The road to WW3

[Aim64C]

I agree war these days are changed.....but it's not that easy what you think ok, these thing you telling us, that hitting a building or all that aircraft's, why didn't use on AQ/Talibans? Hitting there nests, they should have been dead long ago bro......winning a war isn't that easy, it takes alot more than just tech and weapons......And I understood everything you said, and i know that you guyz got tech and weapons but it doesn't man you won the war

I already explained most of this.

The Taliban and AQ are not nations with defined borders - they are an organization that carries influence across borders. The U.S. Military is in service to a political institution that insists upon respecting the borders of nations that we have arbitrarily established for them (how many in Pakistan truly consider themselves in Pakistan? Most couldn't tell you where it begins and where it ends, because the distinction is irrelevant to their way of life and almost entirely a political/western construct).

The other thing is that the Taliban and AQ were not trying to hold physical assets. They simply were wanting to hold influence. For that, no physical asset needs to exist - just the knowledge that you still exist, somewhere.

That makes for a very amorphous target that has safe harbor where we cannot disrupt its organization. We all knew that as soon as we left, AQ and the Taliban would return. But they didn't enjoy much success in physically breaking our garrisons. Had we been more committed to staying - we would have stayed, and AQ would have been shit out of luck to do anything about it other than be annoying.

Had we been allowed to pursue them across borders - their ability to be annoying would have been severely reduced, and popular support would have begun to shift somewhat more strongly in favor of us. Or - at least - belief in our conviction to allow them to develop a society away from the intimidation of groups like the Taliban.

But our politicians didn't want to swallow that pill. Rather than choosing a course and sticking with it - they tried to appeal to both sides and only succeeded in pissing off both.

And, again - you don't understand the difference the objectives in a war make.

I'm content to let Iran do whatever the hell it wants to. The moment it decides to attack an us or an ally - scorched earth. The type of weapons that I pointed out would be used to destroy your power grids, weapon development complexes, key transportation hubs, munitions plants, air fields, etc. We'd break every toy you have in the box.

Then we'd leave. Not a boot -has- to set foot on your soil. Nothing for you to shoot at - no uniforms telling you what to do, no one insisting you hold an election - just utter destruction of everything making you relevant to the modern world - and then not a peep from us.

It doesn't really take that much to 'win' a war. It takes a lot to control people. I have no interest in controlling people - if they are that much of a problem then they should be destroyed.

Our politicians like controlling people - so it is more than likely that they would commit to an actual invasion with the idea of trying to spread democracy or whatever. That would most likely fail for numerous reasons - but the insurgency would be a nuisance while the power Iran once had would be completely gone.

Ultimately - if a population does not want our influence - invasions are temporary affairs doomed to ceding the territory. Further, our own incompetence in handling nation building means that any would-be-receptive population rapidly gets frustrated and pissed at us (justifiably so). Then we leave and they reject much of our influence (so we fail).

What it takes to win a war is the resolve to follow through with the objectives of the war. If our objective was to eliminate AQ - then we needed to hunt down AQ anywhere and everywhere they organized. We focused too heavily on trying to appeal to the local populations of a nation without our politicians realizing that it was crucial to completely eradicate AQ in order to secure the 'hearts and minds' of those people.