[HN Gopher] Fighting Like Taliban
___________________________________________________________________
Fighting Like Taliban
Author : robertwiblin
Score : 133 points
Date : 2021-08-23 13:14 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (scholars-stage.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (scholars-stage.org)
| forkLding wrote:
| Afghanistan was a war of attrition that the locals felt the most
| of. Likely one of those wars that your dad and granddad fought
| (if you trace it back from the Soviet invasion) and somehow you
| also ended up fighting in. After a while everyone gets tired and
| they want to live in peace and not die in a war.
|
| Can see why it ended the way it did.
| NonContro wrote:
| After reading this article, Afghanistan doesn't seem inherently
| like a war of attrition at all.
|
| "Men fought, men switched sides, men lined up and fought again.
| War in Afghanistan often seemed like a game of pickup
| basketball, a contest among friends"
|
| It seems more like renaissance Europe, where armies of
| Condottiero would parade against eachother, and the smaller or
| less extravagant side would back down.
|
| This probably didn't suit the USA, who wanted real, bloody war,
| to justify trillions of dollars of military spending. Just like
| Vietnam: 'body count'.
|
| "The goal is to use Afghanistan to wash money out of the tax
| bases of the US and Europe through Afghanistan and back into
| the hands of a transnational security elite. The goal is an
| endless war, not a successful war"
|
| - Julian Assange, 2011
|
| Rapid takeover by the Taliban instead of months of dragged out
| death and destruction is a fair outcome for the country.
| at-fates-hands wrote:
| >> This probably didn't suit the USA, who wanted real, bloody
| war, to justify trillions of dollars of military spending.
| Just like Vietnam: 'body count'.
|
| The role of the US went from hunting and killing Taliban to
| not allowing them a permanent base from which to launch
| terror attacks to "nation building" where the military was
| then building schools and gas stations. The US never wanted a
| "bloody war". If they did, they could end the Taliban in the
| span of a few weeks, just like they did ISIS. It wouldn't be
| a war, it would be a rampage for which many in the US
| population and politicians wouldn't have the stomach for.
| Thus, we have "surgical strikes" and operations that go above
| and beyond protecting civilian casualties.
|
| >> Rapid takeover by the Taliban instead of months of death
| and destruction is actually the best possible outcome for the
| country.
|
| I'm not sure how replacing the US military with the Taliban
| is considered "the best possible outcome for the country."
| captain_price7 wrote:
| > If they did, they could end the Taliban in the span of a
| few weeks, just like they did ISIS. It wouldn't be a war,
| it would be a rampage...
|
| This whole paragraph seems utterly bizarre.
|
| US did NOT "end" ISIS, certainly not alone. Most of the
| fighting and dying was done by Shia and Kurdi forces inside
| Iraq whose lives literally depended on stopping ISIS. US
| failed in Afghanistan precisely because no such ally
| existed.
|
| And, what exactly do you mean by "rampage"? There seems to
| be an awful implication- "if US forces didn't bother about
| civilian casualties, Taliban could be surely defeated".
| Which I suppose is true, there can't be any Taliban if
| there isn't any more afghan.
| watwut wrote:
| > Thus, we have "surgical strikes" and operations that go
| above and beyond protecting civilian casualties.
|
| While US army is significantly better then Taliban, the
| surgical strikes killed civilians fairly regularly and wish
| to protect civilians is not exactly "above and beyond".
|
| > I'm not sure how replacing the US military with the
| Taliban is considered "the best possible outcome for the
| country."
|
| I think that OP meant "compare to 2 years long war after
| which Taliban takes power anyway". That was the estimation
| as America was leaving - that ANA will be able to hold off
| for two years. They were not expected to win, but they were
| not expected to fold that fast.
| ilammy wrote:
| > _They were not expected to win, but they were not
| expected to fold that fast._
|
| There was no way they did not know US assessment of the
| capabilities. Why _would_ you fight a war that you know
| you 're not likely to win anyway?
|
| Only if you genuinely believe US advisers are delusional
| and your side will certainly prevail.
| watwut wrote:
| US advisors were delusional, that seem to be sure now.
|
| I mean, I agree with that logic, theoretically.
| Theoretically, if you know you will loose in 2 years, it
| is better to not fight and hope your treatment will be
| better as result.
|
| But, groups did hold up and fought lost or seemingly lost
| wars. It is not just that they logically concluded it is
| all helpless and gave up. That does not seem to be the
| only or primary factor here.
| at-fates-hands wrote:
| >> US advisors were delusional, that seem to be sure now.
|
| The numbers the military were giving them were completely
| inaccurate.
|
| Biden said the Afghan army was 400K strong. It was not.
| It wasn't even close. The most recent figures put the
| Afghan army conservatively at 170K. Imagine touting a 4:1
| advantage and then realizing, it's more like a 1:1
| contest.
|
| The Taliban numbers were way off too. The media and
| politicians were saying they had 50-75K, when in reality
| their numbers are closer to 100K if not more. Even back
| in 2018 they were saying they were 85K+.
|
| The military chiefs saying they had trained that many
| Afghans was also wildly inaccurate. One of my family
| members was part of the Marines who were tasked with
| training the Afghans. He said it was nearly impossible to
| train them because they never took it seriously. They
| never expected the US to leave them. For many, it was a
| cushy paycheck that put them on easy street - it was
| never about defending their country, or having a sense of
| patriotism or duty. He repeatedly called them "clowns"
| and after a year, he asked to be reassigned and told his
| superiors the training was useless and there was no way
| these men would fight anybody, even with the best
| equipment and training they provided.
|
| The assessments being made were incredibly off base and
| not even close to being accurate. The information that
| should've been coming out of there was the Afghan force
| was very small, barely trainable, and would never fight
| the Taliban or any other group regardless of how much you
| pay them or equip them or train them. Instead,
| politicians were repeatedly fed a fantasy about how the
| Afghans had a huge force, were trained by the best and
| fully capable to defend their country when the draw down
| or withdrawal happened.
|
| When you talk to people who were over there and ask them
| what they saw and experienced? None of them are surprised
| by what happened. When you ask the Joint Chiefs and
| politicians in Washington? Total confusion and shock.
| watwut wrote:
| All that amounts to evidently delusional US advisors, for
| years.
|
| And on US side, it resembles corporations in a way. The
| more optimistic report you give, the more you are
| rewarded. If you talk about issues, you are sidelined. So
| people down on hierarchy know there are issues and high
| on hierarchy get to pretend how good everything is.
|
| On afghan side, it amounts to organization capable people
| who have choice won't join. You join it to get free meal,
| to steal a thing or two. You join it if you don't have
| much perspective otherwise.
|
| Patriotism can't be motivation either, because Afghan
| would be joining American led army. And expectations that
| US will be there forever was fairly reasonable too. It is
| atypical for US to leave I they can have influence.
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| >> They never expected the US to leave them. For many, it
| was a cushy paycheck that put them on easy street - it
| was never about defending their country, or having a
| sense of patriotism or duty.
|
| To be fair, it's hard to imagine any person with
| patriotic feelings accepting to be trained by the
| invaders of their country to become a kind of native
| garrison for them.
|
| Although I don't pretend to understand how Afghans saw
| the war, the US, their allies, or the Taliban, or
| anything else. It can't have been simple.
| clipradiowallet wrote:
| > Can see why it ended the way it did.
|
| If we learn from all that history, I would imagine it has not
| ended at all.
| nullifidian wrote:
| It wasn't anywhere near close to a war of attrition. It was a
| war of different value systems, and one of these value systems
| simply can't win certain types of war. For Taliban it was not a
| problem to hide among the civil population, and for the
| Americans it was problematic to commit China-style ethnocide,
| or at the least institute authoritarianish high-security
| measures, depopulate the rural areas, to actually win this war.
| xtian wrote:
| You're saying the US was constrained by its strong sense of
| morality? https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/21/world/asia/us-
| soldiers-to...
| jeltz wrote:
| Then why did the Americans not accept the Taliban surrender?
| No, this was not a war of value systems, this is just proof
| of how hard someone can fight if you do not allow them to
| surrender.
| mcguire wrote:
| I can recommend _21st Century Ellis: Operational Art and
| Strategic Prophecy for the Modern Era,_ edited by B. A.
| Friedman. It is a collection of articles written by Ellis
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earl_Hancock_Ellis) starting
| with one on the Philippine-American War, an early example of
| a loose manual on how to handle counter-insurgency.
|
| It also contains his "Advanced Base Operations in Micronesia"
| which was essentially the US Marines portion of the Navy's
| plans for WWII in the Pacific.
| forkLding wrote:
| War of attrition encompasses guerrilla warfare which is what
| the Taliban used, see definition:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attrition_warfare
|
| War of attrition does not mean casualty numbers, it means the
| goal of the war is to wear down the enemy so that their will
| to fight collapses which both the Taliban and the US tried to
| do, see: https://www.csis.org/analysis/afghan-war-attrition-
| peace-tal...
| forz877 wrote:
| >War of attrition does not mean casualty numbers
|
| War of attrition almost certainly requires high continual
| casualty numbers, it's literally in the first sentence of
| the Wikipedia article:
|
| > Attrition warfare is a military strategy consisting of
| belligerent attempts to win a war by wearing down the enemy
| to the point of collapse through continuous losses in
| personnel and materiel.
| kiba wrote:
| I don't believe these measures contrary to our values would
| be something that helps us "win" the war, especially not in
| way that we would have liked.
|
| But I do believe that the American people's heart were not
| into the fight, especially when it became a "forgotten" war.
| If we commit our full effort and our mind, we might have won
| the way we would stomach.
|
| In the end, if this is not the kind of war the American
| people are willing to fight, then we shouldn't entered them.
| merpnderp wrote:
| Afghanistan has always been poor and its people fractured
| because it was cut off from the world by its topography,
| but topography can be overcome.
|
| If the US had spent the last 20 years building
| infrastructure, railroads, highways, mining operations,
| schools to train engineers, managers, and professionals,
| Afghanistan would likely look a lot different.
|
| But the US missed even low hanging fruit like making
| poppies a legitimate crop by giving Afghanistan a cut of
| the legal opioid market.
| nemo44x wrote:
| 60% of Afghanistan is illiterate. An improvement from
| when NATO forces invaded 20 years ago, but not too much
| better. I don't think your infrastructure dreams would
| have had any efficacy.
| merpnderp wrote:
| What does someone working in a primitive mine need with
| literacy? It would be a job that paid a lot better than
| subsistence farming and might allow that person to send
| their kids to school to become engineers.
|
| Without railroads and highways, Afghanistan will never
| move forward. It should have been the first thing we did,
| and not only to link up cities, but to locations with
| large amounts of natural resources to build up some
| wealth and industry.
| watwut wrote:
| It was making training army difficult for American troops
| for example. Soldiers complained about it.
|
| Such high illiteracy rates will make it impossible to
| build enough of management and general bureaucracy needed
| to build anything large. It will make it hard to train
| workers in technology. You won't build railroads nor
| roads, you won't mainten them either.
|
| Primitive mines are not competitive. They are not
| producing enough to feed you. And hungry people won't
| save money for school. You need technology.
| MichaelGroves wrote:
| > _20 years building infrastructure, railroads, highways,
| mining operations, schools to train engineers, managers,
| and professionals_
|
| 20 years? Zahir Shah tried this for 40 years. Amanullah
| Khan also tried, as did several others. Numerous would-be
| reformers have thought as you do and tried to impose
| change on Afghanistan, and all their efforts have
| culminated in the situation we have now. It's been
| approached from a number of ideological/political
| directions. Some were monarchs, others proponents of
| republics. The PDPA/Soviets tried it from a
| Marxist/Leninist angle with lots of bloodshed, while
| Zahir Shah tried to create a constitutional monarchy and
| refrained from murdering his political opponents. Neither
| succeeded in the end.
|
| What would you bring to the table that hasn't been tried
| before?
| [deleted]
| sureglymop wrote:
| The goal was never to "win". It was to build up an army
| (the afghan army) that could eventually stand by itself and
| defend the government in place.
|
| This was a largely failing effort even years ago,
| considering that most of the afghan army were made up of
| people from the north of Afghanistan and previous
| geopolitics (north/south) play a role. The people in the
| south would at times trust the taliban over sympathisers
| for the previous northern warlords which had influence over
| members of the afghan army.
|
| See this documentary (from 8 years ago) about how utterly
| lost and helpless this situation has always been:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ja5Q75hf6QI
| kiba wrote:
| By "win", I meant whatever strategic goal, clearly
| defined, we hope to accomplish there. And then we spend
| our full effort to achieve that.
|
| If we do not know our goals, and not willing to spend
| blood and treasure, then what are we doing there?
| AniseAbyss wrote:
| I disagree, in the beginning the Americans were hopeful
| they could impose a puppet state with permanent US
| military bases. Look at a map and you can see the allure.
| Nobody in the region was particularly enthusiastic with
| that idea.
| mcguire wrote:
| Nobody was particularly enthusiastic about the Taliban,
| either. Except perhaps the Pakistanis, who wanted a
| relatively friendly, stable country on their border
| (IIRC, there was an oil/gas pipeline involved.)
| mcguire wrote:
| Keep in mind that, whether or not the initial invasion of
| Afghanistan was justified, it immediately became a football
| in the US political game. George W. Bush was elected on a
| platform that included "no nation building", and he
| certainly didn't. (I have a personal theory that the
| invasion of Iraq was solely due to the fact that the war in
| Afghanistan as of 2002-3 was not going to get Bush re-
| elected. Bush also failed to include the costs of the
| Afghanistan and Iraq wars in his 2005 budget
| (https://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/03/us/president-s-budget-
| pro...).)
|
| The war in Afghanistan was started badly, continued
| thoughtlessly, and, naturally, ended poorly. As it was
| originally destined to do.
| darkerside wrote:
| Much like the Napoleonic invasion of Moscow, the key was home
| field advantage. Not in the classic Russian winter sense.
|
| Once Napoleon's army arrived in Moscow, there was a "what
| now" aspect to the war. They'd accomplished the goal that was
| set out and defeated Russia, but they didn't actually want to
| live in Moscow. So, they eventually left to go fight the
| Russian army, which had seemingly and unbelievably abandoned
| its crown city to the invaders. But they hadn't. Because
| Moscow was home, whether it was filled with these unseemly
| visitors or not. There was no way Napoleon's forces could win
| unless the Russians actually decided to sign a piece of paper
| and let them.
| MichaelGroves wrote:
| > _commit China-style ethnocide, or at the least institute
| authoritarianish high-security measures, depopulate the rural
| areas_
|
| The PDPA and Soviets tried this, and it didn't work. Together
| they killed tens of thousands of combatants and hundreds of
| thousands, if not millions, of civilians. Millions more were
| displaced. And what did they get for that bloodshed?
| Certainly not the reform they sought.
|
| You may as well try to crush a fistful of water.
| steve76 wrote:
| War is bad. We should try to limit it. War can easily kill us
| all. Sounds simple, but very few people believe that. They either
| see weakness and advance their own criminal leadership. Or they
| reject it outright, turn from human to animal, and settle
| contention through territory expansion, something the USA stopped
| doing a century ago.
|
| Fight enough, you find out wins mean nothing, and what matters
| are arthritic knuckles which cripple and kill you. I think the
| next step in this is leaders will not care if millions of their
| own followers are horribly murdered. They didn't care about the
| riots or the doubling murder rate. Why should they care about the
| terror, as long as they are in power? That is much more
| frightening than mindless loyalties or cold ambition. Along with
| curing disease and not giving people the cure, and geoengineering
| a planet just for your own needs. Now that will solve this
| problem quick.
| yawaworht1978 wrote:
| No way to impose any sort of external order there. Russia was
| there, US/UK and half NATO have been there, the insurgent groups
| have financing via drugs and God knows what else(look at Colombia
| how much drug financed groups can hold back progress). All the
| foreign forces have done plenty of damage and lost credibility.
| Looking back, what in the world made Russia go there in the first
| place and then the USA? Why is this matter not settled yet?
|
| This has gone past many administrations and advisors, and yielded
| nothing.
|
| Does anyone know if the Taliban actually have some sort of
| popular support there or only by fringe groups?
| MeinBlutIstBlau wrote:
| It's obviously an islamic dominated country, and by the fact
| that the military and government fell so quickly, it's as if
| everyone knew the US would leave and everyone secretly actually
| wanted the Taliban. Us westerners like to look at "The Taliban"
| as some evil anti-women hate group but what most woke
| westerners are too scared to bring up is that this is Islam in
| it's barest of forms. Especially among illiterate peoples. The
| Taliban has ridiculous support and has had it for the longest
| time primarily because many people want the sort of religious
| regime. While us enlightened democratic types like to think
| democracy is so great, it actually makes change very difficult.
| Especially essential change such as controlling the local petty
| lords that essentially enslave people in perpetual bondage like
| serfs. The only way you can do away with that is an even more
| powerful authority higher than them that people can support. If
| some man with a turban and thousands of men with AK-74's need
| to tell you Allah does not approve of enslaving Muslims, guess
| what, you're gonna be hard pressed to fight back when all other
| lords are gonna be fearing for themselves too.
|
| Too many pampered Americans like to think we can solve all
| problems by petitioning the government and talking. Vocal
| ignorant influencers love to believe we can solve all problems
| peacefully at all times and all situations are the same because
| they grew up in a nice little suburb. In reality globally, it
| only uniquely works in cultures where that has been integral to
| the establishment of the actual nation. I mean South Korea and
| much of Central and South America has been governed by Military
| Juntas for decades and they have become far more freer than any
| place that was given democracy outright like Afghanistan and
| Iraq. The tight grip and control on people is meant to get them
| adjusted to the new way of life. As time progresses, reforms
| occur to ensure stability and people don't go rioting in the
| streets to establish another government that totally undermines
| all the work done to ensure the system continues.
| watwut wrote:
| > Us westerners like to look at > "The Taliban" as some evil
| anti-women hate group but what most woke westerners are too
| scared to bring up is that this is Islam in it's barest of
| forms. Especially among illiterate peoples. The Taliban has
| ridiculous support and has had it for the longest time
| primarily because many people want the sort of religious
| regime
|
| Those are not mutually exclusive. You write about it as if
| there was contradiction and they somehow were not women
| hating as proven by them being religious.
|
| They are exactly that. Besides, misogyny and
| authoritarianism/violence are related almost everywhere.
| acjohnson55 wrote:
| I'm no expert, but I'm fairly sure power there is fragmented,
| hierarchical, and transactional. Popular support does not
| figure in. According to Wikipedia, "As estimated by the CIA
| World Factbook, 26% of the population was urbanized as of 2020.
| This is one of the lowest figures in the world."
|
| It's probably a fair bet that the urbanized population does not
| support the Taliban, but they can't stand alone. The warlords
| and Taliban want control over the largest city, and Kabul
| depends on the countryside. Think about the urban-rural
| cultural divide in the US, but imagine that rural people vastly
| outnumbered urban and that there was no central monopoly on
| violent force.
|
| Another interesting question is why should the Taliban be
| stronger than any other potential leadership group? I suspect
| this comes down to their past success, their connections to
| Pakistan, and their appeal to international fighters.
| nickff wrote:
| The Taliban are power-hungry and ruthless, while their external
| (Pakistan/ISI & China) supporters don't mind it.
|
| In an battle between kindness and ruthlessness, (especially
| where the former is less committed than the latter,) the
| ruthless will always win. Put another way, if you had one side
| giving you aid (food/medicine) in exchange for support, and the
| other (credibly) threatening to kill you for disloyalty, what
| would you do? You'd probably feign support for the former, and
| never betray the latter.
| captain_price7 wrote:
| > if you had one side giving you aid (food/medicine) in
| exchange for support
|
| I'm afraid you have an awfully rosy version of what life was
| like for an average rural afghan under American rule.
|
| Here are some links to get started-
|
| - https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/21/world/asia/us-soldiers-
| to...
|
| - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/sep/09/us-soldiers-
| af...
|
| - https://news.abs-cbn.com/global-
| filipino/world/01/12/12/outr...
| nickff wrote:
| I've left out a lot of detail, because I was writing a
| comment, not a treatise. I also left out how the Taliban
| fighters routinely raped the widows and children of their
| opponents, as well as the Taliban's horrific history of
| brutality.
|
| In addition to all of these atrocities, there are a number
| of outliers, such as those you pointed out.
| xh-dude wrote:
| There is an argument that the 'stay and tolerate the corruption
| for another generation' strategy would eventually outlast
| native "Taliban" resistance - this is the path the U.S. was on,
| fairly explicitly since 2010 or so. In a realist framing, this
| is something that deserved more careful consideration before,
| and also now, in the aftermath.
|
| Look at the outcomes for Karzai and Ghani as an indicator - I
| don't know that 'popular support' is something to attribute to
| the Taliban but we ought to entertain the notion that the
| framing of Afghanistan for domestic consumption in the U.S.
| distorts a useful, realist analysis. How could we arrive at the
| current state of things if, outside of Kabul, the dynamics were
| as simple as painting a target on the Taliban?
| jeswin wrote:
| There was no way to defeat the Afghan Taliban without Pakistani
| help. The ideological reservoir from which Taliban recruits is
| bottomless; and with military and financial support from across
| the border, quite formidable.
|
| Over the last decade, the US had lost all leverage with Pakistan.
| Pakistan is now fully allied with China.
| 650REDHAIR wrote:
| Don't forget Saudi Arabia funding madrassas in Pakistan for
| decades.
| cmurf wrote:
| The Taliban could uave been defeated with the proper equivalent
| extremist commitment: kill all life within 1 km of any Taliban.
| No matter the country they are in. Tactical nukes.
|
| An non-violent alternative, grant permanent U.S. residency to
| all Afghan women and children. And evacuate anyone who wants
| out.
|
| Either would be cheaper, and involve less death and misery,
| than what has transpired.
| dragontamer wrote:
| > An non-violent alternative, grant permanent U.S. residency
| to all Afghan women and children. And evacuate anyone who
| wants out.
|
| Did you live in 2001?
|
| There was severe distrust of "Al Qaeda cells", which were
| these hypothetical terrorists inside of the USA pretending to
| be a nice guy. But one phone call from Osama Bin Laden would
| turn them into a suicide bomber.
|
| -------
|
| I'm glad that we've built up trust with the Afghan people and
| are able to accept them into our society today. But that kind
| of thinking you're talking about would have NOT worked in
| 2001.
|
| I think the Afghans have also learned to trust us to some
| extent. My friend had to kill a child girl soldier who fired
| upon him, hiding an AK47 in her Burka. It turns out that
| burkas are really good at hiding weapons. I don't think I've
| heard of any of those stories recently however.
|
| ----------
|
| The US won the hearts of Afghan women and children because we
| built schools and universities for them. The trust did not
| exist in 2001, but the trust exists today thanks to literally
| millions of college-educated Afghan women telling our story
| and learning our values.
| mcguire wrote:
| " _I 'm glad that we've built up trust with the Afghan
| people and are able to accept them into our society
| today._"
|
| Do we? We didn't as of the Trump Administration.
|
| https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/07/trump-
| i...
|
| https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/immigration/trump-admin-
| bro...
| dragontamer wrote:
| Trump didn't, but Americans as a whole have an accepting
| culture.
|
| Over 75% of Republicans and 90% of Democrats wish to
| accept more Afghan refugees in light of the Taliban
| takeover. When push comes to shove, Americans
| (Republicans included) are a welcoming bunch.
|
| https://drive.google.com/file/d/1VJKdBglH8nPNslg4duYhtV1f
| uTc...
|
| Question #13, which has Republican / Democrat statistics
| specific to that question on a later page. Something like
| 79% of Trump voters think we should help those Afghans
| come to the USA.
|
| -----
|
| Question #12, with 59% of respondents saying the US isn't
| "doing enough" to help the Afghans, is even more
| bipartisan, with Republican/Democrat splits being
| negligible in the stats. (59% Democrats / 64% Republicans
| think Biden is "not doing enough" to help the Afghan
| people)
| watwut wrote:
| It is scary how easy some are about committing genocide when
| it is abroad.
| cmurf wrote:
| The comment is not advocacy. Had all Taliban been murdered,
| there would be no Taliban problem today. Instead the
| dispute would be between the drug lords and the rest of the
| civilian population.
| content_sesh wrote:
| Does your hot take genocide-based solution include
| "tactical nuking" of Pakistan as well? Because the Afghan
| Taliban gets plenty of support from them as well.
| cmurf wrote:
| U.S. foreign policy stated from the outset in 2001 that
| we would follow terrorists where ever they are, no matter
| the country. Hunt them down and kill them. That's what we
| said about terrorists generally and Taliban specifically.
|
| We departed from U.N. Charter article 51 twice, and also
| disregarded the determination of Nuremberg. The nation is
| complicit, Bush was reelected subsequent to his foreign
| policy assertions and actions. There's been no serious
| consideration to hold him or the U.S. accountable. That
| makes it tacitly permitted.
|
| Killing all Taliban would not be genocide. It would be
| consistent with long standing U.S. foreign policy. It's a
| religious sect, not a group of ethnic or nationals.
| dragontamer wrote:
| Various leadership positions of the Taliban have been
| murdered by drones something like 5x or 6x over. The US
| never had a problem with killing Taliban per se (or
| imprisoning / exiling them).
|
| A good chunk of upper-Taliban leadership were former
| prisoners that were released, leading up to the peace
| talks of last year. (Its better that we negotiate with
| moderate Taliban we chose to release from prison, rather
| than the extremists that come from self-recruitment)
|
| The issue is that the Taliban can continue to recruit
| more and more leaders from the locals. They're able to
| recruit in large numbers because the Afghan culture
| glorifies their resistance across the 1800s against Great
| Britain (and other world powers with superior tech).
|
| Their entire culture is optimized about fighting against
| foreigners and rallying locals. The more we kill them,
| the more they're able to recruit.
| yourapostasy wrote:
| _> Their entire culture is optimized about fighting
| against foreigners and rallying locals. The more we kill
| them, the more they 're able to recruit._
|
| Afghanis stopped doing that for the period the Mongols
| ruled via one demonstration of regional depopulation
| through municipal-scale genocide [1]. But the Mongols
| were like that: they were quite progressive and often ran
| on a benevolent dictator model, but you cross them just
| once and they salted the earth after they were done
| wholesale killing everyone, innocents included.
|
| But the Mongols' record in Afghanistan was likely only
| possible because they established a reputation for
| carrying out these genocides on various scales
| (Khwarazmian Empire being a notably bloody example). I
| suspect China comes closest in the current era to that
| level of determination; fortunately for Afghanis, China
| is not demonstrably interested in Afghanistan.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasions_of_Afghanista
| n#Mongo...
|
| [2] https://asia.nikkei.com/Opinion/The-myth-of-Chinese-
| investme...
| fleddr wrote:
| It's equally scary how optics rule the conversation, not
| outcomes.
|
| Whilst killing all life within 1km of any Taliban is
| ridiculous and absurd, the thought of a true extermination
| strategy of the Taliban should be on the table. At the very
| least as a thought.
|
| The Sri Lankan government has managed to permanently wipe
| out the Tamil Tiger movement by sheer effort, aggression
| and indiscriminate military approach. Endlessly beating
| down on them until they gave up, and dissolved their
| movement, permanently. The human cost of the conflict has
| been enormous, without question.
|
| Has it been worth it, this permanent solution? I really
| don't know, and I'm in absolutely no position to tell. The
| only point I'm making is that total victory is possible,
| yet at a high price.
|
| China goes even further, it seems even the thought of
| rebellion makes you end up in a re-education camp, and
| sometimes not even that. Again, the human cost is enormous.
| But does it work, if the sole aim is to suppress or wipe
| out rebellion? Probably yes.
|
| One could at least contemplate what would have happened if
| the US had directly engaged with the Taliban, and use its
| full military, diplomatic, intelligence and monetary might
| to do so.
|
| The West has higher morals, we like to tell ourselves.
| Hence, an indirect approach. The outcome is 200K
| casualties, and trillions spent. The grand "prize" of all
| this suffering is the country firmly back in the hands of
| the Taliban, under Sharia law. Afghanistan's tiny economy
| tanking, hence every single citizen suffering. All women
| rights reversed, back to being cattle.
|
| A telling stat is that roughly 7K US soldiers died, yet
| another 30K committed suicide back home. Due to the length
| of the war and multiple exposures to traumatic experiences.
|
| Altogether, I don't believe it is unreasonable to wonder if
| the "good intentions" approach's outcome isn't just as
| terrible or worse compared to an actual extermination
| approach. I won't claim to know the answer, I'm merely
| raising the question.
|
| Admittedly, based on this article and given the backing of
| neighboring countries, in this case there simply may not be
| any winning approach at all. You can't defeat an enemy when
| they keep switching camps.
| gremloni wrote:
| Is it even what we want? I think the taliban have some
| good ideas about the role of feminism in society.
| fleddr wrote:
| I guess this forum turned into Twitter overnight,
| unbelievable.
| gremloni wrote:
| It's probably a sign of the times. We're very polarized
| and I feel very strongly about my opinions. I feel like
| modern feminism is a cancer eating away at American
| society. I'm very progressive about pretty much every
| other "politicized" opinion, maybe besides guns.
| fleddr wrote:
| This took an odd turn.
|
| I'm actually in agreement with you that modern feminism
| is in many ways counter productive or even harmful.
|
| That's still a far cry from what you said. Maybe it was
| just deeply cynical, but I sure hope you don't support
| the way the Taliban treats women.
| content_sesh wrote:
| Damn, this is the second guy in this thread "just asking
| questions" about if genocide would have been a good
| approach.
| fleddr wrote:
| What a ridiculous summary of my comment. I guess you must
| get a thrill from framing a deeply complex matter into
| such low life hot takes.
|
| The very intent of the message is the reduction of
| suffering, not the prolonging of it. The West has now
| inflicted an enormous amount of suffering with absolutely
| nothing to show for it but even more suffering.
|
| This doesn't raise any questions to you? If not, then
| that's exactly what I mean: managing optics, not
| outcomes.
| watwut wrote:
| > Whilst killing all life within 1km of any Taliban is
| ridiculous and absurd, the thought of a true
| extermination strategy of the Taliban should be on the
| table. At the very least as a thought.
|
| It is neither ridiculous nor absurd.
|
| It plain simply involves killing almost everyone in an
| area. Which is called genocide. It is doable. Nazi done
| it. Khmer Rouge done it. Hutu in Rwanda done it.
|
| You want to frame it as attacking Taliban, which is not
| true. Majority of victims would not be Taliban. It would
| be quite literally going to Afghan to commit genocide in
| half of it.
|
| > The grand "prize" of all this suffering is the country
| firmly back in the hands of the Taliban, under Sharia
| law.
|
| Anyone including women have better chance under Sharia
| law then they have under your proposal. Cause your
| proposal is to plain kill them. You don't get to propose
| killing people and then saying someone else is cruel.
|
| > Altogether, I don't believe it is unreasonable to
| wonder if the "good intentions" approach's outcome isn't
| just as terrible or worse compared to an actual
| extermination approach
|
| Under Taliban, those people are alive. With your
| approach, they are all dead. So, they are better off now.
| I don't think few terrorism victims in USA is good enough
| excuse for that.
|
| > One could at least contemplate what would have happened
| if the US had directly engaged with the Taliban, and use
| its full military, diplomatic, intelligence and monetary
| might to do so.
|
| They did and lost.
| sadfkhjasdf wrote:
| A better solution would be to use small drone swarms and
| create a surveillance state in the rural areas. Each
| drone can see about 100m2 at 100m height. So 10K drones
| for 1 km2 = 10 million dollars.
|
| Attach weapons and you have zero risk of life and can
| maintain a permanent presence, that can essentially be
| automated by AI and computer vision.
|
| And I've only spent 0.01% of the yearly spend on the war.
|
| This is clearly the future of warfare.
| fleddr wrote:
| Did people all of a sudden lose the ability to read, or
| what?
|
| "It plain simply involves killing almost everyone in an
| area."
|
| No, not almost everyone. Only Taliban. Which arguably is
| complex, but surely if the US would make full effort to
| infiltrate and map the network, such selective targeting
| would be possible.
|
| "Cause your proposal is to plain kill them. You don't get
| to propose killing people and then saying someone else is
| cruel."
|
| It gets even weirder, I guess. You know the very point of
| the Afghan military was to kill the Taliban, right?
| Together with the US backing them up, they managed to
| kill 52,000 Taliban and other opposition fighters. What
| exactly do you think happens in a war?
|
| "Under Taliban, those people are alive. With your
| approach, they are all dead."
|
| All? The Taliban is estimated to have a force some 50,000
| strong, 100,000 tops if you include weak allies. That's
| 0.13% of the total population. So you're saying that the
| selective targeting of the Taliban, will also wipe out
| the other 99.87% of the population? Some 38 million
| people? Get the fuck out of here.
| watwut wrote:
| Killing all life within 1km of any Taliban literally
| involves killing all people there. And it is not even
| Taliban hiding among civilians. It is them living with
| their parents in their village.
|
| > Together with the US backing them up, they managed to
| kill 52,000 Taliban and other opposition fighters. What
| exactly do you think happens in a war?
|
| Not every war is going on with goal of killing everyone
| in an area. So while civilians always die, what you
| propose has that extra step of being genocide.
|
| > The Taliban is estimated to have a force some 50,000
| strong, 100,000 tops if you include weak allies. That's
| 0.13% of the total population.
|
| Yes, because your plan is to not just kill them, but to
| kill everyone around.
| fleddr wrote:
| Are you drunk?
|
| I did not make the "killing all life" remark, it's by
| another commenter. I specifically said to target an
| exterminate the Taliban.
|
| "Not every war is going on with goal of killing everyone
| in an area. So while civilians always die, what you
| propose has that extra step of being genocide."
|
| No that is the exact opposite of what I propose!
|
| "Yes, because your plan is to not just kill them, but to
| kill everyone around."
|
| What!?
| watwut wrote:
| So why are you then joining this thread? Keep discussion
| in the context.
|
| Anyway, army claimed they killed taliban like 10 years
| ago or so and here we are.
| fleddr wrote:
| You should be the last person on the planet to even use
| the word context.
| tinza123 wrote:
| Your idea is the most Taliban idea I've heard.
| gremloni wrote:
| Your solution is worse than the problem.
| mcguire wrote:
| " _Only the civilians seemed to lose._ "
|
| Yeah.
|
| Something to keep in mind with everyone repeating the old
| "Afghanistan is the graveyard of empires" dismissal.
| YinglingLight wrote:
| Trump made a Peace deal with the Taliban, which involved
| releasing Baradar, whose currently in charge of the takeover.
|
| People need to understand the importance of the Border Wall.
| Between Afghanistan and Pakistan. It stops terrorists from
| ducking in and out of the country at will. It stops the drugs. It
| stops systemic child abuse/trafficking. The Afghanis are one of
| the most abused groups of people in Human History.
| ripe wrote:
| The consistent problem with most comments about the conflict in
| Afghanistan is they fail to fully account for the role of the
| Pakistan Army and ISI in all of this. They are the most important
| element in the conflict, not the Afghans, not us and not the
| Taliban. If they weren't involved and the conflict were limited
| to Afghanistan and Afghans things like what Mr. Filkins describes
| would hold sway and accommodations and arrangements might be
| made. But that won't happen because the Pak Army/ISI won't let
| it. They have a mad idea of requiring Afghanistan for strategic
| depth ('After the Indians beat us we can fall back on the tank
| factories of Kabul and regroup.') and they require a compliant
| regime running the country. So they make it happen. As plucky as
| the Afghans can be, Afghanistan can't handle Pakistan, especially
| a Pakistan that is a conduit for Gulf Arab money being sent to
| buy the donors a place in heaven.
|
| Handling the Pak Army/ISI was our job and we didn't do it. We
| never really even tried to do it. If we had kept the Paks out and
| the conflict was contained within Afghanistan, the Afghans could
| have handled what would have been left of the Taliban through
| means such as those described by Mr. Filkins. But we didn't. We
| got had by Pakistan and tales of the Raj and their special
| knowledge. We gave them money even, lots of it to kill us and
| Afghans.
|
| We did get something for this though. Hundreds of high ranking
| officers got their tickets punched. The spec ops community got
| their budgets and fanfare. Multitudes of State Dept. people got
| hazard pay and career points. Contracting companies and
| contractors galore got lots and lots of money over lots and lots
| of years. Several thousand of our guys died but they were mostly
| deplorable NASCAR fans and don't much count. Now the party is
| over and the Afghans get to pay the final bill.
|
| Nice going Americans! This is the second time in my life where
| we've bugged out on people who trusted us when we told them we
| wouldn't bug out on them.
|
| (The above comment was made by someone on the original article,
| but I think it's 100% accurate.)
| ngcc_hk wrote:
| Foreign power is foreign. The affairs is internal. Ultimately
| it has to be decided for people on the ground. Unless you
| colonise it replacing the beings to be yours as one country did
| and do, I suspect even Pak or whoever will fail.
| g8oz wrote:
| "It was in the waning days of November 2001 that Taliban leaders
| began to reach out to Hamid Karzai, who would soon become the
| interim president of Afghanistan: They wanted to make a deal.
|
| "The Taliban were completely defeated, they had no demands,
| except amnesty," recalled Barnett Rubin, who worked with the
| United Nations' political team in Afghanistan at the time.
|
| Messengers shuttled back and forth between Mr. Karzai and the
| headquarters of the Taliban leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar, in
| Kandahar. Mr. Karzai envisioned a Taliban surrender that would
| keep the militants from playing any significant role in the
| country's future.
|
| But Washington, confident that the Taliban would be wiped out
| forever, was in no mood for a deal.
|
| "The United States is not inclined to negotiate surrenders,"
| Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld said in a news conference
| at the time, adding that the Americans had no interest in leaving
| Mullah Omar to live out his days anywhere in Afghanistan. The
| United States wanted him captured or dead."
|
| -- Did the War in Afghanistan Have to Happen?
| https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/23/world/middleeast/afghanis...
| eschulz wrote:
| To play Devil's Advocate, didn't the US have to label the
| Taliban as terrorists at that time? I think given their
| association with Bin Laden, and the 9/11 attacks, most people
| in the US considered the Taliban to be terrorists, and it would
| have completely destroyed the credibility of the Pentagon or
| Bush administration to be negotiating with them a mere 60 days
| after 9/11.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| The first ~thirty days after 9/11 were full of negotiations
| with the Taliban as they weren't terrorists but harboring
| terrorists. Even after the invasion, they could have labeled
| it as the Taliban agreeing to help bring Bin Laden to justice
| and they would have been able to save face.
|
| Hell, it might have helped prevent Bin Laden's flight into
| Pakistan, and have been a tremendous PR victory.
| eschulz wrote:
| You make a good point, but it leaves the Taliban of late
| 2001 with a very narrow path to successfully complete
| negotiations: give up Bin Laden in cooperation with the US
| and then hope the ramifications from Bin Laden's people are
| minimal and the US is satisfied to then leave you alone.
| Might have worked, but they succeeded in the waiting game.
|
| "Everything comes in time to him who knows how to wait.
| There is nothing stronger than those two: patience and
| time, they will do it all." - Tolstoy, War and Peace
| foogazi wrote:
| > Mr. Karzai envisioned a Taliban surrender
|
| Seeing what the Taliban were able to do after being "completely
| defeated" makes me wonder if Karzai's vision was realistic at
| all
| danans wrote:
| Being a movement in stark opposition to the current authority
| can be a powerful rallying force. Resentments are
| tremendously motivating. We see plenty of recent examples of
| that in the US itself.
|
| Therefore it's not so surprising that the Taliban regained a
| lot of popular support, especially given the oft mentioned
| corruption of the prior government.
|
| Of course now the boot is on the other foot, and the Taliban
| must provide the security and economic guarantees of a civil
| society, and the jury is out on both their willingness and
| ability to do so.
|
| If they fail because they are too fixated on waging a
| puritanical religious war both within and without
| Afghanistan, financed by wealthy outside countries with their
| own agendas, they will be overthrown again, either from
| within, or from outside.
| watwut wrote:
| > If they fail because they are too fixated on waging a
| puritanical religious war both within and without
| Afghanistan, financed by wealthy outside countries with
| their own agendas, they will be overthrown again, either
| from within, or from outside.
|
| Violent oppressive dictatorships can last very long tho.
| danans wrote:
| Even still, those authoritarian governments have to serve
| the needs of a large subset of the population, often
| biased on ethnicity, and have an overwhelming monopoly of
| force. Neither of those is likely in Afghanistan.
|
| The Taliban themselves are motivated by the rather modern
| goal of uniting the country's fractious and diverse
| ethnic landscape ... albeit under the banner of their
| extreme interpretation of Islam.
| TechBro8615 wrote:
| For a (much longer) exploration of this idea, I recommend reading
| the book _The Seventh Sense: Power, Fortune, and Survival in the
| Age of Networks_ [0] by Joshua Cooper Ramo.
|
| [0] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0196KYTA6
| [deleted]
| mariodiana wrote:
| My understanding is that medieval warfare, among the noble class,
| had similarities to this: specifically, nobles didn't necessarily
| fight to the death. Capture and ransom was a big thing. The term
| "parole" comes from the idea of _giving one 's word,_ after
| capture, that you would not return to fighting if you were
| released. The nobles of Europe, too, had an extended network of
| kin, some of whom might be on the "other side."
|
| I don't recall learning about switching sides with fluidity (as
| in Afghanistan), but I do recall learning that this little game
| got broken up once the common people were enlisted.
| pradn wrote:
| War rules are fascinating. They play a large role in the
| Mahabharata, which has an incredibly long battle sequence at
| the end, where the events of each day are detailed minutely.
| Part of the moral complexity of the epic comes from both sides
| breaking the rules, all of which are broken at some point and
| lead to pivotal shifts in the battle. These rule violations
| muddy the moral waters: what's usually seen as a "good
| guy"/"bad guy" story turns into a vicious tale of deception,
| violence, and senseless death. This martial epic contains
| within it both the call to duty, and, therefore, violence, but
| also a searing critique of where it leads to.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dharma-yuddha#In_the_Mahabhara...
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| That sounds fascinating and it reminds me I haven't read the
| Mahabharata (then again I have quite a bit of backlog going
| all the way back to the epic of Gilgamesh...)
|
| Is there a good English translation? Or a French one maybe?
| sadfkhjasdf wrote:
| > After the fall of Kabul to the Taliban on September 27, 1996,
| Ahmad Shah Massoud and Abdul Rashid Dostum, two former enemies,
| created the United Front (Northern Alliance) against the Taliban,
| who were preparing offensives against the remaining areas under
| the control of Massoud and Dostum.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Afghanistan
|
| Amazing how it's almost an exact repeat of 25 years ago.
| amriksohata wrote:
| The US image as the "brave" superpower has been heavily exposed.
| The US despite having the latest tech hardware and all these
| images of muscle pumped up soldiers in Hollywood movies were seen
| as fleeing the battlefield. It took the US 20 years to push
| Taliban to outer cities and the Taliban took 20 days to come
| back. It shows for me, the US is not a superpower when it comes
| to warfare, as we saw in Vietnam too. They are good when it comes
| to aerial combat where they do not engage on ground level but
| they are not trained or built for guerrilla warfare which many
| Asian countries employ. They would lost in most terrains like
| this.
| pphysch wrote:
| "Our failure to understand [the Taliban's] dynamic has had
| consequences."
|
| There was no "failure to understand". This narrative that
| Afghanistan was a well-intentioned strategic/tactical failure is
| utterly misleading. The dynamic reality was very clear to every
| one involved (who cared to know), from servicepeople to 4-star
| generals, but the military's culture of careerism and corruption
| prevented these truths from being publicly acknowledged [1].
|
| [1] - https://youtu.be/_bo7P_podIk
| seagullz wrote:
| That is indeed an eye opening discussion, goes beyond the
| soundbites and much of the charade.
| guerrilla wrote:
| Please summarize your opinion of the dynamic instead of making
| us watch an hour long video that we don't even know we want to
| watch to find out.
| pphysch wrote:
| I strongly recommend you listen to the two veterans describe
| the dynamic (try 1.5x speed). It is worth more than a 1000
| hours of the bloviating punditry that crowds the airwaves
| right now.
|
| The gist:
|
| * On the ground: "rebuilding Afghanistan" was a total farce.
| Major Sjursen (Ret.) describes handing out bags of money to
| "local contractors" with virtually no oversight. He suspects
| that the Taliban were among the "contractors" and were
| benefiting immensely from the inept American policy.
|
| * The US military/political leadership is entirely motivated
| by optics and self-interest. Virtually every report had to
| have a positive outlook; publicly recognizing the reality on
| the ground was forbidden, including using words like
| "insurgency".
| dirtyid wrote:
| One statistic I think gets overlooked is the Afghan population
| almost doubled from 20M to 38M in the last 20 years. The massive
| young demographics growing up under occupation was going to come
| home to roost sooner or later. There's also the geographic
| reality that Afghanistan is a land locked country and US tenuous
| access via Pakisan or the even more perilous northern routes
| meant taming Afganistan was always going to be a long term losing
| proposition.
| res0nat0r wrote:
| Note: Afghani is the currency, Afghans are the people.
| tlogan wrote:
| British had a saying: you can rent an Afghan but you can't buy
| one
|
| I heard the above saying during Soviet invasion but I cannot find
| the origin.
| wombatmobile wrote:
| The other war that comes to mind that doesn't fit the standard
| model of black hat vs white hat is the Vietnam war. It was
| impossible to defeat the Viet Cong because they blended in with
| the citizenry. And so, despite superior technology and enormous
| wealth, America and its allies were unable to prevail in Vietnam.
|
| And yet, today, the socialist republic of Vietnam is hardly a
| pariah, or a communist menace, or a backwater or a threat to
| anyone. It is a rapidly developing economic power in South East
| Asia, with a dispersed diaspora that has integrated well with
| diverse cultures in Europe, North America, Australia and South
| America.
|
| Have you ever heard of a Vietnamese terrorist shooting up or
| bombing a public place in the west over the last 40 years?
|
| What does that tell you about the paradigm of us vs them?
| gotoeleven wrote:
| That the Vietnamese don't follow a religion which they
| interpret as mandating the conversion or death of all non
| believers?
|
| The Taliban have moral clarity and that's a huge advantage
| against the relativist post-modern muddle brained thinking that
| characterizes most of western leadership these days.
| captain_price7 wrote:
| I think the entire point of the article was that Taliban
| doesn't really care about rigid ideology, it's their
| flexibility that has won them the war.
| watwut wrote:
| Suprising amounts of conservative westerners seem to admire
| taliban.
| Animats wrote:
| _And yet, today, the socialist republic of Vietnam is hardly a
| pariah, or a communist menace, or a backwater or a threat to
| anyone._
|
| If it turns out that Afghanistan has substantial mineral
| resources, as some claim, that could happen to Afghanistan.
| With substantial help from China.
|
| Perhaps China will build a road and rail link to Afghanistan.
| There's a narrow corridor that connects the two nations. No
| roads. No rail. Mountains. But it's a shortcut for the Belt and
| Road Initiative, so it might happen.
| drocer88 wrote:
| The East Turkistan nation disputes China's ownership of this
| area.
| pradn wrote:
| Battles have rarely been massive charges from two sides of a flat
| battlefield, as we see in war movies. Historically, it's been
| really hard to get soldiers to charge to their deaths, which
| makes sense if you think for a second. Most armies throughout
| history were nonprofessionals levied by their lords or seasonal
| opportunists, who fought for extra income. Sometimes, the leaders
| would get the soldiers drunk before they went in, and they'd
| retreat and have to be coaxed into running in again.
|
| Aside from all this, contrary to some sort of received chivalric
| ideal of loyalty and fighting-unto-death, a great number of
| military engagements in every part of the world were decided by
| bribery and deception. People don't want to risk their lives and
| are often tempted by monetary gain. Countless forts have fallen
| to people opening the doors from within. There's instances of
| Sufi leaders being admitted into forts only to open the gates.
| Hyderabad was conquered by Aurangazeb in great part due to
| bribery, too.
|
| The calculus changes dramatically if the attacker has a history
| of lenient behavior toward those who surrender, versus massacre
| for those who do not. The Mughals regularly incorporated
| surrendering lords into their feudal system, with honors, income,
| and opportunities for social advancement. The Mongols razed the
| Khwarezmia because of their disastrous refusal of their envoys.
| acjohnson55 wrote:
| It's one of the things that made the First Crusade so
| remarkable. Once the Crusaders were in way over their heads, it
| paradoxically made them far more committed than the warlords
| they were fighting against. The invaders were nowhere near
| hospitable lands, fighting for their lives.
| crazy_horse wrote:
| It helps when you have guys that are so convinced that they
| have found the lance that pierced the side of Christ that
| they are willing to walk through fire to prove it.
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| Sorry to nitpick, but I wouldn't call the caliphs, sultans,
| emirs and kings of the muslim world of the 1090's "warlords".
| Even the Seljuks had essentially ceased being nomads by that
| time and had settled down.
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| >> Battles have rarely been massive charges from two sides of a
| flat battlefield, as we see in war movies. Historically, it's
| been really hard to get soldiers to charge to their deaths,
| which makes sense if you think for a second. Most armies
| throughout history were nonprofessionals levied by their lords
| or seasonal opportunists, who fought for extra income.
| Sometimes, the leaders would get the soldiers drunk before they
| went in, and they'd retreat and have to be coaxed into running
| in again.
|
| In some historical periods that was true. In others, not so
| much. The Zulu at Isandlwana were seasonal warrior-farmers, but
| they sure charged the British lines with their goat's hide
| shields and short, thrusting spears, and massacred the British
| despite the latters' technological superiority. Alexander's
| army comprised regular professional soldiers and they sure
| marched in a phalanx (the phalanx didn't quite charge as it was
| too slow moving to do so) and Alexander himself of course
| charged at the head of his Hetairoi. The armies of medieval
| feudal lords were in their majority levies, as you say, but the
| Crusaders, in the same time period, were for the most part
| elite knights who fought with unending courage (and commited
| incredible atrocities) against enemies many times their
| numbers. And so it goes.
|
| As to bribery, sure, many battles were fought with money or
| politics rather than swords. Yet again others were not. Think
| of WWI for example, or WWII. No chivalric ideals there, but the
| battles were bloody and the corpses piled on high.
|
| Btw, thanks for reminding me to read about the Khwarazmians.
| nradov wrote:
| The Napoleonic wars were full of massive charges, and long
| violent sieges against fortresses. Armies figured out how to
| instill enough discipline into soldiers to march straight into
| enemy fire. Casualties in the front ranks of the French army at
| Waterloo were horrific, yet they still kept attacking all day
| long.
|
| "A soldier will fight long and hard for a bit of colored
| ribbon."
|
| -Napoleon Bonaparte
| AniseAbyss wrote:
| You get a lot of globalist shills here but the reality is
| that nationalism is a powerful force.
|
| You can see that in Afghanistan: the Dutch embassy staff
| waved goodbye to the plebeians down on the Kabul airport when
| their military flight took off. Being a citizen of a country
| matters and it is worth fighting for.
| pradn wrote:
| Exactly, this is my point. Napoleon's professional standing
| armies are a relatively recent (~200 years) and exceptional
| compared to the historical norm. Even Napoleon was able to
| take lots of territory by just negotiating with actors who
| knew they had no chance. People don't want to just go die;
| this requires a large amount of training. Not wanting to kill
| someone is something like a universal.
| simonsarris wrote:
| Minor but annoying: Napoleon didn't say that and didn't mean
| it like that. When introducing the Legion d'Honneur (open to
| civilians too), the first introduction of an honor since the
| French Revolution, some on the left complained that this
| reintroduction violated the revolutionary concept of social
| equality. In 1802 when discussing the creation of it,
| Theophile Berlier sneered at the concept as merely baubles,
| and Napoleon replied:
|
| "You tell me that class distinctions are baubles used by
| monarchs, I defy you to show me a republic, ancient or
| modern, in which distinctions have not existed. You call
| these medals and ribbons baubles; well, it is with such
| baubles that men are led.
|
| I would not say this in public, but in a assembly of wise
| statesmen it should be said. I don't think that the French
| love liberty and equality: the French are not changed by ten
| years of revolution: they are what the Gauls were, fierce and
| fickle. They have one feeling: honour. We must nourish that
| feeling. The people clamour for distinction. See how the
| crowd is awed by the medals and orders worn by foreign
| diplomats. We must recreate these distinctions. There has
| been too much tearing down; we must rebuild. A government
| exists, yes and power, but the nation itself - what is it?
| Scattered grains of sand."
|
| He went on that in order to ameliorate that sand, "We must
| plant a few masses of granite as anchors in the soil of
| France."
|
| His phrase "it is with such baubles that men are led" (and
| your paraphrase) are often quoted out of context as something
| cynical, but Napoleon was actually commending these things as
| the physical manifestations of honor. If he's cynical about
| something, it's the liberty and equality bits.
| MichaelGroves wrote:
| Wellington used to say that the presence of Napoleon on a
| battlefield was worth forty thousand men. Partly due to
| Napoleon's tactical skill I'm sure, but I think this also
| speaks to Napoleon's unusual ability to motivate men. They
| didn't want to disappoint Napoleon so they were more willing
| to throw their own lives away. I think the defection of the
| Fifth Infantry Regiment at Grenoble probably corroborates
| this. There, they had the opportunity to shoot Napoleon dead
| and slaughter his rag tag forces but instead they chose to
| join him.
| crazy_horse wrote:
| It speaks to the power of belief in something. Napoleon
| represented something bigger than a person, he was French
| nationalism.
|
| I think a similar story (this is in Ken Burn's doc, told by
| Shelby Foote) is when the Union forces at Fredericksburg
| took the city and then sent wave after wave of soldiers at
| the Confederate held hills with a wall at the base of them.
| I don't recall how many waves it was (10+), but it's
| difficult to imagine being in the sixth or seventh wave,
| watch man after man before you walk into a "wall of lead"
| and decide to do it anyway.
|
| How many people today have that kind of conviction? We
| can't get people to wear masks.
| fladrif wrote:
| Oh but interestingly isn't that a kind of conviction
| itself? They've been fed some kind of idea of 'freedom'
| that they now strongly adhere to until death (I assume a
| lot of anti-mask are also anti-vaccine and are now the
| ones dying in the hospitals).
|
| If you look at American politics over the past 5 years,
| trump has almost become another napoleon in how fervent
| the support he has, and how the idea of 'freedom' has
| held.
| glofish wrote:
| Excellent point, arguably NOT wearing a mask takes a lot
| more conviction than wearing it.
|
| if you believe wearing a mask benefits you then there is
| no need for "conviction", it is just a belief and the
| person is trying to maximize their own benefit
| ngcc_hk wrote:
| Or others. Especially the heavy load to hosiptal system
| if one get sicks. There are two forces in live - self
| preservation and passion for others. Left and right
| coexist in one. That is the fundamental issue in life.
| rags2riches wrote:
| One thing has visibly changed with the US occupation. Before, the
| typical Afghan fighter carried a Kalasjnikov. Now they will be
| carrying an M16.
| kenty wrote:
| After US withdrawal the Taliban probably had a massive financial
| advantage. They probably used the last years to save up billions
| which they used to buy them a "critical mass" of fighters that
| would steamroll the country with no chance of resistance.
|
| Even when factoring out corruption, the government's ability to
| muster up funds for keeping it's own military is severely
| hindered by them having to upkeep basic services throughout the
| country and having to go through the usual government
| bureaucracy.
|
| Now the tables have turned somewhat and being faced with the cost
| of occupying the country, the Taliban will have trouble keeping
| their freckle allies.
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