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Is Afghanistan really impossible to conquer?
- sirkneeland 13y agoImpossible to conquer on any reasonable budget. I'm sure with enough money and troops to truly blanket the country you could.
- rdl 13y agoNo. If you sold Afghanistan to people in colonial style, it would be perfectly within the power of a middling nation or corporation (or hedge fund) to deal with it. The problem is having unreasonable expectations ; if you just care about killing terrorists and some mining, you don't need to deal with most of it. (The article says this, too -- the issue is that the country is too poor to be worth the effort to conquer.)
- ChuckMcM 13y agoI suspect you are correct, although it is unfortunate. Perhaps a better question to ask would be, is there a place in the world for people who just want to live a simple life? Since really what the 'conquering' is all about is keeping residents in Afghanistan (not necessarily indigenous Afghans though) from impacting the rest of the world in what are perceived to be negative ways. And it is pretty clear from recent events that this is something of a pipe dream anyway.
- rdl 13y agoYeah, I don't care about Afghanistan as a country at all. I do want anyone reasonable there to be able to have a decent life, just like I feel about anyone else in the world. Immigration and mobility, combined with individual sovereignty over ones own land and possessions, is probably the best model for that.
- belorn 13y ago> residents in Afghanistan from impacting the rest of the world Isn't that what an defensive army and border police are for? If an residents in Afghanistan want to harm me, they have to first get over to my country.
- PeterisP 13y agoWell, the two main harms claimed by USA as their reasons for [continued] invasion - funding&sheltering terrorist groups and producing a majority of worlds heroin - don't need anyone from Afganistan to get over to USA. And you can't isolate a border from the outside even with total cooperation with all their neighbors (which USA doesn't have), even North Korea doesn't achieve that in their borders.
- rdl 13y agoIf you let them build up without any restrictions, as AQ did under the Taliban and in Sudan, you end up with quantity and scale of attacks which border defense can't mitigate sufficiently.
- camus2 13y agoyeah,like Afghan soldiers are going to attack USA at its borders with tanks and fighter aircrafts... they did not give a f. about America until USA came to invade them.
- belorn 13y agoI am off the impression that the quantity and scale of attacks which was seen in 9/11 is currently being restricted by a locked door in airplanes, and less passive passengers.
- MarkTee 13y ago
- srean 13y agoI think this works in way more than one direction. US has been in the business of impacting other countries in what are perceived to be negative ways. US is by no means unique to be in this position. The last one was British, and compared to the others that have come before them, they sort of unraveled semi-gracefully rather than implode in a cataclysm. Interesting to see what our lifetimes have in store for us.
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- spikels 13y agoWhy would you want to conquer it?
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- ethana 13y agoFor democracy.
- spikels 13y agoHa! This beating is for your own good. Later you will thank me.
- thaumasiotes 13y agoThis is a real problem in US government. Democracy is a moral issue of the times, not a practical one. Unfortunately, that means essentially all public policies relating to it are idiotic. :/
- srean 13y agoHope that was sarcasm.
- PavlovsCat 13y ago"Who says: 'Here reigns freedom' is lying, because freedom doesn't reign." -- Erich Fried, "Herrschaftsfreiheit"
- atmosx 13y ago[irony] Because fairness, justice and freedom are more than words, they are perspectives! [/irony]
- ryanobjc 13y agoWhen the US invaded Afghanistan, I (and some of my friends) smartassedly noted that where the British and Russians failed, so would the US. Ultimately the US has failed to tame Afghanistan - as expected - but really the world isn't better for my smartass comments. The real opportunity was to do something radically better, and really think outside the box. I really do miss the US military of the 1940s and 50s, I feel they would have the gumption to put someone smart and weird on that project and really solve it.
- ryanobjc 13y agoTo follow up, I think the project could be defined as 'the civilizing of Afghanistan". Reduce the chance of it nurturing terrorism, helping calm relations between neighbors, reducing the rates of violence. Of course, in the UN framework this is not really up to someone else. Sovereignty and all of that.
- abcd_f 13y ago> I think the project could be defined as 'the civilizing of Afghanistan". Reduce the chance of it nurturing terrorism, helping calm relations between neighbors, reducing the rates of violence. Awesome! Sounds like a full-fleshed plan to me.
- rdl 13y agoI'd be pretty comfortable with a Chinese in Africa style program to build infrastructure and business while working with existing warlords and dictators on the ground. You might want some national level control (Taliban) to keep the civil war under control, but it would be a loose federation. The us really would never want to be seen working with even people like Dostrum, let alone the Taliban. I had a semi ironic Massoud sticker on my gun safe for a while , but even he was a pretty bad guy compared to non afghans.
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- chaostheory 13y ago> I really do miss the US military of the 1940s and 50s, I feel they would have the gumption to put someone smart and weird on that project and really solve it. imo They would not have fared batter. Vietnam is the prime example. The problem is that historically the US doesn't do well in long term, large scale unconventional warfare, especially if it isn't conducted on open terrain. Even if SOCOM runs the show now, overall the strategy is still highly conventional. Capturing Afghanistan is easy. Holding it every year is the true test. The humiliation from Vietnam has improved our forces as a whole. However, the problem remains. How do you fight an enemy with little to no infrastructure? How do you fight an enemy with no real fixed base of operations or even command? Maybe the US does know how to win the war now. Winning hearts and minds of the occupied is the key. Unfortunately, knowing how to win and executing a win are two very different things.
- grendelt 13y agoNo, but the tactics required would probably violate international laws and be labeled war crimes.
- 911_Inside_Job 13y agoSpoken like a true Armchair General.
- tjmc 13y agoActually Genghis Khan used those exact tactics to conquer Afghanistan in the 13th century.
- 911_Inside_Job 13y agoSpoken like a true XBox Hero. Seriously. Westerners play XBox and that's their portal to militarism. Oh. And they can pass quotes from their secondary education on militarism as knowledge of it. In actuality, we're all just house pets who've never been in the jungle. Our owners are the ones who know about war and slaughter. And the Armchair General types, don't get me started. They look at the world like a Risk Board that doesn't have enough of their colored pieces on it until we've got everything. And talk about how others are too squeamish or domesticated to do things properly. But they are far removed from war, and post on HN.
- Dewie 13y agoPeople have to be Armchair X to a certain degree, in countries that you are alluding to - it's a prerequisite to a democracy.
- jotm 13y agoWhat? He's right - with $700 billion you could carpet bomb the place three times over...
- belorn 13y agoHow can one achieve victory without a clear definition on who the enemy is, what goals the war has, and how to achieve those goals. The pinnacle of military deployment approaches the formless: if it is formless, then even the deepest spy cannot discern it nor the wise make plans against it." -- Sun Tzu, "The Art of War", Datalinks I have never seen the US even try define how victory over al-Qaeda would look like. Is it to kill the leadership and 10 sequential new leaders? One could argue that victory is at what ever point there is no more leaders, but how do you define that then? No announcement in 10 days from last killed? Afghanistan is not impossible to conquer, you just have to define what conquer means. For some, it means sacking every town and metaphoric sail away with all the gold. Others want to build cities and extract taxes from people who lives there. If you define victory, victory is possible.
- chaostheory 13y ago> I have never seen the US even try define how victory over al-Qaeda would look like. "In accordance to the principles of Doublethink, it does not matter if the war is not real, or when it is, that victory is not possible. The war is not meant to be won. It is meant to be continuous."
- chatman 13y agoWonderfully irrelevant article to people here. Politics is entering everywhere!
- alexeisadeski3 13y agoOne wonders how democracy and modernization became part of the Afghan project. Had the US stuck to its goal of vanquishing Al Qaeda whilst merely deposing the Taliban, things would be different. The world is a big place, and we rich westerners are not omniscient. Why Afghanistan needs democracy I will never understand, and why the US must bring it there puzzles me further. Let it be a Pashtun Sharia state. So long as the bastards running it do not provide a safe haven to those plotting harm to the US and friends, all is well. It's a simple rule for leaders of any ideology to follow - and most importantly the drone fleets provide strong incentive for them to comply. George Bush forgot that the only reason for the NATO invasion in the first place was that the Taliban refused to turn Bin Laden & Co over to him.
- jotm 13y agoAfghanistan has vast reserves of minerals, including valuable rare earth metals and oil. With a friendly (whether democratic or not) government they could be mined efficiently, supplying the world and making Afghanistan rich at the same time. Like it happened with UAE. I don't understand why the locals would not want that. We're gonna get there sooner or later, anyway... Plus there's the issue of Afghanistan supplying opium to the world, but that doesn't concern the US with Mexico next door.
- hartator 13y agoUAE is not really a democracy. I think that's a issue. Only a few people are made rich by the exploitation of oil. And they aren't entrepreneurs. They use foreign companies to bring them money and that's not faire. Like because they manage to exploit people, we should give this local kings money and power? I can see why nothing is better than that.
- rdl 13y agoYes. I would have killed the drug war, at least within Afghanistan (if you don't legalize, you can still buy all their heroin at field price and turn it into medical opiates or just destroy it), as well as splitting AQ off from the Taliban ("anyone who wants to leave must be allowed to do so"), and trying to have some minimal restrictions on the Taliban while letting them continue to rule. This probably would have been mutually acceptable. The other option would have been funding the CIA Northern Alliance program 2001-2002 and letting JSOC play, but keeping conventional forces out (i.e. not letting the Marines take KAF for Christmas, etc.), and having a few years of civil war where the NA took over the country and killed a whole lot of Taliban with no real difference.
- hammadfauz 13y agoStupid me, I thought they were going in to liberate. All this time they were a-conquerin'
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- vfclists 13y agoMore idiotic HN commentards as usual. Instead of calling out the idiotic criminal enterprise know as the Afghanistan occupation for what is, they are finding more ways of rationalizing it. Why don't they spend time debating the persecution of US, British and other Western European leaders for war crimes? I don't suppose it occurred to them that there were no Afghans or Iraqis involved in the 9/11 'attacks'.