After nine years the Russians gave up in Afghanistan what are we doing differently?

Question

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_war_in_Afghanistan

Are we going in the same direction?

Answer 1

No country in history has properly conquered Afghanistan,due to local ferocity and the terrain.

The Russians came into the country with very poor equipment and clothing and training.They thought they could get the country by sheer volume of numbers,and the many causalities didn't bother the Russians,as they tend to have a disregard for their own humans lives.

They lost and retreated,the Americans can't win,but the Taliban have got even less chance than the Americans.So stalemate

Answer 2

First, the Russians were opposed by a guerilla military force that was funded and supplied with weapons by the United States.  The Taliban is not funded, nor are they supplied by a wealthy nation.

Second, the Russians were targeting not just the military forces, but were conducting atrocities against civilians as well.  Relatives of mine spent time in Pakistan during this time, helping treat wounded Afghan children.  Many had arms blown off by teddy bears that were filled with explosives.  The United States, is not deliberately targeting civilians.  

The deliberate targeting of civilians by the Russians turned the population against them.  Coupled by the guerilla military that was supplied by the United States, they were in serious trouble.

Answer 3

We have an empire of military bases to build and maintain. No other nation in history, not even the British Empire, has had as many bases across the world as us. But still we're afraid of Third World countries and their camel riding terrorists, real and imagined.

Aside from the Indochina area, we haven't left a single place we've sent troops.  

Answer 4

We have done wonders for the Poppy Crop.

America has always been an agricultural leader.

Answer 5

Sure.

Why not?

Look in the real world.

Who's being left behind with time?

When they do not even know how to teleport back to the twilight zone.

Luke 6.39-40,41-45,46-49

What do you think?

Answer 6

A favourite question in quasi-political discussions which was used to engage people who thought they knew something but, patently, didn't, in the 60s was: "What about the political situation in Afghanistan?".

Endless, fruitless, discussions took place - often alleviated with the consumption of small (and, sometimes, large) amounts of illegal weeds.

The "situation in Afghanistan" has been going on for (in Western terms) hundreds of years.

Everybody thinks they can "control" it, but nobody has yet been able to show that they can.

Nor we, nor anybody else will ever be different.

Afghanistan will look after itself, and, I suspect that if you ask this question in another couple of hundred years the answer I would give would be the same.

There are some countries that are impervious to significant external influence - Afghanistan has a long history of being just such a one.

edit:

p.s. I am fully aware that the poppy crop is a very important issue. I would only suggest that, as Iran, and Iraq, and Kuwait, and so on, have little to offer the west except oil, so Afghanistan has little to offer but poppy sap.

In comparison of the amounts made for their respective countries by their exports, poppies amount to a tiny proportion of Western expenditure in that region.

I do not justify heroin, which I consider a pernicious and evil trade, but ask you to look at the economics.

You trade what you have or can produce.