The Great Gamble Quotes

“Many young men's more immediate and important problems were abuse from their superior, on top of their material privations. Perhaps nothing more could have been expected of a political system founded on mass murder and preserved with oppression.”
― Gregory Feifer, The Great Gamble: The Soviet War in Afghanistan

“It would be an irony of history, or another lesson about the unintended consequences about using force, that [Najibullah's] regime would outlive the Soviet Union that was convinced it had a duty to teach the world how to think and live.”
― Gregory Feifer, The Great Gamble: The Soviet War in Afghanistan

“But the first casualty of the Afghanistan War wasn't truth. That had long before succumbed to the onslaught of Soviet lies about all aspects of life. The all-encompassing brainwashing makes the task of discerning what actually took place in Afghanistan especially difficult. The manufactured justifications that enabled many to close their eyes to the war's unspeakable abuses continue to influence perceptions-although the Soviets had no monopoly in that.”
― Gregory Feifer, The Great Gamble: The Soviet War in Afghanistan

“Marxism-Leninism offered little guidance to rural Afghan society, with its ancient concepts and ways. Since Moscow's obligatory ideological treatment of war-most important, between socialist and capitalist forces-did not include explanations of a popular uprising against an (at least nominal) socialist state, the Kremlin failed to understand its new mujahadeen enemy.”
― Gregory Feifer, The Great Gamble: The Soviet War in Afghanistan

“All that is very relevant to Afghanistan. To a startling degree, the Politburo’s 1979 deliberations about how to deal with it mirror the Bush administration’s close-minded and secretive decision-making that led to its invasion. The Bush White House might have modeled itself on the Soviet gerontocracy under Brezhnev that brushed aside warnings from military and regional experts who knew the situation in Afghanistan to be far more complicated than the Politburo stated.”
― Gregory Feifer, The Great Gamble: The Soviet War in Afghanistan

“According to at least one general staff officer, no one ever actually ordered the invasion of Afghanistan. Instead, between December 10 and 30, various units were given some thirty various directives to prepare for action. Defense Minister Ustinov’s lack of combat experience helps explain the absence of centralized implementation. A career spent building the military-industrial complex gave him scant knowledge of how to command the invasion of a sovereign state. Since it was beneath the marshal to ask subordinates for advice, staff activity remained largely uncoordinated.”
― Gregory Feifer, The Great Gamble: The Soviet War in Afghanistan

“Even worse, however, was that the soldiers hardly knew whom they were fighting, and not only because distinguishing resistance fighters from the native civilians was next to impossible.”
― Gregory Feifer, The Great Gamble: The Soviet War in Afghanistan

“Marxism-Leninism offered little guidance to rural Afghan society, with its ancient concepts and ways.”
― Gregory Feifer, The Great Gamble: The Soviet War in Afghanistan

“(The operation didn’t take place entirely smoothly. Soviet soldiers disguised as technicians placed the explosives successfully, but were forced to return because they’d forgotten to start the timer.)”
― Gregory Feifer, The Great Gamble: The Soviet War in Afghanistan