Talk:Soviet–Afghan War
This is an excerpt from an article I wrote for a private mailing list 5 days or so after the September 11 attack. It has been updated for the Wikipedia.
BTW - The numbers in the What was Wagered and What was Accomplished section are taken from "A Quick & Dirty Guide to War" (ISBN 0-688-06256-3) by James F. Dunnigan and Austin Bay. The numbers in this book are a composite from many sources themselves. There exist [[http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstat2.htm#Afghanistan other sources]] for this information, no one source can be regarded as 'correct'. With all these caveats in mind, I do not believe that any of this information can be regarded as copyrighted, except with regard as to form, which I have changed from the original. I hope this is enough due diligence as to possible copyright issues.
FYI: There is already much material on this subject at Democratic_Republic_of_Afghanistan. What would be great is for somebody to copy that material here, merge it and then leave a summary of the moved material for the DRoA article (ending with a link here of course). Then much of this current article can be spun off into Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan timeline. I will have to look over this article later for POV issues (if any). I'm sure somebody else will fix what needs to be fixed before then. --mav
Thanks much. Here's a quick question. If I screw up such an edit, and end up really causing problems with the DRoA page when I port their more detailed information here, (along with some of my own that I removed the first time - I figure better to be a bit too detailed than not enough if we are going through all the trouble of creating a special page and all.....) due to my inexperience and lack of faith in my own ability, what can be done? (Still having problems with those vicious run-on sentences! <GRIN>)
I took 'Be bold!' to heart, but I still feel uncomfortable with editing and moving material that obviously took someone a long time to put together. On the other hand, no one has replied to my post on the DRoA Talk page about these changer either. Sorry for so much hand wringing, I'm certain I will slowly get the hang of it. dobbs
- For each page, we keep the previously saved versions. You can see them by clicking the History link on the left or bottom of your screen when viewing an article to get a list of them. If you screw up, we can still read the old version and use it to edit the new version, or if you really screw up (which I don't expect), we/you can just put the old back. So, just go ahead and edit! Jeronimo
Ok, the new info is up. This page isn't really just a timeline anymore, so I'm unsure if it needs to be renamed. I've changed the 'Soviet Invasion' heading into a link that points here, I'm not certain how to or what else I would point here.
Again, neutral POV insights would help. I've really tried to change much of it to be as neutral as possible. For instance, while EVERYONE I have ever read, spoken to personally, or heard of, accepts that the invasion and resulting war was unprovoked agression by the U.S.S.R. against the Afghani's - SOMEONE must of at least thought up the party line that they were 'helping out' their socialist brethren. Thus, my attempts to re-write all that. I hope my studied assumptions on Soviet geostrategic goals is not out of line. While it is written neutrally (I hope), it is still subjective (even if well researched). I think that is acceptable for an encyclopedia, is there something "official" in the Wikipedia universe (talk area perhaps?) to steer me towards? Thanks again.