After 9/11, all operations in Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq are complete disaster. I wonder why all of them failed.
Our puppets are paid. The Opposition is not.
I know it's cliché, but that's the root of the issue. Wherever we are in the world, we never give the people a narrative that evokes strong belief. A narrative that will convince young men that the beliefs evoked are worth dying for. Wherever we install governments, the opposition side almost always has foundational beliefs in place.
We generally paper over the imbalance with money and military power, but that will only work for a time. Particularly in a place like Afghanistan. (As we're seeing today.)
The history of US involvement in those areas starts way before 9/11.
And the will of the non-Sunni Syrians and Kurds should not be underestimated. They didn’t roll over and walk to slaughter like the Iraqi Army.
Those who make up the Taliban aren’t crazy. They play generational war. Have for millennia.
Modern US war doctrine is garbage. They believe a fallacy that war can be fought with precision weapons directed only at enemy combatants. Leaving most civilians and their infrastructure unharmed.
The best result this can bring is occupational victory. Territory can be occupied but its not been won. Only occupied.
War can only be won after completely submitting an opponent. With indiscriminate violence. Only then might an enemy submit. If not, they'll all be dead.
This calculus wins wars. Its horrible. Its inhumane. And its the genius of the Taliban. The population knows: Submit or die.
The Chinese warned that they'd enter the war if Macarthur went too far. He didn't listen, so they did and pushed the Allies way back past Seoul again. It took another 2-3 years of stalemate before the Armistice was finally signed.
Notice that the Armistice still holds, and the Korean War is still running after 71 years. Nobody has won that war. Nobody but the US wants to keep it running. Trump, Bolton, etc, weren't willing to guarantee Security for the North Koreans by ending the war. The North Koreans were willing to give up their nukes if the war was ended with a peace treaty. As we now know, nothing has changed.
Think of today's situation as a non-combat stalemate. much as happened in areas of trench warfare during World War one. (Both sides maintained a quiet watch-and-wait in various parts of the Front, while fierce campaigns took place in other parts of the Front.)
A question or two for you. If the Korean War is finished, why are there still 30-40 thousand US troops still occupying South Korea? Why does the US interfere with North and South Korean diplomacy? Why is it any business of the US what North and South Korea agree in, anyway?
That is not a fallacy, but the max they can sell to the politicians.
World War 2 was not an American-only success:
In the Pacific war, they were helped by the Chinese who held down lots of Japanese forces for eight years in China, and the British and Indians and Australians who fought the Japanese in South Asia.
Against the Germans, the Americans, as in Asia, entered the war long after it had started. The Soviets killed eighty percent of all German casualties, and had the Great Patriotic War practically won single-handedly long before the Western Allies got ashore on D-Day in mid 1944.
Without the Western Allies and D-Day, most estimates put the end of the war in Europe around Spring 1946 with the Soviets at the English Channel.