Comments by "Persona" (@ArawnOfAnnwn) on "Afghanistan staring at the abyss" video.

Just goes to show that all the money and advanced weaponry in the world can't beat a determined enemy with a home field advantage. The US should keep this mind when launching their next war. They've lost like this several times already...
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@masonfarnsworth6730 I don't see the west gaining any advantage out of this. Meanwhile Afghans have lost hundreds of thousands of people to a needless war. While the Taliban may be terrible, one silver lining is that if the war finally ends then the death toll will finally reduce as well. And yes, before anyone says it, they're repressive. But war kills more people.
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Just goes to show that all the money and advanced weaponry in the world can't beat a determined enemy with a home field advantage. The US should keep this mind when launching their next war. They've lost like this several times already...
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@readmeat4vegans829 "Learn from history - so you do not repeat the same mistakes" - the people who launched these wars haven't suffered a thing, and in fact many have benefitted greatly from them either politically or financially (or both), so they have no reason to 'learn from history'. Cos as far as they're concerned, this wasn't a mistake, quite the opposite.
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@stoneymcneal I wonder if you have the inner strength, not to mention honesty, to realize how morally elitist, judgmental and supercilious you sound. They aren't there to stroke your ego by living up to your values. If anything, the ones to be judged harshly are the people responsible for a needless war that's killed hundreds of thousands of people. I do hope the average American isn't as stuck up and full of themselves as you sound right now. And has the humility to admit defeat instead of just blaming it on other people. They never signed up to fight for this war, you forced it onto them. Hence they aren't responsible for its success, you guys are. Both the Vietnamese and Afghans have fought off multiple world superpowers - I rather think they have more inner strength than your average coddled American. Inner strength is precisely why they won - they just didn't fight for the same things.
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@snuffleuppagus6979 And if you took all those people and put them in a repressive society, I'm willing to bet over 90% of them would choose to live. Hell, people accept life without freedom even without death as the alternative - just go look up the Sultanate of Brunei as an example. The most totalitarian state you've never heard of, and yet there's almost no discontent - cos it's so rich that the people are taken care of just with the dregs of the immense wealth of its ruler. Anyway, it's not for us to lecture them. Freedom, as they say, isn't free. The people who want freedom or death will make their own choices on it, and so will everyone else. But you can't make that choice if you're already dead - and war makes a lot of people dead.
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@mewoozy2 9/11 killed about 3000 people. The Afghan has killed several orders of magnitude more than that. There was never anything 'moral' about this war. In any case, I think the idea of 'reforming' a country from the outside and top down is wrong headed the begin with. The US' only big success at doing this has been Japan, and that was because the Japanese themselves were up for it. Invading a country to reshape it in your image is proposition doomed to failure, except maybe in some tiny island states with small populations and short histories.
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Just goes to show that all the money and advanced weaponry in the world can't beat a determined enemy with a home field advantage. The US should keep this mind when launching their next war. They've lost like this several times already...
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@stoneymcneal Pointing out that they share the US in common is arrogant, huh? That was really a fact. The 'inner strength' of the Afghans and Vietnamese is nothing more than your opinion. And what of your original comment, disparaging both the Afghans and Vietnamese? Sounds more like you're trying to save face after revealing your true colors i.e. the disdain you hold for others. And it's not working.
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@frank031 Rome and other empires annexed territory. Did America ever claim it was trying to annex Afghanistan? No. So stop treating it as if it had. War is launched to accomplish lasting geopolitical goals, not just kill lots of people, which is why they spent 20 years trying to settle things in Afghanistan the way they wanted it to be. And they failed to do that. They couldn't settle anything, and the very enemies they ousted are now back in power again. This is similar to the British and Russian expeditions into Afghanistan, both of whom also overpowered their opposition initially, and yet both of which are widely considered failures. America doesn't get an exception here.
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They also share the US in common. They're both American embarrassments.
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@rbanerjee605 Sure, they shouldn't. But they will. They've got a long history of doing it, and are still boasting about their capabilities despite their high profile losses. As long as America feels it can get away with war, and it serves their interests, they'll continue waging war.
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@frank031 "The Americans could've stayed there indefinitely" - that isn't winning, that's just refusing to admit you've lost aka dumping money and lives into preserving your own ego.
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@enoch9468 Just goes to show that all the money and advanced weaponry in the world can't beat a determined enemy with a home field advantage. The US should keep this mind when launching their next war. They've lost like this several times already...
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@T_M_E_8 "many people in the US disagree with war in the first place." - Tbh, I'd rather the country have more of those people, and less of their opposites. For everyone's sake - https://brilliantmaps.com/threat-to-peace/
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Just goes to show that all the money and advanced weaponry in the world can't beat a determined enemy with a home field advantage. The US should keep this mind when launching their next war. They've lost like this several times already...
2
Just goes to show that all the money and advanced weaponry in the world can't beat a determined enemy with a home field advantage. The US should keep this mind when launching their next war. They've lost like this several times already...
2
Just goes to show that all the money and advanced weaponry in the world can't beat a determined enemy with a home field advantage. The US should keep this mind when launching their next war. They've lost like this several times already...
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@Morristown337 "We did not overthrow any governments in those countries" - Neither have the Chinese overthrown the Afghan govt., or installed the Taliban. Just because the two have come to a tenuous agreement doesn't make them puppets.
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@frank031 The 'garrison' here is the Afghan army, which just lost. Like it or not, the Americans didn't want to stay forever - and never intended to. So claiming that they 'theoretically' could've done is moot. They did what they intended to - not just now, but even at the outset of the war - and it didn't work out in the end.
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@eyeofhorus1301 Sure it would. They'd hide, conduct hit-and-run attacks, wait for you to exhaust yourself or your mandate, and then come right back after. Welcome to asymmetric warfare school, where simply throwing money at a problem doesn't solve everything...
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@eyeofhorus1301 Good luck with that lol. Methinks you're struggling to understand what the concept of 'hiding place' even is - it isn't some big building with a billboard outside saying, "come and get us!". There's a reason guerilla warfare has stood the test of time. It's far cheaper and actually way more sustainable, especially in home territory, than conventional war. You think highly educated army generals have lost to it over and over cos they're idiots? Jets/tanks aren't 'waiting for you' lol, they're cumbersome and slow and you're long gone by the time they get there. They're also horribly overkill - an air to ground missile is both expensive, and will likely kill a dozen civilians for every fighter, if they even manage to hit the fighter at all - stop being so overawed by the big fancy tech toys. Most of them are fairly useless against such tactics, which is why boots on the ground are so important. Look up any of the strategies that comprise the umbrella of 'counterinsurgency' - the most tech they use is a few helicopters, not jets lol. Asymmetric warfare isn't some damn pitched battle with a bunch of dudes with AKs lining up against jets and tanks.
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@eyeofhorus1301 Oh, and don't underestimate the sustainability of suicide attacks either. Guerrilla armies have kept those up for literal decades without breaking a sweat. Both the Afghanistan and Vietnam wars lasted about 20 years for instance, and yet look who left both theaters in disgrace. It wasn't the guerilla forces, no matter their losses.
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@frank031 Afghanistan was conquered by the British, and they later left with their tail behind their legs. Here's a description of it by British army chaplain G.R. Gleig, who was part of it - "a war begun for no wise purpose, carried on with a strange mixture of rashness and timidity, brought to a close after suffering and disaster, without much glory attached either to the government which directed, or the great body of troops which waged it. Not one benefit, political or military, was acquired with this war. Our eventual evacuation of the country resembled the retreat of an army defeated." #HistoryRhymes You'll find that trying to 'conquer, convert and colonize' Afghanistan today will be an even worse undertaking than what the US aimed for, which is why it wasn't the goal.
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@Ice "T"esla The Taliban have been in power before. Not as many people died. They'll definitely be a lot of deaths, no doubt widely reported in the press now that it's the bad guys doing it rather than the west, in the short term as they impose and solidify their rule. But eventually, if they manage to regain control (which is now stronger than ever, as the northern alliance has been shattered this time), things will settle down. Wars usually kill far more people.
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Just goes to show that all the money and advanced weaponry in the world can't beat a determined enemy with a home field advantage. The US should keep this mind when launching their next war. They've lost like this several times already...
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