Comment by mullingitover

Comment by mullingitover 5 days ago

The NATO forces defeated the Taliban in a timeframe that could be measured in hours. The remaining years were an exercise in nation building, there was never “defeat.” The military simply isn’t the right tool to lift a nation out of poverty and eventually the voters got bored.

In Vietnam, the US was fighting an army backed by the Soviet Union and China that had anti-aircraft and artillery.

No, the US insurgency would turn into a Grozny unless the insurgents get backing from China or some other serious player.

kakacik 5 days ago

Lol thats so untrue, are we already at the phase of rewriting this recent history?

US and coalition held Kabul (mostly) and their bases, and that was about it. Rest of the country was lets say contested territory, never really conquered, never yielding to Kabul government or coalition.

Ambushes, attacks, suicide bombers were daily grind. Not really conquered territory, is it.

Whether it was or wasnt defeat - when you see soldiers desperately running away from the country in a very similar fashion that happened in Vietnam, I struggle to not describe it as a full military defeat. The fact that it was orchestrated by politicians doesn't change much.

Reply View 0 replies

modo_mario 5 days ago

>The NATO forces defeated the Taliban in a timeframe that could be measured in hours. The remaining years were an exercise in nation building, there was never “defeat.”

There was never a "defeat" indeed but the taliban grew in numbers manifold over the course of the occupation so saying you defeated them in hours is also a funny take.

Reply View 1 reply

mullingitover 4 days ago

> over the course of the occupation
This is my point: the war was over almost immediately, and since there was never any intention of permanently colonizing Afghanistan the occupation always had an expiration date.
On the other hand, the United States already lives in the United States, there's no 'waiting it out.'

Reply View | 0 replies

pjc50 5 days ago

Think of a rebellion as national "unbuilding" and you get some idea of how things might go.

If things get that hot, there will be substantial defectors and various state and federal security services fighting each other.

Reply View 0 replies

rbanffy 5 days ago

I don’t think it’d be easy to get a Chinese ABM to Minneapolis without anyone noticing.

What could happen in this scenario would be either local military defecting or guerrilla warfare while the US military targets them from afar. You can easily bomb anyone back to Stone Age in hours, but taking control of the ground can be a lot more challenging if the locals don’t cooperate.