Excellent article on Afghanistan

[Snipey]

The didn't supply the Afghanistan contingent properly. Yes, there were supplies, but it wasn't enough. My quote was that the Stavka failed to supply the escalation. Your counter-argument is that "they did supply the limited contingent". Your counter-argument fails to address my argument.

Of course they had a hard time, this is war. Rarely do you see a war that's easy. The US war against the Iraqi Insurgency is no Operation Cakewalk.

I brought up Leningrad for a comparison to show what the Red Army could do. I didn't bring it up to start a debate over it. We both agreed that 640,000 civilians were supplied from scratch via a treacherous road.

In the Siege of Leningrad there was limited supply that the Soviets could give to the city, because, uhhh geez, I don't know, maybe the Great Patriotic War was still going on? When the Red Army fought against Afghanistan the USSR had no other wars. In the Vietnam War, the US had over 550,000 men in Vietnam. Why couldn't the Red Army do something similar? It took the Red Army under three months to bring over one million men, all the way across the USSR to help take out the Japanese Army in Manchuria and capture 600,000 POWs, and destroy the previously undefeated Japanese Army in a matter of weeks.

The Western Front was far more criticial then an actual war? Are you serious? After Hungary, and especially after Czeckoslovakia, it was pretty damn obvious that NATO was going to invade the USSR. On the other hand, after the Berlin Airlift and the Cuban Missile Crisis, it was obvious that USSR wasn't going to go after NATO. The War in Afghanistan started in 1979. The Western Front wasn't going to be an issue. Carter wasn't going to invade. Reagan's new program focused on providing a counter to USSR nukes, and then using US nukes to threaten USSR to give their natural resources to the West. Bush followed Reagan's foreign policy until the USSR collapsed. No ground invasion was even possible here. The front was idle, not because both sides balanced each other out, but because of the strategies employed by the USSR and NATO. Major powers tried to avoid going to war after World War II, for some strange reason, maybe total devastation of the agressor had something to do with that.

So according to your logic, you keep your best troops in an idle front, while you have your average troops fight an actual war. Gorbachev and Brezhnev both supported that logic and that's how you lose wars. On the other hand, the Red Army leadership opposed it fiercely. If you have an actual war and an idle front, you send your best troops to fight in the actual war. That's how you win wars. But now I see why you agree with Brezhnev and Gorbachev.

You think there were enough ambushes. I think more could have been set. It's a difference of opinion on what's enough.

I still don't see why the Red Army couldn't switch support from an unpopular leader to a popular one. On the local level (city, neighborhood, town) the USSR actually had honest elections. Could have done the same for Afghani tribes.

If tanks no work, get better tank. Have tanks with less wear and tear, and raise the main armament. The T-34 was a product of World War II. Surely if the Soviet effort was placed towards the War, something like the T-34 could have been done. If tanks aren't useful, you make them useful. The T-34's predecessor sucked. But the T-34 model that was used at Kursk, albeit with more casualties, was able to stop the Wehrmacht tanks in a tank v. tank battle for the first time.

You still failed to address my point about using third world country militaries, in the manner that I've described, that is SpetzNatz training, fight a year in Afghanistan. You also failed to address my point of giving the local Afghani forces that were pro-USSR more responsibility.

Find you a war where the army performed at 100%? US in the Persian Gulf War. Red Army from post-Stalingrad to pre-Berlin campaign. Ike's forces at Battle of Normandy. Suvorov's campaign in the late 1700's, early 1800's.

But you and I think differently. I think in the pure military mindset; I'm against the best resources in idle fronts when actual wars are being fought.