Or...the US army had the impossible task of defeating the Taliban without harming the general population, despite a completely porous boundary between Talib and ordinary citizen.
Modern armies aren’t just technologically and managerially modern, they are wielded by modern states, and modern states usually aren’t ideologically comitted to total warfare.
The US army did poison the drinking water of the general population with uranium (shooting depleted urianium at the sources of their drinking water). The idea that they were avoiding harming the general population is inaccurate. Is always interesting when one reads about how the usage of the uranium mutation produces problems for US veterans without discussing what it actually does in the countries it’s used.
The US did reward commanders for killing a lot of people and thus got them to kill people even when the blowback wasn’t worth it from a military perspective.
They classified Afghan military units as being functional to forge their own statistics and mislead themselves with their bad statistics about what was going on in Afghanistan. Bureaucracies that delude themselves about what goes on aren’t effective.
There are a lot of things about winning hearts&minds that are not about waging total war
That’s a huge understatement. The point was that the US has the technical resources to wage total war against much weaker countries, but doesn’t have the political will. And that isn’t a management problem.
I was talking about the US being unable to win the war. To the extend that you make a point that’s unrelated to that question like whether or not they can wage total war, it makes sense to refer back to my first claim.
Or...the US army had the impossible task of defeating the Taliban without harming the general population, despite a completely porous boundary between Talib and ordinary citizen.
Modern armies aren’t just technologically and managerially modern, they are wielded by modern states, and modern states usually aren’t ideologically comitted to total warfare.
The US army did poison the drinking water of the general population with uranium (shooting depleted urianium at the sources of their drinking water). The idea that they were avoiding harming the general population is inaccurate. Is always interesting when one reads about how the usage of the uranium mutation produces problems for US veterans without discussing what it actually does in the countries it’s used.
The US did reward commanders for killing a lot of people and thus got them to kill people even when the blowback wasn’t worth it from a military perspective.
They classified Afghan military units as being functional to forge their own statistics and mislead themselves with their bad statistics about what was going on in Afghanistan. Bureaucracies that delude themselves about what goes on aren’t effective.
That’s not what I said. I said that it was what they were tasked with.
I do agree that there was that expecation but I don’t believe that’s it’s why they didn’t win.
There are a lot of things about winning hearts&minds that are not about waging total war.
That’s a huge understatement. The point was that the US has the technical resources to wage total war against much weaker countries, but doesn’t have the political will. And that isn’t a management problem.
I was talking about the US being unable to win the war. To the extend that you make a point that’s unrelated to that question like whether or not they can wage total war, it makes sense to refer back to my first claim.