4 ms·
Fighting the Taliban is very different to fighting the types of armies that modern tactics are designed for, I can't speak for the US, but from what I have hea
by ElliotH 16y ago
Fighting the Taliban is very different to fighting the types of armies that modern tactics are designed for,
I can't speak for the US, but from what I have heard from serving UK soldiers the british easily win almost all firefights simply because they are so much better equipped and better trained.
The problem comes when we have to start fighting against unpredictable IED blasts and a sizeable portion of the populous who are willing to give up their own lives to kill relatively small numbers of people.
- gaius 16y agoIt's reported in The Times that the problem isn't taking territory, but holding it.
- caffeine 16y agoIf you can't hold the territory, then surely it wasn't really "taken" to begin with? More like "visited"? It is probably a symptom of our ill-calibrated tactics that even the lexicon we use to talk about this is illogical.
- MichaelSalib 16y agoI disagree. I think the problem is that in some parts of Afghanistan, the Taliban represent authentic Afghani nationalism whereas the warlord government in Kabul is seen as incompetent quislings. If the populace thinks you're a joke controlled from DC, then it doesn't matter how many American soldiers you have helping you; firefights are irrelevant. Look, the US has spent upwards of $250 billion in Afghanistan. Afghanistan has a GDP of maybe $21 billion. If we can't bring about a government that the population sees as legitimate after blowing a decade and ten times GDP, maybe we should just accept the fact that our military is not capable of transforming alien societies in the way that we wish it could.