Why USA hasn't been able to achieve complete victory in Afghanistan yet?
Will the war go on for ever or there will be definite end at some point or you think it will be left as unfinished business? What is your assessment on this?
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Russia invaded Afghanistan years ago and failed. Afghanistan is not organized well enough to be conquered properly. I think everything is spread out in that country in such a was as to have Trump calling it a s-hole country. Blown back to the stone age in some places. Think of a million dollar missile being fired at a cheap target. It’s not worth the cost to fire on. Also their are guerrilla fighters everywhere. Sniping at a distance or placing Improved explosive devices for $5 all over the country and suicide bombers who aren’t afraid to die. I’m not an expert I just have cable news. I’m hoping that CNN is accurate.
Define what a victory would look like. No way the US can “win” something and leave. It will be back to its old ways in a week.
We should have left in 2002.
It might pay to keep in mind that no outsider has managed to subjugate Afghanistan in recorded history. If there is any lesson to be derived from the history of the world it is that Afghanistan remains the graveyard of military ambitions since the days of Alexander the Great. No amount of military talent will stand up to the formidable geography of the place, as the monotonous embarrassment of the world’s military juggernauts proceeds uninterrupted for 3000 years. You would think by now that someone might catch on.
By victory I mean achieving the objectives which were there when it started. End result should be having a Government of Afghanistan which can work on its own without any threat from terrorist organisations.
Just as no invader has ever been able to subjugate Afghanistan, neither has any government been able to truly hold it. Afghanistan is what it is, and it does not adhere to our conventions of unified state, nor will it be conquered.
“Complete victory” is a myth. What does it mean? Bush declared complete victory in Iraq and now the country has fallen apart. What kind of victory was it that made 3 million Iraqis refugees and their country a failed state? Afghanistan shows signs of going the same way.
We aren’t at war with another country. We are at war with a concept. It is not bound by boarders. The war we have been involved in that most resembles the war on terror is the war on drugs.
How do you defeat an idea with a gun? You fight ideology with education and prosperity not weapons.
People with educations, hopeful futures, and a happy family don’t blow themselves up to hurt other people. It’s the people who have nothing to live for and are desperate that are vulnerable to being radicalized. Achieving complete victory is an impossible goal. FFS there are Neo-Nazis still running around, should we occupy Germany indefinitely as well?
Why would we do such a thing? We need the rare-earth metals to build solar panels and batteries for electric cars to offset single digit percentages of CO2 we put in the air that we use to do things people in Afghanistan can only dream about. But we feel better about it inside.
If we wanted to, we would. But we are training the Afghan army to fight their own war.
What is “victory” for America?
Afghanistan is not about America and “American victory”. It is bigger than that.
Every year since the “war” started in 2001 the United States has spent double the Gross National Product of Afghanistan in military operations there.
From 2001 to 2016 this comes to an eye watering $783 billion. “Victory” doesn’t come cheap.
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