Sorry it struck a nerve or whatever it did.

"How was the USSR making Afganistan a puppet about defeating the West? I don't think they were ever so stupid as to embark on something so drastic and damaging without having a namable interest to gain."

So, I suppose you think that only America could be so stupid?

No. It was just an honest observation on my part. To start a war in the USSR, you had to justify it to the politburo, and ultimately to the people. People who do publicly stupid things in the USSR tend to do poorly.

Well, I suppose USSR did lack the thousands of colleges, lacked a free press, and numerous other factors which could create a huge amount of stupidity.
But despite this, it seems to me that USSR could possible make some tiny and inconsequential mistakes and even large mistakes could be a remote possibility without all this assistance that America has.

You are trying really hard to make something of this. I only meant that Afganistan is the back-end of nowhere, and it has few rewards for a conquerer.

And the main point of my post: you said Russia <sic> mainly saw it as a way of defeating the West. HOW SO? That's it. No politicing (at least in my post). Just a simple question about your interpretation of recent history that I have a hard time understanding.