Report: 92% of Afghans don’t know about 9/11; 40% think US out to destroy Islam

[PLC1]

To win a war means to demoralize the population to the point where they loose their will to fight. This may mean different things in different wars.

Where battles are being fought by conventional armies with conventional equipment, then conquering the opposing military may be sufficient to bring the general population to its knees.

However, in some place like Afghanistan or Vietnam, or the American Revolutionary War, battles are fought against insurgents or guerrilla warfare fighters. The tactic is to have a quasi-organized militia that lives among the local population which makes a combatant impossible to recognize from a non-combatant.

The militia is supplied basic supplies (food, water, first-aid, etc) by the local population. Combat equipment is generally portable, and often improvised. The fighting tactic is to secretly train together, disperse, then gather at a battle point, to fight a skirmish. Once the element of surprise is lost, then the soldiers melt back into the general population again.

This second type of war, the insurgent war, which can bring great military forces to their knees through attrition. Eventually, the superior military force gets frustrated and goes home.

Right. We fought an insurgent war against one of the biggest military powers in the world, and gained our independence. Vietnam waged a similar war against the greatest military force on Earth, and won. It is very difficult for the foreign powers to prevail in such a war.

Very few generals have ever been successful in fighting and winning wars against insurgents. Two of the greatest are Genghis Khan and Alexander the Great, and the strategy is to strike fear and terror into the hearts of all who would dare oppose us. It isn't a pleasant thought to think of killing civilians, and burning their villages, but THAT is the way you win the hearts, minds and respect of those who that would oppose us.

Right again, and even Ghengis Khan was unable to subdue Afganistan.

I

f you can't stomach the thought of such terror, then don't go to war! We are in Afghanistan without a mission - and innocent people are dying. Many, many more innocent civilians that were killed in the 9-11 attack! Thank about that. America, disguised as NATO, are the terrorists in Afghanistan -and I sympathize completely with the Afghan people who think we are there to destroy them.

We should just get out of Afghanistan and focus on fighting al-Qaeda, not Taliban, using black ops and other clandestine methods. And let the Afghanistan people have their country back.

That's what we shold have done in the beginning - gone in and taken out Bin Laden and his supporters, then gone home. Maybe the war really would have lasted six days, six weeks, "I doubt six months."

If a war is worth waging, it is worth waging all the way. If we don't have the stomach to level the enemy, and if the cause is not worth such an effort, we should not go to war.

 

[pocketfullofshells]

Right. We fought an insurgent war against one of the biggest military powers in the world, and gained our independence. Vietnam waged a similar war against the greatest military force on Earth, and won. It is very difficult for the foreign powers to prevail in such a war.



Right again, and even Ghengis Khan was unable to subdue Afganistan.

I

That's what we shold have done in the beginning - gone in and taken out Bin Laden and his supporters, then gone home. Maybe the war really would have lasted six days, six weeks, "I doubt six months."

If a war is worth waging, it is worth waging all the way. If we don't have the stomach to level the enemy, and if the cause is not worth such an effort, we should not go to war.

the issue is never leveling the enemy...its how many civilians do you care to level with them...and how many civilians do you want to make...the enemy

 

[Hobo1]

the issue is never leveling the enemy...its how many civilians do you care to level with them...and how many civilians do you want to make...the enemy

Well, under our current strategy, 40% already think we are out to destroy Islam.

Think about it. If we had foreign soldiers walking on the streets of the United States, do you think they were there to help us? That they were our friends? No argument could convince any American citizen they were there to help us. The Afghan people didn't ask for our help; we came in and set up a puppet government that is intensely corrupt.

And you want to walk down the street and ask, "Are you our friend or our enemy?" "Do you mind if we kick down your door so we can look for Taliban?" "Oops, sorry, we killed your innocent son by mistake." You think that is going to win a war????

Or do you think that a fleet of terrible war machines that spits out fire and shells at everything within a mile radius, like out of some Hollywood movie, that comes down the street with loudspeakers saying, "Surrender or Die, you bastards" --- is that going to win the war?

I guarantee, in a few weeks, the whole country will beg for mercy. We can walk wherever we want to go, round up the people who are the leaders, and do whatever we want to do in Afghanistan. What exactly we are going to do I have no idea, because I don't know what our mission is circa 2010.

And after that we pull out every last troop - just like we pulled them off the top of the American Embassy in Saigon. And we tell them, here is your stinking country back. I suggest you round up the any trouble makers and keep them out of the United States - and maybe in a few years we can be friends again, just like Vietnam. The US is a generous country to its friends.

But beware, if we have to come back again for any reason (which I can't imagine why), then we are not going to be so nice!

THAT IS HOW YOU WIN A WAR AGAINST INSURGENTS. Even a liberal like you should be able to see that logic. You can't be nice and win a war!