“Wow, Afghanistan was a disaster. Here to comment, one of the assholes responsible for it all, who we will uncritically present to the audience as a very serious person who should be taken seriously!”
- every media outlet
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Is there a difference? In that they would both cause pretty much the same issues overall.
The US military seems like it could use more sociologists. It appears our biggest military mistakes over the last 20 (60?) years is not appreciating the social reality of the situations in which we find ourselves.
I’ve always thought that tactics and logistics are harder than strategy, but strategy seems to be our weak point.
Sociology seems pretty clear and straightforward, it’s just that every incentive our military establishment has leads them to ignore the clear red flashing indicator of “gtfo, foreign occupiers are not welcome!”
That was one of McNamara’s key takeaways from Vietnam.
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It was a complete lack of cultural and historical understanding of the areas and how to effectively operate in them.
We went in thinking that we’d topple Afghanistan and the entire country would be like, “OMG DEMOCRACY! WE’LL DO EVERYTHING YOU TELL US TO DO WITHOUT QUESTIONING YOU AMERICAN HEROES!!”
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Damn, I miss Sam Kinison. I didn’t fully understand it, but “Breaking All The Rules” absolutely blew my mind. First time I ever watched stand-up comedy and him playing the piano will always stick in my head. That and the necrophilia joke at the end.
Did he mention it was a nearly impossible hurdle to overcome? To have even have a chance, your army needs to be fluent in the local language, bribing some local translators won’t cut it. So just need to know what country your army is invading 20 years in advance and have your next batch of soldiers grow up learning that language! EZgame.
I’ve just finished two general histories of WW2, and it does seem hard to conduct “limited” wars in the post WW2 US way, which is likely for the best. Or at least it’s hard to leave after limited objectives have been achieved–and they tend to be “achieved” in less than satisfactory ways (e.g., warlords instead of Thomas Jefferson running things).
The Japanese didn’t capture hearts and minds to rule Manchuria, they just killed everyone opposed and a lot of people who weren’t. Same with the Germans or the Russians in most theaters. Just kill everything that resists until there is no opposition. Or really, the British and the US with “strategic” bombing.
Could we have “won” Afghanistan if we conducted an extermination campaign against the Tabliban, which no doubt would have involved killing a few non-combatants for every Taliban killed and have been very unpopular?
I’m doubtful even of that, as it was not exactly clear what the overall strategic objective was: general literacy and infrastructure, voting in a parliamentary system, rule of law based around adequate government control, tax collection, limited poppy cultivation, no extreme subjugation of women, free enterprise? Any one of those seems like a big ask and accomplishing most of them through military oversight seems fairly impossible. Maybe it’s the sort of thing that can eventually be done with a border state, like the Texas/California territory after 1848, but not when you’re dealing with a different language, culture, history, and religion halfway around the world.
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If the shoe fits.
Conglaturation!!! You completed a great mission. And prooved the justice of our culture. Now go and rest our heroes!
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There’s a huge difference between conquering a territory and trying to set up some sort of new autonomous or semi-autonomous government before going home. Japan and Russia and Germany in your examples were trying to take new territory, not start a new government and then head out. Saying we just didn’t kill enough people still leaves the huge problem of going home compared with hanging out and killing the next round of opposition. Post-WWII Germany is about the only time this has worked in any sort of real capacity.
Like maybe instead of putting John Bolton on, find this woman and interview her? She’s clearly more of an expert on the subject.
https://twitter.com/kumarraonyc/status/1427019062043938820?s=21
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That’s certainly fair, I’m just noodling around trying to understand whether things could have been different or if it was basically impossible (and therefore we should have withdrawn in 2004ish).
Yeah, the Ron Paul Bots were back to twitter today to crow about how right he was. Bullshit. He voted for the AUMF. Lee knew.
lol
How long have you been waiting to make that reference here?
https://twitter.com/POTUS/status/1427394471801593856?s=20
I think I’m mostly on Biden’s side of this, but the fact that there doesn’t seem to have been a worse case scenario contingency plan is less than ideal. Then again, worse case scenarios are hard to plan for because everything sucks.