SavannahMann, post: 18941543
You know, partisans on both sides are completely full of shit.
And you are not of course.
Are you reading what's on this thread or just lashing out at perceived partisans?
You could comment on my point no matter your pure, sincere and most intelligent opinion on the war in general. My point is that Trump has inherited a military situation there that is one tenth as difficult to deal with in terms of number of US troops deployed, while continuing to pursue the prinary objective
Ten times better is improvement. Do you agree.
I have covered your points. You just don’t like to admit it.
What is Victory? We originally declared that destroying Al Queda and getting OBL was Victory. The Taliban was just in our way, protecting and supporting us. Then we were forced to admit that Al Queda was just one of a hundred militant Islamic groups in the world. So we decided that Victory would be a remade Afghanistan. When that was the goal, John McCain said we were willing to stay there for a hundred years to accomplish the task. It would have taken a Century at least.
So what is Victory today? Now it is again Afghanistan free of the Taliban. When that was the goal, hand in glove with destroying AQ, we bitchd and moaned about how the Taliban was safe across the border in Pakistan.
Well, we decided to train up the Afghani military and create a stable military using modern warfare techniques, or something, to fight the Taliban. So we had that and drew down and the predictable happened. The Military didn’t fight for shit against their countrymen and the religious leaders they knew and respected. So we surged.
You see, if we pull out and the Taliban takes over, that is a defeat. But we are still hampered by the same problems that we were hampered by before. The Taliban is free to go out of bounds so to speak, across into Pakistan, and the Pakistani Government is not going to commit suicide by trying to establish direct control over the tribal areas. Pakistan would have to use pretty much all their military, and they’re too busy hoping to win the Kashmire region that is disputed with India.
By attacking the Tribal regions bordering with Afghanistan, Pakistan essentially cedes the disputed region with India. So the Taliban has a Safe Space where they can stay and laugh at us. We could go in, if we wanted to act of war against Pakistan. Pakistan would have to object, perhaps violently, to the incursion or risk riots and perhaps having the government toppled. So we could go in, and get the Taliban out of their safe space, but in doing so put the Taliban in control of Pakistan.
So what happens in a decade? What happens when we finally pull out? Inside of two years later, the Taliban, no matter what they call themselves, win.
As for my “feelings on war” you have no idea what I think about anything. I’ve given you examples in this thread of how your insane rants have more in common with the Nazi’s and the Japanese who refused to admit defeat. I’ve explained how you were not sounding like Churchill with the intelligent defiance based on solid military thinking.
I’ve pointed out that essentially nobody has ever conquered Afghanistan. The Persians had the best success there, and that was limited. In two and a half thousand years, nobody has conquered the nation for long.
So how do we win? Our conditions for victory now are no more Taliban. That’s just idiotic. The only way to get rid of the Taliban is to modernize the entire nation, and drag them kicking and screaming into the modern world. Otherwise the tribal chiefs are going to keep ruling as they have for two thousand years. We would have to start educating the children today, and in twenty years, when we started to educate their children, and their grand children after that, we would start to make a dent in these social norms.
Japan was easy. The Emporer worked with us to create a vibrant and powerful Economic Japan. The Japanese People followed their leader, and rejected the Militarists once and for all. That was demonstrated when the Japanese people voted against reestablishing a military in the 1950’s.
Germany was a little harder, but still relatively easy. The average German person was sick of war, sick of the losses, sick of the destruction, and here is the important last thing, afraid of falling under the Soviets. So Western Germany while they might resent the allies, did not resent the allies so much that they wanted to be easy pickings for the Soviets.
American Defiance during the Berlin Airlift showed that we were not going to abandon them to the hated Soviets, so the Germans started to really get behind a democratic nation. There again, the leaders were able to direct the genius of the German People into economic concerns, and unlike World War One, there was not an embargo against German products. The people could make quality items, and sell them to the world, which they could not do after War One.
If you look at any successful invasion, there are two ways of winning. One, decimate the opponents to the point where resistance is futile and they reluctantly decide life as a subject is better than death. See the American Indian for that result. Option two. Win the support of the people. If you don’t do that, you are lost. See Vietnam, Afghanistan, and through history literally a thousand examples. The Persians in Greece. They just could not get the Greeks to settle down and give a little earth and water and a tiny amount of treasure each year to the Persians.
The Carib Indians went with national death instead of defeat and subjugation. History is full of these stories, and pretending that one side or the other is the way to victory ignores the truth of history. We won’t win in Afghanistan. There is no Soviet threat to scare them. There is only what they want, which is religious based leadership through the Taliban. Certainly not all, but more than enough for the Taliban to win within two years of our departure.
So how do you stop that from happening? You stay there, indefinitely. We haven’t lost if we haven’t pulled out and the Taliban isn’t in charge. We can’t win, and we are delaying defeat is all we are accomplishing.
We never had a plan for victory. We had a plan to win the battles, but the war was something we would worry about later.
