3 ms·

Never-mind that, there's every indication this one is in fact yet another bad one. The Taliban didn't return to power in Afghanistan, because the war was unjus

Never-mind that, there's every indication this one is in fact yet another bad one. The Taliban didn't return to power in Afghanistan, because the war was unjust according to international law, or morally repugnant or any of that. That has never mattered. And it won't ever matter. The Taliban won because American strategy was defective from the start. While great victories with thousands of Taliban getting massacred were common, none of those contributed the destruction of the Taliban or any other strategic objective. There had been minimal effort to learn from the failures of Vietnam and the idea of learning from British victories against the insurgents in Malaya and South Africa was unthinkable. And the situation in Ukraine gives every indication of being similar. The Ukrainian side conducts ambitious operations, some of them impressive successes, but ever since the summer of 2023, victory only seems to be getting more distant as time goes by.

ttshaw1 1y ago
Why, because Russia can grind out a village a week? Ukraine is inflicting disproportionate losses and is supplied to the hilt by Europe, while Russia's moving closer every day to a Potemkin economy.
- username332211 1y ago
  Ukraine is inflicting massively disproportionate losses. Meanwhile, Ukraine does very aggressive conscription while Russia mostly deploys volunteers and only resorted to reservists in 2022 in an emergency. It doesn't really add up, does it. And the collapse of the Russian economy will happen any day now for the past 3 years. After 20 years of being told the military leadership of the western world had COIN all figured out, you're going to have to give people something more than a prayer that the enemy's economy will collapse all of a sudden. Proud ignorance of the basic facts of the field or of the enemy won't procure much public support any more.
  - ttshaw1 1y ago
    Of course Ukraine conscripts, they're in a war for their survival. They aren't drafting anyone under 25, by the way, so it's not as dire as you seem to think. And Russia's beating people and throwing them in pits if they won't sign contracts to go to Ukraine, so it's not all roses over there. It's not at all unreasonable to think that Ukraine can continue ceding ground and shredding Ladas full of mobiks until Putin kicks the bucket, or the Russian economy collapses. A healthy economy doesn't have a 20% key interest rate for 8 months straight, you know. We've already seen one large-scale mutiny in the Russian armed forces, too, so who knows what else might happen? You haven't proposed any sort of alternative to continuing to arm and fund Ukraine. What's your idea, cut them off and say "good luck?" How does that benefit anyone besides Russia and the minority of Ukrainians who don't want to fight? edit: if you're thinking that I care about the financial cost of arming Ukraine, I don't. This is the best money we've ever spent and the only time I've respected our MIC, and I wish we were sending more weapons and more financial support. Every time Ukraine spends $100,000 of aid destroying a piece of Russian armor, that's saving us god knows how much in money spent on deterrence.
dh2022 1y ago
What American-Vietnam war and American-Afganistan war had in common was counterinsurgency of the opposing forces embedded with local population (VietCong embedded with local south Vietnamese villagers; Taliban embedded with Afghan villagers). This broke the war for Americans. (If we are pedantic we can observe a similar situation in the second American-Iraqi war with similar outcome for Americans) This situation is not present in the Russo-Ukrainian war.

ttshaw1 1y ago

Why, because Russia can grind out a village a week? Ukraine is inflicting disproportionate losses and is supplied to the hilt by Europe, while Russia's moving closer every day to a Potemkin economy.

username332211 1y ago
Ukraine is inflicting massively disproportionate losses. Meanwhile, Ukraine does very aggressive conscription while Russia mostly deploys volunteers and only resorted to reservists in 2022 in an emergency. It doesn't really add up, does it. And the collapse of the Russian economy will happen any day now for the past 3 years. After 20 years of being told the military leadership of the western world had COIN all figured out, you're going to have to give people something more than a prayer that the enemy's economy will collapse all of a sudden. Proud ignorance of the basic facts of the field or of the enemy won't procure much public support any more.
- ttshaw1 1y ago
  Of course Ukraine conscripts, they're in a war for their survival. They aren't drafting anyone under 25, by the way, so it's not as dire as you seem to think. And Russia's beating people and throwing them in pits if they won't sign contracts to go to Ukraine, so it's not all roses over there. It's not at all unreasonable to think that Ukraine can continue ceding ground and shredding Ladas full of mobiks until Putin kicks the bucket, or the Russian economy collapses. A healthy economy doesn't have a 20% key interest rate for 8 months straight, you know. We've already seen one large-scale mutiny in the Russian armed forces, too, so who knows what else might happen? You haven't proposed any sort of alternative to continuing to arm and fund Ukraine. What's your idea, cut them off and say "good luck?" How does that benefit anyone besides Russia and the minority of Ukrainians who don't want to fight? edit: if you're thinking that I care about the financial cost of arming Ukraine, I don't. This is the best money we've ever spent and the only time I've respected our MIC, and I wish we were sending more weapons and more financial support. Every time Ukraine spends $100,000 of aid destroying a piece of Russian armor, that's saving us god knows how much in money spent on deterrence.

dh2022 1y ago

What American-Vietnam war and American-Afganistan war had in common was counterinsurgency of the opposing forces embedded with local population (VietCong embedded with local south Vietnamese villagers; Taliban embedded with Afghan villagers). This broke the war for Americans. (If we are pedantic we can observe a similar situation in the second American-Iraqi war with similar outcome for Americans) This situation is not present in the Russo-Ukrainian war.