Is Afghanistan really impossible to conquer? | Hacker News Reader

Is Afghanistan really impossible to conquer?

bbc.com

52 pointsarunitc54 comments

How 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.

> 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."

No. 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.)

I 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.

> 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.

If 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.

I 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.

Terrorists have weapons other than planes, you know.

yeah,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.

Actually, rdl was referring to Bin Laden's folks who, as non-Afghans, were using the country for a base of operations early on to train.

And had previously done the same in North Africa.

Well, 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.

Yeah, 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.

I 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.

No, but the tactics required would probably violate international laws and be labeled war crimes.

Spoken like a true Armchair General.

What? He's right - with $700 billion you could carpet bomb the place three times over...

Actually Genghis Khan used those exact tactics to conquer Afghanistan in the 13th century.

Spoken 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.

People have to be Armchair X to a certain degree, in countries that you are alluding to - it's a prerequisite to a democracy.

When 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.

> 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.

How is the Vietnam war (US involvement 1961-1975) a prime example of the US military of the 40's and 50's?

Wouldn't Korea (1950-1953), the occupation of Japan (1945-1952) or the occupation of Germany (1945-1949) be better examples?

Guess who developed military theory that was used in the 60's? It was the guys in the 40's and 50's who were fighting conventional wars against conventional foes.

> Wouldn't Korea (1950-1953), the occupation of Japan (1945-1952) or the occupation of Germany (1945-1949) be better examples?

No, because military strategy evolves from military theory. Military theory doesn't happen overnight. It develops over time from hard lessons which almost always involve a lot of body bags. WWI is a prime example of this. You have outdated strategies and theory mixed with new weapons that no one was accustomed to using on a large scale. The lessons learned were applied to WWII by WWI veterans.

I also don't lump 70's Vietnam with 60's Vietnam. We were beginning to develop effective strategies to mitigate the guerrillas. However public support at home was pretty much gone.

Interesting, I said 'solve the problem' but nothing really about capturing or fighting.

Define the problem and solution broadly, and better ideas start coming out of the woodwork.

Ok, one of the biggest problems in that time was the continuing spread of Communism, namely China. It wasn't solved. The global landscape would be far different today if China was never a communist state. Cuba is another example of an unsolved problem.

To 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.

I'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.

> 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.

> 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.

This isn't right. The problem was not enough people making comments like you did. The real opportunity, which you were supporting, was to not invade in the first place. You did more to make the world a better place than a lot of people (wrt this issue).

There are a couple of books on the CIA and special forces operations on Afghanistan prior to the invasion. You can see how with some dozens of guys on the ground, some air superiority and some millions to buy loyalties, they had Afghanistan under control in 2 months.

The problem is that the Army and the Marines wanted their part of the cake (National revenge and of course the glory), that pressure from the pentagon is what forced the invasion and the current situation.

Most Afghanis wanted a change from the Taliban, they were ready to support a different Afghan government, the problem is that they hated even more a foreigner hanging around with tanks at their homeland that they hated the dumb and abusing Taliban.

Why would you want to conquer it?

For democracy.

Ha! This beating is for your own good. Later you will thank me.

This 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. :/

Hope that was sarcasm.

"Who says: 'Here reigns freedom' is lying, because freedom doesn't reign."

-- Erich Fried, "Herrschaftsfreiheit"

[irony] Because fairness, justice and freedom are more than words, they are perspectives! [/irony]

Stupid me, I thought they were going in to liberate. All this time they were a-conquerin'

Impossible to conquer on any reasonable budget. I'm sure with enough money and troops to truly blanket the country you could.

One 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.

Yes. 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.

> Why Afghanistan needs democracy I will never understand, and why the US must bring it there puzzles me further.

Because democracy is the Trojan horse of the American imperialism.

I understand Americans don't like to see it that way, they'd rather think of themselves as good people and they are. But their elites are bloodthirsty bastards bent on conquering the world.

Look at the cold hard facts about American military "presence" in the world and tell me it doesn't look like an empire occupying its conquests ...

> But their elites are bloodthirsty bastards bent on conquering the world.

That's probably true of most countries in the world.

Off course, but only the US has enough money to do it. Fwiw I despise my country's elites as much as the American ones.

South Korea, Japan, France, Germany - all occupied by American Imperialism and slaving away under its exploitative boot heel to this day!

Truly there has been no crueler empire in history.

No, cruelty is reserved for unwilling countries (Irak, Afghanistan ...).

The good, obedient states are rewarded and shown as examples as you do in your comment (I'm French btw).

edit : maybe it's not apparent in my comments, but I have nothing against Americans (or any other people for that matter). I criticize the elites, not the "normal" people.

And what was South Korea "willing" to do?

Afghanistan,Iraq,Lybia, clearly successfull democracies !

Try this instead, for just one place to start from concerning the question of why it might be a good idea to spread democracy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_peace_theory

Afghanistan 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.

UAE 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.

More 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'.

Wonderfully irrelevant article to people here. Politics is entering everywhere!

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