Leothebear wrote:So who supports the Taliban? Why Russia and China of course. All delighting in the West's humiliating defeat. World order looks just great doesn't it?
People have short memories. So who was it that drove the Soviets out of Afghanistan in 1989 and shot down 333 of their helicopters and 120 other planes? And killed so many Soviet troops in nine years that there were serious public rumblings in the Russian streets. (Which was one of the things that drove the disintegration of the USSR in the end.) The official Soviet death count was given as 26,000, but it was unofficially reckoned to be four or five times that.
Who were these heroes? Why, those indomitable mujaheddin, of course. Hiding out in the Panjshir mountain valleys, where the air was so thin that the Soviet helicopter gunships couldn't fly properly - at which point they could be swatted down like flies by a hand-held rocket missile. Oh, how we cheered when Moscow admitted defeat and went home with its tail between its legs.
Hmmm, perspectives change, but the realities don't. Tough country, tough people.
BJ