Americans tune out as Afghan war rages on

scoutpilot said:
That view of how to fight a war is simplistic, barbaric, juvenile, and wrong. Worse yet, it's fruitless.
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Ask the Nazis and the Japanese if they agree.

As for Afghanistan, the Russians were a pure aggressor, and were winning right up to the point we started giving the Mujahideen some Stinger missiles.

We go in to get Bin Laden and the Taliban. You help us or you're the enemy. When we have them we leave, and you can go back to stoning your women and sleeping with your goats. Just don't mesS with us again or we'll play really rough.

Instead, we are laboring under the utopian idea that these people are going to drop 2,000 of martial tradition and adopt Western democracy. We see how well that's working out...
 
Zaphod said:
Ask the Nazis and the Japanese if they agree.

As for Afghanistan, the Russians were a pure aggressor, and were winning right up to the point we started giving the Mujahideen some Stinger missiles.

We go in to get Bin Laden and the Taliban. You help us or you're the enemy. When we have them we leave, and you can go back to stoning your women and sleeping with your goats. Just don't mesS with us again or we'll play really rough.

Instead, we are laboring under the utopian idea that these people are going to drop 2,000 of martial tradition and adopt Western democracy. We see how well that's working out...
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I spent a lot of months in that country. Sometimes I feel like I was living on the moon, it could be so alien. I also met some brave Afghani people risking everything (and the goats remark is a little flip, honestly). It really isn't simple. If a genie had offered me more firepower and resources I don't know what I would have asked for--blowing up more villages and killing everyone in them wouldn't have helped our mission or my Marines or me. Insurgencies in terrain like that are not easy to combat.
 
Zaphod said:
Instead, we are laboring under the utopian idea that these people are going to drop 2,000 of martial tradition and adopt Western democracy. We see how well that's working out...
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I concur.
 
Hurricane12 said:
What? Because that totally worked out so well for them.
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No, I think what he's saying is that we can draw great corollaries between the use of total war to destroy industrialized, disciplined militaries on linear battlefields outside their homeland with fighting an insurgency in a lawless, semi-primitive, agrarian society. No, wait, that can't be it.

Maybe he meant that we smashed our enemies in Germany and Japan and then left wholesale, leaving them only their suffering to remind them of America's might. No long-term nation-building engagement or military presence in those lands of Japan and Germany. No, wait, that can't be it either...
 
scoutpilot said:
No, I think what he's saying is that we can draw great corollaries between the use of total war to destroy industrialized, disciplined militaries on linear battlefields outside their homeland with fighting an insurgency in a lawless, semi-primitive, agrarian society. No, wait, that can't be it.

Maybe he meant that we smashed our enemies in Germany and Japan and then left wholesale, leaving them only their suffering to remind them of America's might. No long-term nation-building engagement or military presence in those lands of Japan and Germany. No, wait, that can't be it either...
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Thank you.
 
scoutpilot said:
No, I think what he's saying is that we can draw great corollaries between the use of total war to destroy industrialized, disciplined militaries on linear battlefields outside their homeland with fighting an insurgency in a lawless, semi-primitive, agrarian society. No, wait, that can't be it.

Maybe he meant that we smashed our enemies in Germany and Japan and then left wholesale, leaving them only their suffering to remind them of America's might. No long-term nation-building engagement or military presence in those lands of Japan and Germany. No, wait, that can't be it either...
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And by our continuing presence, protected them from something they considered far worse.

As I said elsewhere, I wish we could just skip over 2013 and get to 2014 right now. The result will be the same regardless of 1 more year there or 100.
 
scoutpilot said:
No, I think what he's saying is that we can draw great corollaries between the use of total war to destroy industrialized, disciplined militaries on linear battlefields outside their homeland with fighting an insurgency in a lawless, semi-primitive, agrarian society. No, wait, that can't be it.

Maybe he meant that we smashed our enemies in Germany and Japan and then left wholesale, leaving them only their suffering to remind them of America's might. No long-term nation-building engagement or military presence in those lands of Japan and Germany. No, wait, that can't be it either...
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Awesome. :shake:
 
There's something to be said for absolute war. Get rid of the rules for an act that should be horrible in the first place... war might not last as long. Sure if would be harder to look at, but then, war was never supposed to win a beauty contest.
 
LineInTheSand said:
There's something to be said for absolute war. Get rid of the rules for an act that should be horrible in the first place... war might not last as long. Sure if would be harder to look at, but then, war was never supposed to win a beauty contest.
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That's the same logic that led Gatling to believe his new gun would save lives.
 
Maybe it did, at least until they established rules for mowing down advancing troops. We can think of at least two bombs that ended a war early....
 
AF6872 said:
We always back off and then support the vanquished. How many Billions will we spend in Iraq and Afghanistan? We could have owned Europe and the Pacific. Take all the industry and ship it home? They still all hate us (US) and will never change.

http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/featured_documents/marshall_plan/

http://www.crf-usa.org/election-central/bringing-democracy-to-japan.html

sprog has it correct.
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A bunch of thoughts, none as pithy or well-stated or as clever as Scout's responses:

I'm not sure what point you are making about the Marshall Plan and the situation in post WWII Europe and Asia. The Marshall Plan was a spectacular success -- a stablized Western Europe stood with the U.S. and did not fall into the Soviet bloc, and the Cold War never turned hot on a large scale. The Japanese have been important allies (largely for basing rights), first against the USSR and now giving us a basing presence in the Pacific as China's power grows. Truman talked about the Marshall Plan and the Truman Doctrine/containment as "two halves of the walnut" in terms of resisting the spread of communism. In terms of "owning" Europe and the Pacific, the American people and the troops didn't want a territorial empire and there was not a public will for any kind of large-scale permanent occupation/overseas empire. A big slogan among soldiers and their families leading up to the 1946 mid-term election was "no boats, no votes" -- in other words, the troops wanted to come home and their families wanted them there. Lastly, at least in the European theater, the world tried a "grind them into the dust peace" -- it was the Treaty of Versailles. The resentment and anger of Germany helped foster Hitler's rise.

My two cents is that we had to go into Afghanistan after September 11 -- Al Quaeda trained there and regimes need to know that if they support a large scale terrorist presence that attacks the U.S. they will face invasion and regime change. Iraq was much more a war of choice -- the foreign policy movers and shakers thought that George H.W. Bush missed a chance to re-shape the Middle East in the Gulf War and used the climate after September 11 to get public and Congressional acceptance of a move against Iraq.

Whatever happens in Afghanistan (and they've got a kleptocracy in power there, make no mistake) we have made our point that if you sponsor terrorism against us you are effectively declaring war and we will respond in force. I think it may be a lesson Iran is mulling over, for example.
 
No logic. Just "train of thought":thumb: Something I have been criticized for but sometimes pertinent. :shake: And Gatling is on subject?
 
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AF6872 said:
No logic. Just "train of thought":thumb: Something I have been criticized for but sometimes pertinent. :shake: And Gatling is on subject?
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Yes, he is. In a thread where we're discussing the theoretical merits of unfettered and overwhelming force Mr. Gatling has some lessons to offer. He knew his gun could do the work of dozens of soldiers, and thought it was a way to reduce the number of men on the battlefield and to show the futile nature of close combat. Instead, it became an instrument of mowing down Zulus and assorted other unfortunate natives who faced masses of Gatling guns in combat.

The point in all that is that this notion, propagated by many a layman, that all we need to be victorious in Afghanistan (and prior to that, Iraq) is more force and fewer restrictions on how we use it. I say this with the utmost conviction: that is a childish, ignorant view of how a war among a civilian populace is to be fought and won...at least by any moral nation and its citizens. The idea that we can simply march into a land, tell them all that they're either with us or against us, and expect that to be the road to swift victory is so blind to history and reality that I don't know how anyone could honestly think it to be anything other than a punchline.

Drawing a line in the sand and telling them they're with us or against us results in one sure result: they're against us. I could argue until I'm blue in the face about why that's a sure road to misery and failure, but I doubt I'll change any minds. Suffice it to say, I am actually quite put off by the armchair generals who suggest that somehow the one thing we haven't done enough of is to destroy. We have destroyed enough lives for several wars--theirs and ours--and it hasn't brought us closer to victory.
 
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Well...Carthage isn't a major competitor anymore.
Then again, actually salting the earth of your enemy's home is pretty darn extreme!
 
"Salting the Earth". How many know that historical context:thumb:

"War is Hell" = Sherman = spent a few years proving it.

Gatling = Gun

Isandlwana could have used a few more Gatlings.
 
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