You think Iraq is bad? Look at Chechnya...

[Az]

Actually, Where peace IS restored in chechniya, life certainly is better, without Sharia law, and gang order.

Hadn't you helped the Afghanis there, the Soviet Union would've prevailed, and women's emancipation, and the redestribution of land from the priviliged few would've occured.

I think the war in Afghanistan was mismanaged in two ways by the soviets:

a contingent of forces too small. the number of soldiers staying at any time in Afghanistan was small. Very small. less than what you currently have in Iraq, for example.

The use of Motorized and Mechanized Infantry, including their heavy gear, while Light Infantry had to be used.

[Serb]

Are you suggesting the Russians would have treated them better than they have, say, Chechnya?

And who told that Russians wanted to make Afghanistan a 16th republic of Soviet union?

[The Mad Monk]

Originally posted by Serb

And who told that Russians wanted to make Afghanistan a 16th republic of Soviet union?

...I'm not sure if you're saying that they would be treated better or not...

[Serb]

I'm saying that comparison with Chechnya is incorrect.

[The Mad Monk]

Then what comparison would be correct?

[Serb]

Vietnam.
Both interventions were to protect friendly regimes, not to annex invaded countries.

[Az]

only that the regime in Vietnam was worse than the Guerillas, and the regime in Afghanistan was better.

[OliverFA]

First I would like to make a little comment here. Is not correct to say "the Chechenians" and "the Russians" because there is no such thing as a Chechenian colective opposed to the Russian colective. What there is here is a group of Chechenian people that arrogantly speak in the name of all the Chechenians and start spreading lies about how Russia opresses them. They try to look as the good guys and justify what cannot be justified (their horrible crimes and the MURDER of innocent people) by pretending they have some high ideals they don't have. Sadly we know a lot about this in Spain...

It is "normal" that the Russian army has problems protecting citizens about those terrorists that speak in the name of all the Chechenians. To bring terror and assassin lots of innocent people there are very few things needed, and this makes the task of countering it specially difficult, specially for an untrained army like the Russian. Terrorism is pretty new for them and they don't have experience.

The Chechenian terrorism is another part of the terrorism around the world. Sadly this is their own creature that has turned against them, because the USSR encouraged terrorism as a part of their plans to fight capitalist countries, so they are geting (part of) what they seeded. What makes it even more sad is that the regime than promoted this is no more the regime that governs nowadays in Russia (which is far from being perfect but definitely is much better than what governed the USSR for a great part of the last century).

Wow, I've made this very long. So, summarizing. The terrorism of a part of the Chechenian people is terrible and Russia doesn't deserve it.

[Alexander's Horse]

See Chechnya today, see Iraq in a few years time.

[Giancarlo]

Originally posted by Alexander's Horse
See Chechnya today, see Iraq in a few years time.

That's crap.

[DanS]

Oh, the return of Alexander Horse, the doomsayer. What would we do without him? Read "on the top of the Abrams tank" Fisk?

[Alexander's Horse]

*shrug* I don't care. It's your people coming back in the body bags every week.

And the Bush Administration clearly has no idea how to extract itself with dignity from the Iraq mess.

[Lancer]

Iraq is going great. Now that we know they have no WMD, we can nuke them anytime we want.

[DanS]

And the Bush Administration clearly has no idea how to extract itself with dignity from the Iraq mess.

We're in there whole hog. No turning back. No way of "extracting" ourselves from the situation.

[Alexander's Horse]

yes you are. You've gone completely nuts. We understand that now.