The eerie similarities between Iraq and Afghanistan
It seems a leap to say that the war in Iraq will be the thing that destroys America, which has weathered so much more turmoil than this in history. But the thought that an invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 would be the undoing of the Soviet Union, as it is widely regarded now, was unthinkable at the time. It occurred to me that there were some parallels between the US in 2003 and the Soviets in 1979, but without a little research I wasn't sure how deep those parallels would be. In fact, they are startling.
As our economy becomes more unstable and our country more divided, with no end in sight to violence in Iraq, and no possible outcome of the election that won't raise tension at home, looking back to the Soviet experience is instructive.
- Iraq and Afghanistan were both supposed to be easy victories, meant to foster a domestic cultural unity and spread a superior ideology to a dark corner of the globe.
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