A simple truth about Afghanistan. You can't win a guerrilla war on somebody else's turf

[MadHound]

It's that simple, a fact that has been known for centuries. Unless you are willing to go in and lay waste to the land in order to call it peace, you aren't going to win a guerrilla war.

America proved this in our own Revolution. Hell, we lost more battles than we won, but we kept the army in the field, won enough strategic victories to make a difference in British public attitudes, and simply outlasted the British.

We got our ass handed to us in this very same manner by the Vietnamese. Even with technical, troop, and air superiority, we lost.

Why is this an axiom, tried and true? Because first of all, the guerrillas are on their own home turf. This means knowledge of the country and support of the people. Second, guerrillas aren't defending conventional targets like forts or capitols. They're singular aim is to keep up the good fight. Hell, the US sacrificed our capitol, Philadelphia because Washington and others knew that it didn't mean a thing in the larger scope of matters. Instead, they kept the army a going concern, hitting back at the British anyway they could. Third, they have the support of the people, and this is huge. While supplies have to be shipped in from far away for the invading force, guerrillas simply have to show up on a doorstep or in a village and they're fed and rested, kept from prying eyes.

So the question becomes, why are we fighting a guerrilla war in Afghanistan?

No, I'm not looking for the standard replies like "going after Al-Qaeda" or "fighting terror". I mean why in the hell are we fighting a war that we already know we can't win?

Face it, we are not going to win a guerrilla war, not unless we nuke the place (and we know that's not going to happen). The longer we stay there, the more money and lives we pour down a rathole, the more our international reputation sinks. Sooner or later there is going to come a tipping point where the public refuses to support the war (and judging by recent opinion polls, that time is coming soon) or we get to the point where, like the Soviet Union, we exhaust ourselves and are forced to withdraw.

This is a losing situation all the way around, so why in the hell are we still playing this game. Why is Obama and his generals speaking of "victory" and "winning the war" when they know and we know there's no way in hell we can win this war.

Now is the time, we need to pull out and bring the troops home. Rather than continuing to turn the Afghan and Pakistan people against us by using bombs and bullets, instead start using aid and our help to get them to like us.

But whatever we do, we have got to stop fighting this war that we simply can't win. NOW

[demigoddess]

1. amen, yes, yes, right on

I have been saying this loudly for years. The first thing I learned in history class was that the reason we won the revolutionary war in this country was that it was a guerrilla war. We were fighting on our turf and the English had to bring troops over the ocean and fight on our familiar turf. So we won, and they didn't. It is as basic as ABC. Why don't the big brains know this????????????

[MadHound]

2. Oh they know it, but hey, it isn't their asses on the line,

And they're helping their buddies in the MIC get rich, so all's good for them:puke:

Frankly I think that we should do like the old Celts did, their leader was at the front of the line in any combat. It would tend to put a damper on people's lust for war.

[rrneck]

3. True that.

They don't have to win, they just have to not lose.

Why are we there. The people who are sure they won't have have to fight are making a lot of money off of it.

[David Zephyr]

4. Yes. So, why are we doing it? Look at Obama's advisers and there's your answer.

K&R.

[tekisui]

5. knr!~

[harlfxstc]

6. Uh, unlike our revolutionary war, our troops do not wear red and march in formation through woods.

No comparison. Guerilla wars can and are being won all over the world. What happens is you cannot completely stamp them out and when a few attacks occur later, pundits claim "see, we never beat the guirillas".

[Fumesucker]

8. Show us a conflict being won by the invaders with a supply line half way around the world..

The guerrilla conflicts that are being "won" are being "won" on home turf, like against the Shining Path in Peru.. The government and the guerrillas both are from the same country, both know the people and the fucking supply lines aren't tens of thousands of miles long.

Welcome to DU by the way.

Edited for speling.

[Kaleva]

28. Here are a few.

Filipino Rebellion
Moro Rebellion
Boer War
The Malayan Uprising
The Mau Mau Uprising

[Fumesucker]

35. Thank you for falling into my trap..

Take a look at how those conflicts were won and ask yourself if those tactics are something that America should emulate.

You do know that concentration camps came out of the Boer war, eh?

Do you *really* want to be responsible for renewing the use of concentration camps?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Boer_War

The English term "concentration camp" was first used to describe camps operated by the British in South Africa during this conflict.

The camps had originally been set up by the British Army as "refugee camps" to provide refuge for civilian families who had been forced to abandon their homes for one or other reason related to the war. However, when Kitchener succeeded Roberts as commander-in-chief in South Africa in 29 November 1900, the British Army introduced new tactics in an attempt to break the guerrilla campaign and the influx of civilians grew dramatically as a result. Kitchener initiated plans to

"flush out guerrillas in a series of systematic drives, organized like a sporting shoot, with success defined in a weekly 'bag' of killed, captured and wounded, and to sweep the country bare of everything that could give sustenance to the guerrillas, including women and children.... It was the clearance of civilians—uprooting a whole nation—that would come to dominate the last phase of the war."<29>

Lizzie van Zyl, visited by Emily Hobhouse in a British concentration camp

As Boer farms were destroyed by the British under their "Scorched Earth" policy—including the systematic destruction of crops and slaughtering of livestock, the burning down of homesteads and farms, and the poisoning of wells and salting of fields—to prevent the Boers from resupplying from a home base many tens of thousands of women and children were forcibly moved into the concentration camps. This was not the first appearance of internment camps. The Spanish had used internment in the Ten Years' War that led to the Spanish-American War, and the United States had used them to devastate guerrilla forces during the Philippine-American War. But the Boer War concentration camp system was the first time that a whole nation had been systematically targeted, and the first in which some whole regions had been depopulated.

Eventually, there were a total of 45 tented camps built for Boer internees and 64 for black Africans. Of the 28,000 Boer men captured as prisoners of war, 25,630 were sent overseas. The vast majority of Boers remaining in the local camps were women and children. Over 26,000 women and children were to perish in these concentration camps.



Edited for speling.

[Kaleva]

40. What trap. You concentrated on the Boer War. What about the others?

And I only listed a few such conflicts. There are more.

Research all the conflicts in the past 100 years or so that you asked examples of and see if your point holds true for all of them. You will find your trap is made of styrofoam.

[Fumesucker]

42. Like I said, take a look at the tactics used to win such wars..

Every single one you listed was "won" by large scale slaughter and inflicting horrific conditions on the indigenous population.

Is that the way you think America should win in Afghanistan?

Keep in mind it didn't work for the Soviets and their supply lines were far shorter than our own.

For instance the Mau Mau Uprising..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mau_Mau_Uprising

Conditions in the British detention and labour camps were grim, due in part to the sheer number of Kikuyu detainees and the lack of money budgeted for dealing with them. One British colonial officer described the labour camps thus: "Short rations, overwork, brutality, humiliating and disgusting treatment and flogging - all in violation of the United Nations Universal Declaration on Human Rights."<6> Sanitation was non-existent, and epidemics of diseases like cholera swept through the camps. Official medical reports detailing the shortcomings of the camps and their recommendations were ignored, and the conditions being endured by Kikuyu detainees were lied about to the outside world.<7><8>

Gee, concentration camps show up *again*, what a surprise.

Edited for emphasis..

[Kaleva]

43. Keep going. You have many conflicts to go thru yet.

You made the claim thus it is up to you to provide the evidence that your statement is supported by facts and isn't just an opinion.

[Fumesucker]

53. All we are saying is give war a chance..

Not playing your game.

War is what needs to be justified, not peace.

[rockymountaindem]

75. There was also the fact that the Moro uprising in the Philippines was extremely bloody

I read that it is perhaps the only war in modern history in which the number of dead outnumbered the wounded: because the US Army ensured there weren't any wounded Moro.

Also, you can always say that the British were successful against the Malaysian Races Liberation Army and the Mau Mau, and that's true in a sense. But again, the UK forces in Malaysia had to utilize tactics that would be anathema today, such as rounding up whole villages and relocating them to camps so they couldn't supply the MRLA. There's also the recorded practice of the British in Malaysia of tying dead MRLA men to jeeps and driving them around the countryside to cow the populace. Plus there's the fact that it took about eight years to put down a force of approximately 6,000 MRLA men. All that is according to Matthew Carr in "The Infernal Machine".

Plus, for all their effort, Britain lost strategically as they did pull out of both places quite soon after declaring "victory", despite the massive operations they launched in their attempts to retain control of the colonies. Likewise, we can point to the failure of the French and Portuguese to retain their colonies in similar circumstances. We can also point to the white government of Rhodesia, etc.

In fact, the only really successful counter-insurgency campaign I can think of in recent times is that of Russia in Chechnya.

[rhett o rick]

50. Forgive me, but I can not grasp your point. War is hell. There is no good war or good way to wage

war. Autocracies happen on all sides. Some say the fire bombing of Dresden and Tokyo were aimed at killing civilians to a degree to influence the enemy leaders. And I think it is difficult to say who actually wins "wars". Just me.

[Fumesucker]

54. So then you should justify *this* war..

War is hell, war should be justified.

Go ahead, justify this particular war.

[rhett o rick]

58. I see no justification. War only benefits the military/industrial/media complex.

Sorry if I didnt make that clear. I was just wondering what point you were trying to make pointing out autocracies of war.

[Edweird]

59. Afghanistan has been invaded 3 times before us. Why isn't it one of your examples?

[MadHound]

10. Really? Gee, you just made my point for me, Thanks

"What happens is you cannot completely stamp them out and when a few attacks occur later,. . ."

Umm, hate to inform you of this, but if guerrilla armies reform and start to attack you again, you haven't won the war. All you did was slow them down for awhile.

I would suggest that you go read some military strategists' works on this matter.

So tell me, which invading force has won a guerrilla war lately, or ever, without laying waste to the country?

Oh, yeah, no one.

And if you don't like my American Revolution comparison, well use that more recent one I gave, Vietnam. Get the picture?

[Kaleva]

41. The American Revolution succeded because of French intervention.

[Quantess]

11. Welcome to DU!

Have you considered enlisting?

[harlfxstc]

21. Too old. to enlist at 60, however two of my sons are serving right now.

US Marines and US Air Force.

[Quantess]

29. I guess that means I can't call you a chickenhawk, then.

God bless your sons and I hope they come home safely.

[demigoddess]

12. some times the guerillas are simply citizens who do not want their government

appointed by another country across the sea, especially if they are carrying guns to do so.

[harlfxstc]

22. lol, and most times not. NT

[StarfarerBill]

25. Yes, insurgencies are most often won by the guerrillas themselves.

If they can even hold off the government or invading forces until the latter are forced to retreat either because of attrition or lack of popular support, they've won.

The Afghans have proven this time and again, as have the Vietnamese, the Sandinistas, the Somalis, the Algerian FLN, etc., ad infinitum. The best that can be hoped for in most cases is an uneasy ceasefire and occupation, the former which almost inevitably breaks down once the occupiers leave.

We had no business invading Afghanistan in 2001, and have even less interest in perpetuating our war against that country. It's way past time we left.

[DailyGrind51]

38. Cuba, Nicaragua, Vietnam, Afghanistan (v. Soviets),

You can't defeat a determined guerrilla force which has the aid and support of the populace.

[salguine]

45. MadHound couldn't be more right. The Japanese learned the same lesson

in the Philippines. The French learned the same lesson in Vietnam when it was still called Indochina. The Germans learned it all through the Balkans. The Soviets learned the same lesson, where was it—oh yeah—AFGHANISTAN...The British learned it in India without even taking any casualties themselves. There are countless examples. No matter how powerful you are, you cannot win against a native adversary who doesn't want you there. Your post is a lot of nonsense.

[LWolf]

46. Our troops didn't wear red and march in formation through the woods then, either. nt

[KakistocracyHater]

61. yeah but does anyone know of the folklore of the being wearing dollar pants

on battlefields? Slightly off-topic, but I've heard only snippets of this & I really mean coins/money on the legs of a battlefield wanderer.

That Rand Corporation showed military loses 93% of wars against guerillas, detective work/treating it like a police matter only fails low 60s% of the time, adding a political party to represent people also has a similar smaller failure rate. I posted this many times already. Why go with only a 7% chance of winning?
CONFIDENCE GAME. Money laundering.

[NoPasaran]

7. That explains why European settlers were never able to push much beyond the Mississippi

And so to this day vast tracts of this continent remain the domain of proud and ferocious native tribes.

[Fumesucker]

9. Our troops are homesteading and living off the land in Afghanistan?

Raising kids, bringing their families?

I learn something new on DU every fucking day.. :eyes:

[MadHound]

13. You did miss the point I made about laying waste to the land

Which is what we essentially did with the Native Americans. Deliberately infected them with small pox, made them alcoholics, killed off their food source, etc. etc. Sounds like laying waste to the land to me:shrug:

[demigoddess]

14. The indians were outnumbered, out gunned, slaughtered and killed with disease

hardly a comparison. Most of the native tribes were slaughtered.

[Prometheuspan]

15. yep

its true. After the event of modern technology, nobody has ever won an occupation.

bush lost this war when he went for the oil, rather than humanitarian concerns. The people know why we are really there, and so
do many of our soldiers.

The hijackers were all Saudis. Why are we in Afghanistan?

It was the oil pipeline... but then I bet you've heard of that.

[pscot]

16. No. That explains why

the native tribes were completely annihilated. From smallpox and measles introduced by the earliest explorers, to Indian removal and Wounded Knee; until the last of the "ferocious native tribes" were hunted down and killed, or imprisoned on reservations. Read your goddamned history. Better yet, go visit Pine Ridge.

[StarfarerBill]

27. Great idea! Let's eliminate large numbers of Afghans with massacres, disease, and roundups;

perhaps throw in a few nukes and chem weapons for giggles. The Wild, Wild East...it'll make for great novels and movies.

Had American Indians more of the modern (Western) weapons of the day, the "Indian" Wars might well have turned out quite differently. The Afghans are armed a bit more efficiently...

[Mythbuster]

17. Pull out before you go too far!!

Funny... it's a concept a teenager can understand and apply, but when it comes to military strategists, it just doesn't make sense to them. I totally agree with you... we can't win in Afghanistan without nuclear weapons and that will never happen, and I don't want it to ever come to using them anywhere again. It's time to say adios to the Afghanis and get the hell out of there.

[JonQ]

18. Yes you can

it happens all the time. There is nothing about guerrilla warfare that makes it, unlike every other form of warfare, impossible to beat.

[Fumesucker]

26. Show us a conflict being won by the invaders with a supply line half way around the world..

C'mon, just fucking one is all we ask..

The Soviets got their asses handed to them in Afghanistan and their supply lines were far shorter and they knew the people and country a lot better.

[Aragorn]

33. Alexander ("the Great")

BUT - not really. Supposedly he conquered most of the known world (for no good reason mind you) by 1) leaving local authorities and customs in place after defeating their armies, and 2) as soon as he died it all started to fall apart, although only partially because of "guerillas". Also, 3) he did not really have long supply lines for most of the journey.

Hannibal did though.

[AllentownJake]

39. Carthage was burned

Hannibal had exhausted his supply lines, never got to the Roman Capital, and the Romans conquered Carthage.

[cowcommander]

44. Alexander also lost the support of his own men when they went too far to India

Something all leaders should consider in overstretching a war...

[Kaleva]

49. The Soviets were fighting a force supported by the US.

[JonQ]

56. The US

fighting a well entrenched Japanese imperial army, halfway around the world, that rapidly resorted to guerrilla tactics as they lost air and naval superiority.

And we were fighting the germans on the other side of the world as well.

Or in the phillipines many years before that (General Pershing). In fact very few guerrilla movements are successful against a determined opponent unless they are receiving substantial foreign support.

Also, the Union in its invasion of the south, that relied in many arenas heavily on guerrilla style warfare (and continued fighting to some degree after the war had officially ended). And the british in the boer war. Or the again vs various tribes in the middle east.

[NickB79]

76. The guerrilla wars we fought against the Japanese were on isolated Pacific islands

Easy to cut off supply lines. Estimates of the casualties from the proposed invasion of the main Japanese islands were in the millions, even with the ability to cut them off.

The German invasion was a multi-pronged assault, supported by large numbers of British, French and Russian troops, armor and supplies with much shorter supply chains than the US.

Your remaining examples were only won with application of techniques we would find appalling today (concentration camps, slaughter of civilians, scorched earth policies, etc).

[JonQ]

79. So the OP was wrong then, according to you

guerrilla soldiers are not invincible, they only win if A) we don't cut off their supply lines from abroad and B) we are unwilling to fight them in a necessary manner to win.

I agree, if we are unwilling to fight to win and let foreign weapons and supplies in then we will lose.

[rhett o rick]

19. Why do you think winning the war is tho objective? Fighting a prolonged war is the objective of

the Industrial/military/media complex. There is gold in them thar wars.

[MadHound]

23. Oh I know that, you know that, even Obama's supporters know that.

But they can't admit to it because that would mean that Obama is a corporately controlled president just like the rest of them.

[rhett o rick]

34. If we cant stem the influence of CorpAmerica on Congress we can give up hope for ending wars,

getting decent health care or education. Our number one battle should be with ending corporate control of America.

[LWolf]

47. I'm with you there.

Personally, I'd like to see 100% publicly financed elections, authentic debates giving every participant equal talk time and a chance to answer every question, a "fairness" doctrine guaranteeing equal, and equally neutral, media time, and some form of IRV.

Then we could elect some people who don't bow to corporate donors, and others would come to heel when their chances for reelection depended on earning votes rather than buying time.

I don't see how to make that happen, though, since the corporately controlled congress won't pass election reform like that.

[maryf]

64. yep

but when about 60 percent of the US budget goes to the military, that has to be one of our key battles, IMO...the military interests of the corporations...

[rhett o rick]

81. The only way to change that is to eliminate the influence of lobbyists. nt

[arcadian]

20. Add this to the fact that they've found out how to bring down UAVs

with handheld lasers and the going is going to be even rougher.

[LWolf]

48. Saddam was bringing down UAVs

before the election of GWB. I know, because my ex was civilian support for the predator, and deployed several times a year with the airforce. Of course, the predator only carried cameras at that point. But the ex had to go out with troops to haul in UAVs spying of Saddam when he was stationed in Kuwait.

[leftstreet]

24. K&R

[Kaleva]

30. Without support from a major power, most guerrilla movements fail.

[MadHound]

31. True, but only to a certain extent

If the guerrilla movement has strong domestic support, it too can succeed.

[Kaleva]

32. True. But if the guerrilla movement itself is brutal, it can lose domestic support

and only get such thru terror.

[blindpig]

36. That is blasphemy.

You are contradicting our secular religion, American Exceptionalism. The true believers, as we see on this thread, cannot accept that. Hell, they still do not accept that we lost VietNam in the field, despite empirical evidence.

k&r

[anonymous171]

51. America has never been "defeated." We aren't "losing," we are just not winning

We should not even be there. I don't really care about the Afghans or Iraqis. Fuck them. We need to be isolationist again. Let the world deal with its own problems.

[tekisui]

52. I like your avatar.

[blindpig]

63. Yes, of course...

[grantcart]

55. "we lost VietNam in the field, despite empirical evidence"

Emprically speaking we did not lose "in the field". All US combat troops left Vietnam in 1973 when the Peace Accords took full effect and hostilities between North Vietnam and the United States ended and the POWs were returned to the United States.

North Vietnam unexpectedly took over in 1975 when a small excursion into the Pleiku Highlands caused a panic among the Southern troops and they started a panic that engulfed the rest of the country with senior military leaders packing and leaving as soon as they could. General Giap writes about how the sudden retreat was so unexpected that the North was unprepared for the responsibilities of taking over South Vietnam so quickly.

But that is speaking "emperically" about actual events.

[blindpig]

62. It was all done when we decided to leave.

ARVIN was useless.

The US abandoned the fight when army dicipline was so low that field commanders were unable to deploy sufficient manoveur battalions to defeat Mr Charles. That was the bottom line, to a degree the VietNam debacle was abandoned in order to save the US Army.

[grantcart]

66. Complete total bullshit

The discipline was low because the political leadership and large numbers of senior South Vietnam military that were milking the system for personal gain after the United States had turned the defense of their country over to them. It is easy to compare what happened in South Vietnam and South Korea where the political and military leadership was much more dedicated to saving their country.

In 1978 I met with military leaders of North Vietnam and was surprised at how objective they were and even admiring of not only American technological strength but also of the admiration of the average American fighting soldier who was not fighting in familiar land and not trying to save their own home.

In this NYT 1990 interview Gen Giap concedes that military loses to the North Vietnamese were staggering, perhaps over a million and that they were not strong enough to mount a military victory but that they were fighting a diplomatic/political/military battle.

http://www.nytimes.com/1990/06/24/magazine/giap-remembers.html?pagewanted=2

''We were not strong enough to drive out a half-million American troops, but that wasn't our aim,'' he told me. ''Our intention was to break the will of the American Government to continue the war. Westmoreland was wrong to expect that his superior firepower would grind us down. If we had focused on the balance of forces, we would have been defeated in two hours. We were waging a people's war - FITGa la maniere vietnamienne. FNMGAmerica's sophisticated arms, electronic devices and all the rest were to no avail in the end. In war there are the two factors - human beings and weapons. Ultimately, though, human begins are the decisive factor. Human beings! Human beings!'' How long was he prepared to fight? ''Another twenty years, even a hundred years, as long as it took to win, regardless of cost,'' Giap replied instantly. What, in fact, had been the cost? ''We still don't know,'' he said, refusing, despite my persistence, to hazard a guess. But one of his aides confided to me that at least a million of their troops perished, the majority of them in the American war.


In any case I was responding to a poster who was talking about American military defeat in Vietnam as being an "empirical fact" he and you are both 100% wrong.

The United States left Vietnam in 1973 and had the South had the political leadership that was willing to sacrifice to win to the same degree that American soldiers were then they could have maintained a stalemate with the north.

Overtime South Vietnam could have become stronger as they would have continued to generate resources from its economy to fund a war effort. North Vietnam was running out of not only resources but friends. Shortly after North Vietnam successfully reunited the country they were invaded by the People's Republic of China. Support of North Vietnam by other communist countries had dropped significantly after the US had left and old feelings of mistrust and hatred had left them largely isolated, although these facts were not known until China invaded Vietnam.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Vietnamese_War

On January 1, 1979, Deng Xiaoping visited USA for the first time and spoke to American president Jimmy Carter: "It's time to smack the bottom of unruly little children" (original Chinese words: 小朋友不聴話,該打打屁股了).<17> On February 15, the first day that China could have officially announced the termination of the Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship and Alliance, Deng Xiaoping declared that China planned to conduct a limited attack on Vietnam. The reason cited for the counter strike was the supposed mistreatment of Vietnam's ethnic Chinese minority and the Vietnamese occupation of the Spratly Islands (claimed by the PRC). To prevent Soviet intervention on Vietnam's behalf, Deng warned Moscow the next day that China was prepared for a full-scale war against the USSR; in preparation for this conflict, China put all of their troops along the Sino-Soviet border on an emergency war alert, set up a new military command in Xinjiang, and even evacuated an estimated 300,000 civilians from the Sino-Soviet border.<18> In addition, the bulk of China's active forces (as many as one-and-a-half million troops) were stationed along China's borders with the USSR.<19>.

In response to China's attack, the USSR sent several naval vessels and initiated a Soviet arms airlift to Vietnam. However the USSR felt that there was simply no way that they could directly support Vietnam against the PRC; the distances were too great to be an effective ally, and any sort of reinforcements would have to cross territory controlled by the PRC or U.S. allies. The only realistic option would be to indirectly re-start the simmering border war with China in the north. Vietnam was important to Soviet policy but not enough for the Soviets to go to war over. When Moscow did not intervene, Beijing publicly proclaimed that the USSR had broken its numerous promises to assist Vietnam. The USSR's failure to support Vietnam emboldened China to announce on April 3, 1979 that it intended to terminate the 1950 Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship, Alliance, and Mutual Assistance.<15>

[cliffordu]

68. You are so completely full of crap, I don't know how you can stand your own smell.

[cliffordu]

67. Pulling imperial- uh, empirical evidence out of your butt, again, eh?

Why do you think we lost Vietnam???

Those of us with the CIB would say that we fought and defeated a valiant, hardened enemy on his turf and if we'd been left to small unit tactics like the ones they used, we'd have been just fucking fine.


Too bad Washington and the fucking idiot generals thought it could be done with company and battalion sized air cav units. Idiots.

But that's Ok, you just keep saying it and one of these days you might make it true. Close your eyes real tight, it'll help.

:hurts:

[bertman]

77. Oh, cliffordru, as much as I love your pithy one-line zingers, I have to call you on this rant.

My experience was that we defeated the valiant, hardened enemy on his own turf because we threw more munitions at him and his comrades than were used in any previous war on the planet. Artillery, Spooky, B-52's, A-4's, naval gunfire, chemical defoliants to name the ones I witnessed. Don't forget the humongous base camps, hospitals, hospital ships, and Billions of dollars of war materials we had backing up our units. Without those assets to back up our boys we would have been fucked.

The South Vietnamese people we were bringing democracy to just didn't seem to appreciate what we were doing for them. My impression was that they would fight us until they were all dead or we were all dead or we left.

But that's just my $.02 worth.

[cliffordu]

80. Here ya go:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=388x6041

Read what GC has to say specifically about Vietnam.

Your expertise has so many flawed assumptions I'll not dignify them with a response for each.

Ya don't know what you're talking about with regards to Vietnam, Sorry.

[bertman]

85. Yeah, I guess my flawed assumptions about Vietnam have nothing to do with the fact

that I gained them through personal experience. So, in that regard they are just as valid as your flawed assumptions.

Where you and Grantcart are off base is in the assumption that it is OUR prerogative to invade any other nation for whatever purpose we feel is viable at the time. Then, when we begin to get bogged down and the "spreading democracy" meme or the "saving the people from tyrants" meme goes all sour, we start showing on our captive TeeVee networks the endless photos of the abuse the bad buys (NVA, VC, al Qaeda, Taliban, warlords, etc, endless etc.) are perpetrating on the people of the nation. Never mind that we have set up the scenario in which the citizens of that nation have been placed.

After WWII, if the French had not tried to stop the Viet Minh from taking over all of Vietnam the country would have had it's own internal struggle for who would rule. Very likely the Viet Minh would have prevailed. And while that would have been a "communist" victory, we Americans could have used our international clout to negotiate trade and other interactions and could very likely have avoided any other bloody wars there. But, NOOOO, we have to STOP COMMUNISM there, so 50,000 Americans and god only knows how many Vietnamese die in conflict.

Fast forward to Afghanistan after the Soviets were defeated (with our materiel assistance), the Taliban take over and allow al Qaeda to train there. After the 9-11 attacks we decide that we must invade Afghanistan to stop the TERRORISTS. (Please note that now we have changed the enemy from Communist to Terrorist). Never mind that there is an oil and natural gas pipeline that is going to transit Afghanistan and we want to secure it. So, we now have the perfect cover to protect our strategic energy interests--or should I say, Big Energy's strategic interests?--and we invade.

Once again, warring nationalist factions are used against each other and we are the ones who ratchet up the level of destruction and violence. Once again, we sacrifice our nation's young men and women and our national treasure in a savage attempt to force our will and our vision of government on a nation that will not stand still for it.

The people of Afghanistan are going to have to decide for themselves how they will be lead and what type of national government they will have. It's past time for us to stop trying to impose our desires on them.

[laughingliberal]

86. +1 nt

[Vidar]

37. Excellent argument. Recommended.

[treestar]

57. I've spent years trying to get righties to explain what victory in the war on terra looked like

And they evade answering the question.

I do think the POTUS will answer it and define it, unlike the necons and the boy king.

It's the 21st century and with the technology we have now, IMO things are different. We may be able to meet our goal, whatever it is.

[Edweird]

60. A blanket statement about all guerrilla war is automatically wrong.

However, Afghanistan is essentially a foregone conclusion. It is lost.



Ha ha! You fool! You fell victim to one of the classic blunders - The most famous of which is "never get involved in a land war in Asia"

[tabasco]

65. You are aware the U.S. fought a guerilla war against the Native Americans?

Whatever one's opinion on the matter, it was a victory.

[cherokeeprogressive]

70. HAHAHAHA Only because we let you THINK so.

Ask your white brethren who're now attending Gambler's Anonymous meetings three times a week about how the white man defeated the Native American.

Silly white man... We're not through with you yet.

(This is tongue in cheek of course)

[MadHound]

72. Yes, and we essentially laid waste to the Indians,

We launched biological warfare against them, wiped out much of their food source, essentially committed genocide against them. Are we, in this day and age, will to lay waste to another country in that sort of manner? I think not.

[tabasco]

78. I was responding to the statement that the U.S. had never won a guerilla war.

The other issues are different.

I'm a former infantry officer. I don't think we should go to war unless we are willing to lay waste to the enemy, while doing everything possible to avoid non-combatant casualties.

Go in. Lay waste. Get the boys home by Christmas.

Yes, I know. I'm old fashioned.

[CTyankee]

87. As a former military officer, you might want to take a read of "The History of the Peloponnesian War

by Thucydides, written some 2500 years ago, esp. the part where the whole thing came to an end for Athens...in far off Sicily. Thucydides was trying to tell future generations not to do this. Even with wholesale slaughter (the Melians for instance,who really only wanted not to take sides in the war with Sparta) they lost the war. And they lost their democracy. A great empire collapsing remarkably in the port of Siricusa...

[anonymous171]

82. Yes, but genocide is politically incorrect these days.

So we can't do that in Afghanistan.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

69. All this idiotic talk about "winning"

What the hell is "winning" in terms of Afghanistan?

Killing or pacifying every last Taliban fighter and every last tribal warlord?

Running Afghanistan as a colony of the U.S.? (That's what we seem to be doing in Iraq, with 14 permanent military bases and the largest of all U.S. embassies)

Some people have mentioned "nuking." Even if we were callous and stupid enough to do it, what would be the point? Destroy the capital (where the Taliban mostly aren't) and give a lot of innocent villagers severe burns and radiation sickness?

You macho military types are sickening.

[MadHound]

73. I've asked the same question many times,

However what I'm trying to do here, in order to reach certain mindsets, is to point out the illogic in this war, why it is a waste and thus we need to pull out.

I will use every argument I have, I will approach people from any different angle if it is effective in getting them to want to, for any reason, stop these wars.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

74. The question wasn't directed at you, of course, but at all these

armchair generals who are arguing that "winning" is possible.

[cherokeeprogressive]

71. I've been trying to make this same argument for months. To no avail. n/t

[ecstatic]

83. I don't think any kind of war is ever justifiable, but I'm curious about where you get your info

Are you a middle east scholar? Read a lot of books on the topic?

[laughingliberal]

84. 100% True!

My husband, after returning from Viet Nam, participated in war games where he commanded a squad of 9 men fighting against 60,000 national guard, reservist, and MP units. They played it over and over in every imaginable scenario. In every case, his little squad of 9 guys brought down that army of 60,000. He proved to them, way back then, that a guerilla war on someone else's soil can't be won without a 'scorched earth' scenario. Not sure why the lesson didn't take.