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(The Soviet Army leaving Afghanistan in 1989 - Pretending a bad idea never happened)

By the time this news report aired (February 15, 1999), the Russian excursion into Afghanistan had been over for 10 years. But ten years was just enough time to start looking for answers to what happened and why it happened in the first place. The answers were slow and painful in coming. Afghanistan was considered the Soviet version of our Vietnam War. The results were pretty much the same.

Charles Dick (Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst): “Afghanistan is the source of experience the Russian Army would like to forget.”

And judging by the events since the beginning of this year, it's happening all over again.

Not learning from history - doomed to repeat it.

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("They'll greet us with flowers and candy . .. sort of")

Thirty years ago this December, the Soviet Union decided it was a good idea to take advantage of an unstable region by launching an invasion of Afghanistan. Convinced this would be easy and "what the Afghan people wanted", Moscow quickly moved to set up a Soviet backed regime and to fold Afghanistan into the Communist bloc. Or tried to anyway.

Dallas Townsend (CBS News): In recent days U.S. Intelligence has detected the influx of a battalion of Soviet troops, about five hundred men, into Afghanistan.”

Oddly enough, the news warranted only a scant 16 second mention at the end of this CBS World News Roundup broadcast from December 16, 1979. The big news was still the ongoing Hostage drama in Tehran. We were, it seemed, a bit preoccupied to notice what the other hands were doing.

The rest, as they say, is history.