Obama repeats Soviet missteps in Afghanistan

Seattle Post Intelligencer, Bloomberg by Celestine Bohlen | Feb. 27, 2009 (Opinion)

history tells us that increasing troop levels to fight an insurgency is not a winning formula. The Soviets learned this after 10 years in Afghanistan; the French learned it in Algeria, and we had our lesson in Vietnam.

The larger the foreign troop presence in wars of counterinsurgency, "the worse the outcome tends to be." That was the sweeping conclusion drawn by a 2008 study by the Rand Corp. Full Story »

Posted by Dwight Rousu

See All Reviews »

View

Review

Dwight Rousu
3.8
 by Dwight Rousu - Mar. 1, 2009

Bohlen stumbles a couple places, buying into the false narative that the "surge" escalation in Iraq had a positive effect, when independent analysts credit other shifts that occurred before the escalation. The differences in the depth of government corruption, the size of the poppy trade, and the sheer numbers of weapons are not placed into her presented perspective. Those would paint a bigger mistake projection.

Dwight posted this story.

See All Reviews »

Dwight's Rating

Overall
3.8

Good
from 12 answers
Quality
3.8
Information
4.0
Insight
4.0
Style
3.0
Context
4.0
Enterprise
4.0
Expertise
3.0
Originality
4.0
Relevance
4.0
Popularity
4.0
Recommendation
4.0
Credibility
4.0
More How our ratings work »