Oh yeah? I bet you can’t even name one 20 year war on terror that never ended because you can’t fight an ideology while also enabling the spread of that ideology through civilian casualties. Wait.
But seriously, it’s like Israel looked at Afghanistan and decided the issue was there weren’t enough civilian casualties. Which, yeah, if there’s no civilians left then there’s nobody left to radicalize, but I think there’s a word for that and it rhymes with genocide.
In the days after after 10/7, we heard Israeli diplomats talk about how it was their 9/11. On the one hand, I get the comparison and how it explains the shock 10/7 has had on the Israeli phsyce. On the other hand, I get the 9/11 comparison and how it explains the emotional response of launching an impossible military canpaign that will result in a generation defining 20 year quagmire.
Seriously. Any time someone uses a 9/11 comparison to justify Israel’s response, the immediate followup should be “how did the American response work out”?
Well, it’s certainly not a fun subject to talk about but there’s always a point where a threat of bullying, discrimination, violence, ethnic cleansing and eventually mass murder will eventually break a population. Take recent examples of Nagorno-Kharabag ending in a complete exodus with very few casualties, or Western Sahara where clear military superiority broke the resistance against annexation.
Regarding Afghanistan: one can certainly ask the question whether more violence or the threat of it could not have produced a better outcome. NATO tried to go cheap on manpower (compared to Germany and Japan for example), instead buying off warlords to compensate and mistakely thinking the more progressive forces in the country would become strong enough to take over at some point. Had they went in heavier with less regard for collateral damage, or have a soldier looking at every Pashtun all of thetime, the result could have been very different and, dare I say, better
Oh yeah? I bet you can’t even name one 20 year war on terror that never ended because you can’t fight an ideology while also enabling the spread of that ideology through civilian casualties. Wait.
But seriously, it’s like Israel looked at Afghanistan and decided the issue was there weren’t enough civilian casualties. Which, yeah, if there’s no civilians left then there’s nobody left to radicalize, but I think there’s a word for that and it rhymes with genocide.
In the days after after 10/7, we heard Israeli diplomats talk about how it was their 9/11. On the one hand, I get the comparison and how it explains the shock 10/7 has had on the Israeli phsyce. On the other hand, I get the 9/11 comparison and how it explains the emotional response of launching an impossible military canpaign that will result in a generation defining 20 year quagmire.
Seriously. Any time someone uses a 9/11 comparison to justify Israel’s response, the immediate followup should be “how did the American response work out”?
Well, it’s certainly not a fun subject to talk about but there’s always a point where a threat of bullying, discrimination, violence, ethnic cleansing and eventually mass murder will eventually break a population. Take recent examples of Nagorno-Kharabag ending in a complete exodus with very few casualties, or Western Sahara where clear military superiority broke the resistance against annexation.
Regarding Afghanistan: one can certainly ask the question whether more violence or the threat of it could not have produced a better outcome. NATO tried to go cheap on manpower (compared to Germany and Japan for example), instead buying off warlords to compensate and mistakely thinking the more progressive forces in the country would become strong enough to take over at some point. Had they went in heavier with less regard for collateral damage, or have a soldier looking at every Pashtun all of thetime, the result could have been very different and, dare I say, better