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Comment by mattlondon | Hacker News Reader

How did that work out in Afghanistan et al?

US + Allies had clearly superior technological force, but still "lost" to some pretty irregular forces.

I don't think it is so black and white. If Russia/china/pick-your-bogey-man-of-choice invaded your country tomorrow with a robot army and started taking away your way of life (eradication of your native language, your native currency, your media, history, certain foods, schools etc), how do you think that would go down? You'd just roll over and accept everythingyou know and love about where you live being permanently removed because their robots were better? It is the same reason that we can't just have a game of chess to decide it all: when it comes down to trying to force someone to do something against their will, the ultimate and final fall back position is physical force and so sadly violence one way or another.

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Very few Americans died over the 20 year war in Afghanistan. In comparison, over 60,000 died in Vietnam.

The military did its job.

If a country can’t stand on its own, the military can’t fix that.

“There were 2,402 United States military deaths in the War in Afghanistan (2001–2021). 1,921 of these deaths were the result of hostile action.”

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_casua....

Never understood the Vietnam 1-to-1 comparison. In Vietnam they were fighting a landwar against a legitimate army backed by Soviet weaponry. Of course there was 100x less dead, Vietnam fielded 800k soldiers at first before growing to 1.5 million at peak. There was no way an airforce/drone war/long distance attacks/etc alone could fight that sort of numbers with their tangible fighting capabilities.

How many organized people were they fighting in Iraq or Afghanistan? With what sort of equipment/regimentality/strategic coordination/etc.

The US + Allies lost because they didn't have the will to obliterate everything.

As horrible as the Afghanistan war was, it would have been even worse if they had just carpet bombed everything. Add robotics, and it quickly enters nightmare fuel worse than the Terminator movies.

> didn't have the will to obliterate everything.

Had they "obliterated" everything then the US + Allies (or what allies they might have still got left after said obliteration) would have lost even more on the grand scale of things compared to a remote war in Central Asia. No amount of Hollywood + Western Media white-washing would have managed to get that stink off.

This is thankfully still true.

I hope this is true, but we’ll see how people treat Russia in a decade.

>The US + Allies lost because they didn't have the will to obliterate everything.

Hasn't the US carpet bombed Vietnam and still lost?

You can't win when you don't know what winning means

That was the issue with Vietnam (and with Afghanistan in a certain way)

Not exactly. They did bomb North Vietnam, but not carpet style, and they never actually invaded North Vietnam. Basically, just like in Afghanistan they were fighting with self inflicted penalties.

The US won vietnam. They're just disingenuous about what their goals were.

International laws also prevented that. You can't carpet bomb civilians.

I was under the impression that Russia has been doing something akin to that?

Yes. There is a tribunal waiting for them.

Doesn't seem all that preventative though.

Not for some people.

Nope, Russia has not been able to achieve air superiority and can't use the full force of its air power. Both sides' air defenses are too robust. This has mostly been an artillery/land war.

I see your point, doing what was required to "win" was not politically feasible. On the other hand, much of the fighters in Afganistan were already accustomed to fighting from rubble. I don't think carpet bombing the mountains would have much affect. Finally, another commenter made this great observation, you can't win when you don't know what winning means.

> Finally, another commenter made this great observation, you can't win when you don't know what winning means.

Winning means you installed/recovered democracy.

Well, success then. But the patient went into relapse as soon as the IV line was cut.

To add to that:

Both the US and the Soviets lost because Afghanistan isn't a country in a traditional sense; it's just an area of land with _lots_ of regions countrolled by war lords that doesn't have allegiance to anything central (i.e. "the country Afghanistan").

It's impossible to win a war against something like that, unless - as you correctly points out - you obliterate everything.

> The US + Allies lost because they didn't have the will to obliterate everything.

The Soviet Union did that and also lost. The only way to win in Afghanistan is by fighting in Pakistan. And that means a full invasion, not a half-measure as was tried and failed in Laos and Cambodia.

Afghanistan was a mess for reasons other people have mentioned, but the US held itself back. If you want to see supremacy see Desert Storm. The ground campaign took 100 hours for the US to kick the ass of the fourth largest army in the world, not even mentioning the beauty of the air campaign. It is a master class in the brutal efficiency and warfighting capabilities of the US and other coalition forces. If the US wanted, there is no doubt they could have razed Aghanistan and Vietnam from a pure warfighting standpoint.

Technological and logistical abilities still reign supreme if it comes to an all out war. Asymmetric forces like with Aghanistan and Vietnam were problematic because of political pressures at home, and the long drawn out nature of those conflicts which increased political pressure. The 2003 invasion of Iraq was also perfectly executed, but the long duration occupation was the problem.

Asymmetric forces and insurgencies are problematic, but people overate them in modern discourse because of the weight of the occupation of Aghanistan and Iraq in recent memory. They are easy to crush, but politics at the time was complicated.

Yeah but US + Allies have still lost in Iraq too. They won the war sure but now they have a situation where every civilian is a potential hostile combatant.

My point is that the oppressed population who "lost" (Iraqis, Afghanistanis etc in these examples) aren't just like "oh well - I guess I'll just abandon everything I know and believe in and start eating beef and alcohol since the US invasion wiped out my country's military.". Instead they are resisting and so now you get the quagmire where basically anyone old enough to stand is now a threat to the occupiers even if they "wiped out" the army.

So you're not going to have some hypothetical "robot war" where no humans are hurt. The humans will start getting hurt once all the robots are dead.

> Asymmetric forces and insurgencies are problematic, but people overate them in modern discourse because of the weight of the occupation of Aghanistan and Iraq in recent memory. They are easy to crush, but politics at the time was complicated.

I don't know if I would say "easy to crush". For Western nations i think it's especially hard because the images of civilian deaths have a large effect on the population and voting. Fighting asymmetric forces seems to always involve significant civilian casualties. Other nations operating without those constraints would have an easier time destroying asymmetric forces IMO. I think they would use the same tactics used for crushing dissenting civilians only kill-on-sight instead of at least the illusion of arrest-on-sight.

/not a military/war expert

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