russian Army is always underestimated. Hitler in the 1940's. Chechens in 1999 (Dagestan War). Georgians in 2008. Allies in 1920's. And that's just in the past 100 years.

The real reason for the Red Army's defeat was two-fold. The initial Red Army strategy in Afghanistan, to use shock forces to take key points and expand Soviet influence from these keypoints with the use of artillery, was not accepted by the Brezhnev Government. This left gaping holes in Soviet supply lines. The second reason was that the central government, under Brezhnev and later Gorbachev, made the same error that Nicolas I government made in the Russo-Japanese War, the army could not be properly supplied.

I want to see Al Qaeda defeated, I don't think there's a sane person out there who's rooting for Al Qaeda. But in order to defeat Al Qaeda, we cannot have military articles being called "excellent" - especially articles that constantly underestimate other armies. Pat MacArthur, the American General that brought the Phillipines under American control stated: "Never underestimate your enemy". (I think someone said that before him too.) If people constantly write articles underestimating the Red Army for political purposes, what's to stop the same people from underestimating Al Qaeda's abilities? Poor research is poor research, irrespective who you write about. We already made that mistake with Fallujah, with the Sunni Triangle, let's not make the same mistake again Al Qaeda, where it really counts. Let's stop writing crap, at least until bin Laden is toast and Al Qaeda is destroyed.