4 ms·

A well-armed militia took on the most powerful military in the world and won?

by donatj 7y ago

alpha_squared 7y ago
Isn't that how America was founded?
- jjoonathan 7y ago
  I like how the US Department of Defense became the US Department of War right about the time it changed its name from the Department of War to the Department of Defense.
  - codr7 7y ago
    Newspeak, attack is defense, war is peace.
    - Udik 7y ago
      And arbitrary armed violence is "world police". And militias we decide to back are "rebels", the ones we don't are "terrorists". And governments we don't like are "regimes". And acts of terrorism from our side are "targeted killings". And killed civilians are "collateral damage". The list is endless.
      - igravious 7y ago
        Watched Vice[0] recently starring Christian Bale as a corpulent power-grabbing[1] vengeful, power-behind-the-throne, Dick Cheney; Amy Adams as his steely missus; Sam Rockwell as a likable "W"; and Steve Carell (of all people) playing Donald "Don" Rumsfeld. They get to the part post 9/11 where the gloves come off and they sit down with corrupt legal advisers (Alberto Gonzales, David Addington, William Haynes, Jay Bybee and John Yoo), many who are advocates of the Unitary Executive Theory[2], to concoct a legal firewall around their actions. The twisted logic is: The US does not torture therefore the varieties of "enhanced interrogation" being used cannot, ipso facto, be torture. Alongside "enhanced interrogation techniques" (torture) we have those other Newspeak euphemisms[3] "extraordinary rendition" (state-sponsored kidnapping) and "enemy combatants" (any fighting-age male present in a combat zone). Then there's the legal limbo that is Guantanamo Bay, the suspension of habeas corpus[4] (a foundational legal right in modern democracies), and the frankly draconian USA PATRIOT Act. Ah, good times. [0] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6266538/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6266538/ [1] https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/darkside/etc/network.html https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/darkside/etc/networ... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitary_executive_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitary_executive_theory [3] https://vizettes.com/kt/american_empire/pages/euphemisms-glossary.htm https://vizettes.com/kt/american_empire/pages/euphemisms-glo... [4] https://www.thoughtco.com/bush-lincoln-both-suspended-habeas-corpus-3321847 https://www.thoughtco.com/bush-lincoln-both-suspended-habeas...
- krapp 7y ago
  Sure, if you conveniently forget about all of the French support, American independence was entirely due to those plucky militias. Gosh that Second Amendment sure is wonderful and has absolutely no downsides whatsoever.
  - drdeadringer 7y ago
    The French supported "America gorilla revolution" against the British. America has supported "gorilla revolution" for revolutionaries and counter-revolutionaries against multiple nationals, at least some of which involved the CIA selling cocaine domestically for money to fund foreign weapons. Which is half of a dozen? Which is six of the other?
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
  - dang 7y ago
    This breaks several of the site guidelines. Would you please stop doing that on HN? You've been doing it a lot lately (to pick just one of many: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22450681 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22450681) and it's not ok. We need senior users like you to set good examples, not bad ones. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
dvtrn 7y ago
Well-armed militias have a storied history against powerful militaries. Not just US history, either.
arcticbull 7y ago
War's changed. We don't line up on either side of the battlefield and run at eachother. Guerrilla warfare gives smaller numbers the advantage. All out blowing something up and paying the civilian penalty is a non-starter.
- mcguire 7y ago
  I'm not sure I believe any of the numbers I've seen, but I strongly doubt the Taliban can be described as "smaller numbers" in Afghanistan.
  - smt1 7y ago
    Agreed. At some point the Taliban and Pashtun nationalism become quite intertwined (even in areas of Pakistan). This made it so that probably not a insignificant porition of the Pashtun people sympathize with the Taliban if nothing else.
- pbhjpbhj 7y ago
  Well it's not changed that much, The Battle of Teutoburg Forest (9AD) was basically massive powerful army thinks it can win anywhere, guerrilla tactics (and maybe some luck) show that's not how war works. History, repeating; make your own aphorism.
ALittleLight 7y ago
In what sense did they take on the US military or win? Some of them continue to exist, I suppose, but that's rather like a defeated boxer claiming to have won simply for surviving the bout. The various militas of Afghanistan were bombed and engaged haphazardly for years and now, it seems, we're withdrawing. That's hardly an Afghani victory in my mind. One reason I have a problem with this kind of statement is that we should encourage the cessation of pointless wars, and not try to equate ending them with losing or being defeated.
- droithomme 7y ago
  The Afghans win because they successfully repelled the invaders after a long and terrible war. Repelling the invaders is a winning end state in a war where the start state was invasion by a foreign country.
  - ALittleLight 7y ago
    Repelling the invaders may be a victory, but just enduring occupation, bombing, attacks, etc until your occupiers decide to leave isn't.
    - droithomme 7y ago
      Here's another victory: caused 2 trillion in damages to the enemy and thoroughly demoralized them. Primitive stone age goat herders vs the "world's most powerful" military. Who will win?
      - ALittleLight 7y ago
        This is as poor a "victory" as the others suggested in this thread. "We won because you spent so much money on bombs and missiles exploding on us, and soldiers occupying us" is a line I'd expect from Zap Brannigan and not anyone residing in reality. They didn't inflict anywhere near that dollar amount in damages, instead it was paid to American soldiers and contractors. The simple fact is that the US occupied their country for years. Bombed and killed with complete impunity, and then decided to withdrawal. It's absurd to call that a victory for the Taliban or Afghanistan. Their claim to victory is that they aren't entirely dead at the time we wanted to withdraw and the reason for that is that we knew it would be immoral to use the force required to completely kill them, not any strategy or cunning from them. It's bad rhetorically and morally to pretend like this is an American loss because that implicitly says that in order to "win" we'd need to stay in Afghanistan indefinitely. We shouldn't have been there anywhere near as long as we were, we shouldn't have done anywhere near as much as we did, and it's great news that we're withdrawing. Calling it a loss, or a Taliban victory, isn't just immoral because it implicitly argues for perpetuation of the war, it's also completely delusional.
anonsivalley652 7y ago
Afghanistan is where empires go to die.

A well-armed militia took on the most powerful military in the world and won?

by donatj 7y ago

A well-armed militia took on the most powerful military in the world and won?

alpha_squared 7y ago

Isn't that how America was founded?

jjoonathan 7y ago
I like how the US Department of Defense became the US Department of War right about the time it changed its name from the Department of War to the Department of Defense.
- codr7 7y ago
  Newspeak, attack is defense, war is peace.
  - Udik 7y ago
    And arbitrary armed violence is "world police". And militias we decide to back are "rebels", the ones we don't are "terrorists". And governments we don't like are "regimes". And acts of terrorism from our side are "targeted killings". And killed civilians are "collateral damage". The list is endless.
    - igravious 7y ago
      Watched Vice[0] recently starring Christian Bale as a corpulent power-grabbing[1] vengeful, power-behind-the-throne, Dick Cheney; Amy Adams as his steely missus; Sam Rockwell as a likable "W"; and Steve Carell (of all people) playing Donald "Don" Rumsfeld. They get to the part post 9/11 where the gloves come off and they sit down with corrupt legal advisers (Alberto Gonzales, David Addington, William Haynes, Jay Bybee and John Yoo), many who are advocates of the Unitary Executive Theory[2], to concoct a legal firewall around their actions. The twisted logic is: The US does not torture therefore the varieties of "enhanced interrogation" being used cannot, ipso facto, be torture. Alongside "enhanced interrogation techniques" (torture) we have those other Newspeak euphemisms[3] "extraordinary rendition" (state-sponsored kidnapping) and "enemy combatants" (any fighting-age male present in a combat zone). Then there's the legal limbo that is Guantanamo Bay, the suspension of habeas corpus[4] (a foundational legal right in modern democracies), and the frankly draconian USA PATRIOT Act. Ah, good times. [0] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6266538/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6266538/ [1] https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/darkside/etc/network.html https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/darkside/etc/networ... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitary_executive_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitary_executive_theory [3] https://vizettes.com/kt/american_empire/pages/euphemisms-glossary.htm https://vizettes.com/kt/american_empire/pages/euphemisms-glo... [4] https://www.thoughtco.com/bush-lincoln-both-suspended-habeas-corpus-3321847 https://www.thoughtco.com/bush-lincoln-both-suspended-habeas...
krapp 7y ago
Sure, if you conveniently forget about all of the French support, American independence was entirely due to those plucky militias. Gosh that Second Amendment sure is wonderful and has absolutely no downsides whatsoever.
- drdeadringer 7y ago
  The French supported "America gorilla revolution" against the British. America has supported "gorilla revolution" for revolutionaries and counter-revolutionaries against multiple nationals, at least some of which involved the CIA selling cocaine domestically for money to fund foreign weapons. Which is half of a dozen? Which is six of the other?
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- dang 7y ago
  This breaks several of the site guidelines. Would you please stop doing that on HN? You've been doing it a lot lately (to pick just one of many: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22450681 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22450681) and it's not ok. We need senior users like you to set good examples, not bad ones. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]

dvtrn 7y ago

Well-armed militias have a storied history against powerful militaries. Not just US history, either.

arcticbull 7y ago

War's changed. We don't line up on either side of the battlefield and run at eachother. Guerrilla warfare gives smaller numbers the advantage. All out blowing something up and paying the civilian penalty is a non-starter.

mcguire 7y ago
I'm not sure I believe any of the numbers I've seen, but I strongly doubt the Taliban can be described as "smaller numbers" in Afghanistan.
- smt1 7y ago
  Agreed. At some point the Taliban and Pashtun nationalism become quite intertwined (even in areas of Pakistan). This made it so that probably not a insignificant porition of the Pashtun people sympathize with the Taliban if nothing else.
pbhjpbhj 7y ago
Well it's not changed that much, The Battle of Teutoburg Forest (9AD) was basically massive powerful army thinks it can win anywhere, guerrilla tactics (and maybe some luck) show that's not how war works. History, repeating; make your own aphorism.

ALittleLight 7y ago

In what sense did they take on the US military or win? Some of them continue to exist, I suppose, but that's rather like a defeated boxer claiming to have won simply for surviving the bout. The various militas of Afghanistan were bombed and engaged haphazardly for years and now, it seems, we're withdrawing. That's hardly an Afghani victory in my mind. One reason I have a problem with this kind of statement is that we should encourage the cessation of pointless wars, and not try to equate ending them with losing or being defeated.

droithomme 7y ago
The Afghans win because they successfully repelled the invaders after a long and terrible war. Repelling the invaders is a winning end state in a war where the start state was invasion by a foreign country.
- ALittleLight 7y ago
  Repelling the invaders may be a victory, but just enduring occupation, bombing, attacks, etc until your occupiers decide to leave isn't.
  - droithomme 7y ago
    Here's another victory: caused 2 trillion in damages to the enemy and thoroughly demoralized them. Primitive stone age goat herders vs the "world's most powerful" military. Who will win?
    - ALittleLight 7y ago
      This is as poor a "victory" as the others suggested in this thread. "We won because you spent so much money on bombs and missiles exploding on us, and soldiers occupying us" is a line I'd expect from Zap Brannigan and not anyone residing in reality. They didn't inflict anywhere near that dollar amount in damages, instead it was paid to American soldiers and contractors. The simple fact is that the US occupied their country for years. Bombed and killed with complete impunity, and then decided to withdrawal. It's absurd to call that a victory for the Taliban or Afghanistan. Their claim to victory is that they aren't entirely dead at the time we wanted to withdraw and the reason for that is that we knew it would be immoral to use the force required to completely kill them, not any strategy or cunning from them. It's bad rhetorically and morally to pretend like this is an American loss because that implicitly says that in order to "win" we'd need to stay in Afghanistan indefinitely. We shouldn't have been there anywhere near as long as we were, we shouldn't have done anywhere near as much as we did, and it's great news that we're withdrawing. Calling it a loss, or a Taliban victory, isn't just immoral because it implicitly argues for perpetuation of the war, it's also completely delusional.

anonsivalley652 7y ago

Afghanistan is where empires go to die.