aTmAg said:
Cons:
2) We are in massive national debt. Reagan spend $3B in Afghanistan to push the Soviets out of Afghanistan. That was when the Soviets were still a superpower. That is $7-$12 billion in today dollars (depending if that figure was in 1980's dollars or 1989 dollars). Biden has spent ~$75B so far in Ukraine (in less time) and Russia is a shadow of their former selves. So what gives? Reagan did stuff like only provide stingers in exchange for empty stinger tubes. To ensure that they were actually used in war and not stockpiled. Is Biden just blindly shipping them stuff?
Very different wars.
Afghanistan started out with the Soviets essentially overthrowing the Afghan government and installing their own people. From there, they slowly got sucked into a war and occupation. They never really invaded like they did in Ukraine. The biggest difference is that the Afghans could realistically resist the Soviets and expect them to leave by bleeding them dry because the Soviets had to fly in men and equipment, were tied down by other strategic security interests, and were not bringing in settlers to effectively colonize Afghanistan, whereas Ukraine is in Russia's backyard and easily accessible by rail, Russia has no worries about any other potential fronts without the Cold War going on, and they WILL bring in a bunch of Russians to Russify Ukraine into being Russian if they can take territory. An insurgency and bleeding the Russians out over a decade isn't an option. Hell, at the height of the Soviet-Afghan war, the Russians had about 120,000 troops in Afghanistan. They've got that many dead, or more, in 2 years fighting in Ukraine. If that hasn't gotten them to leave yet, they're not going to.
The Russians ended up fighting an insurgency in unfavorable terrain in Afghanistan. Stingers were really effective because the Russians needed their helicopters for mobility and air support. Without them, their armor and infantry were engaging in mountain warfare on someone else's home turf. That put them at a huge disadvantage and precluded the typical Europe focused Soviet military doctrine the Russian army was built around. They can use all of that in Ukraine, so now they're on a battlefield that plays to their strengths. The only way to resist them and retake areas is with armor and large formations. Small hit and run attacks or ambushes like the mujahedeen used are much less effective overall because there's nowhere for those fighters to hide. There's no cave systems or mountains that will slow the Russians down or force them into unfavorable positions just to move around. And again, a resistance or insurgency is not really an option in this conflict.
Russia also wasn't as committed. They couldn't move in vast numbers of troops and equipment by rail because, unlike Ukraine, Afghanistan wasn't next door. Russia invaded Ukraine with more than twice the troops they had in Afghanistan at the height of the Soviet-Afghan war and they've sent hundreds of thousands more. Soviet mothers wanted out of Afghanistan and there was eventually a big public pressure to leave because they had 10,000-20,000 dead. They've got ten times those losses in Ukraine, along with tens of billions of dollars in hardware losses, and there's crickets in Russia about leaving. They've lost strategic bombers, fighters, a cruiser, a submarine, half a dozen large landing ships, thousands of armored vehicles, multiple S-300 and S-400 radars and command stations, 9 figure battlefield radar complexes, and spent god knows how much on munitions and fuel, and yet they undeterred. If we had those kinds of losses, the calls to leave would be deafening.
There are controls in place, and it's not like we haven't seen video of a lot of the stuff we've sent being used. It is in Ukraine's best interest to make sure military aid is used on the battlefield and not stolen because they're in an existential crisis, so they're not going to bite the hand that feeds. Are we getting a perfect accounting? Probably not, but even our own military let's stuff go missing and always has. I don't think perfection is a realistic expectation, but I do believe that what we're sending is being used for its intended purpose and not siphoned off.