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Comment by soperj | Hacker News Reader

>Russia may not be a paper tiger, but they sure can’t do much against an enemy many times smaller than them.

How long did it take for the US to take Afghanistan?

The logistics of taking a country that is thousands of miles away are very different from taking one you share a border with.

It took 47 days to take Kabul, counting from the first day the CIA agents were sent to prepare the invasion. Furthermore, the objective was to find bin Laden, not to take cities.

The war in Ukraine isn't really comparable to Afghanistan. The US mostly "softened" strategic objectives with air strikes, whereas Russia can't/won't do that in Ukraine.

It wasn't logistics that caused issues in Afghanistan though.

Parent was commenting about the speed of the invasion not the general parallels between Ukraine and Afghanistan.

Differences are: USA never planned to invade and anexate (e.g. USA never bombed cities to terrorize people), and supply lines were waaaay worse for the USA.

Also, the terrain is very favourable to create a quagmire in Afghanistan (resistance can retreat to the mointains) while Ukraine is mainly open terrain.

Iraq was on the other side of the world from us, not next door, and we took that over in a matter of days.

Just to correct the info: the invasion of Iraq (a much weaker country) by the combined force of troops from the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and Poland lasted just over one month … but it’s not really comparable situation here for the reasons you pointed.

Not to be too picky about the details, but it took about three weeks to finally get to Bagdad. The Ukrainian conflict has not been going quite that long.

Never.

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