ced by political positions and/or the writers' perception of the war's implication for the US, the rest of Asia, or the world system.
The most striking contrast is that between Davis' (1994) and Sikorski's (1993) eyewitness accounts of their time in Kabul, the Afghan capital. Kabul, which had been almost completely spared in the fight against the Soviets, was being slowly destroyed as different factions held separate sections of the city. The city was a battleground and, as Sikorski reported, "about 20,000 people were killed and 100,000 wounded in Kabul over the last year" (1993, p. 41). Yet Sikorski's article begins with an account of what has happened to the animals at the zoo. He then moves to the shame of the Soviet Union at being defeated and, eventually, ruined by the Afghan victory. The Soviets, he notes, poured "tens of billions of dollars" into the war" while the US supported the victorious side "with a pittance" (Sikorski, 1993, p. 40). The USSR, he says repeatedly, must have felt as the United States would have if Vietnam had turned out this way for America. But, the US contribution to the Afghan effort was "probably the most successful and most cost-effective campaign we ever fought against Communism", it was the Afghans who "did the fighting and dying, but much of the credit must go to Ronald Reagan" (Sikorski, 1993, p. 40). Sikorski sounds as if he is gloating over the Afghan victory and then he allows that that is exactly what he is doing. Continuing his comparison of the US and Vietnam with the US
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