Max Boot wrote in yesterday's Washington Post that "Islamist militants were emboldened by the Soviet Union's retreat from Afghanistan in 1989." That seems like such an obvious understatement, but Yglesias and others take issue:
Did the emboldened militants follow the Red Army home from Afghanistan? No. Rather, a few years after Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan the USSR collapsed under the weight of accumulated economic problems that had been exacerbated by the long and fruitless war in Afghanistan.
I don't think anyone, Boot included, would argue that the Soviet Union fell as a direct result of the defeat in Afghanistan. That was only a piece of the puzzle. But still, there is no doubt that the mujahideen followed the Red Army back to Moscow after the war. The slaughter at Beslan, the apartment bombings in Moscow--there have been any number of terrorist acts perpetrated on Russian soil by people who fought against the Red Army in Afghanistan. And there's no doubt that the shift in Chechnya from nationalist to religious-based opposition to Russian rule was heavily influenced by the success of the jihadists in Afghanistan. It would be unwise for the left to hold up the Soviet retreat from Afghanistan as an example for the United States in Iraq.