Karzai threatens to send Afganistan Army into Pakistan

Diem supported the wealth land owners, who basically kept the majority of Vietnamese in the south enslaved in a feudal system.

The North, while communist, was executing real land reform, and giving land back to the peasants who had been working it as near slaves.

Vietnam was just a battleground for a proxy war with the USSR and China.

 

The US won the fight on the ground and the Paris Peace Accords were signed on January 27, 1973 ending the conflict. The issue came latter when America did a 'cut and run'. Not supporting South Vietnam after the North broke the treaty and overwhelmed the South.

Cut and run does not work. That is the lesson of Vietnam.

In places like Afganistan the US has to be prepared to fight for 50 years or more. What we need to do is fight cheaper and use more indigenous forces.

Air support is costing way too much. F-16s with a $40 million price tag and operating costs of $18,000 per hour and requiring extended and improved runways simply are not economical choices for counterinsurgency work. US Aircraft Corporation is making a redesigned P51 Mustang called the A-67 with a price tag of approximately $3.5 million to $4 million and a cost of $500 per hour to operate.





http://www.usaircraftcorp.com/

 

There are a lot of lessons from Vietnam. I do not agree that you have learned the most important one, or even one I agree with.

You better polish your sombrero amigo, because we're going broke with the war. We can't afford to stay in Afghanistan and lose a war of attrition. The coalition forces won't be there indefinitely because their home governments cannot print money to keep them in play, and as the global economic crisis spreads, domestic pressures will demand that the governments start making cuts. Book it. And save me a Dos Equis in Cozumel.

 

Pakistan presses on with offensive vs. militants

Pakastani forces have launched an offensive against the Taliban. The militants have been threatening Peshawar, a major northwest city, and ambushing supply convoys bound for U.S.-led coalition troops in Afghanistan.

"The criminals were running a parallel administration in the area," Khan said. "They were kidnapping the people, trying them and punishing them and the government is fully determined not to allow anyone to run a parallel administration."

Khan said the jail contained what he called "torture cells" with special equipment, but offered no details.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080629/ap_on_re_as/pakistan

 

No conventional military has ever won against a guerilla army, ever.

 

The thing is with fighting a guerilla army, it usally IS the people that are fighting against you, that's why it is never a winnable situation, so yeah I agree with you.

 

You can't win with Pashtuns or Afghans by War. They can give you war for generations. US and the allies including Pakistani govt. are dumb enough to not to learn from the history of the region. God knows when these thick headed politicans learn not to esclate wars for their profit and work for peace by talks.

 

Sure it's a winable situation. Sherman burned Atlanta to break the will of the people to continue fighting.

Ukrainian nationalist fighters were defeated by the Soviets. At its height, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) is said to have had up to 100,000 members, famously operating out of subterranean forest bunkers.

After World War II, the UPA remained active and continued open battles against Poland until 1947 and the Soviet Union until the 1949. It was particularly strong in the Carpathian Mountains and in Volyn - in Western Ukraine.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainian_Insurgent_Army

 

So basically, you can win, but you have to be a butcher, a terrorist and a war criminal. Do I understand you correctly?

 

If we were as ruthless as the people we're fighting it would be all over.

 

WW2? If I remember correctly they captured almost half of europe and north Asia.

 

Sherman said "War is Hell!"

 

We are. And it's not.

 

And that justifies terrorism? What you posted, was clearly a terrorist tactic. I want to be clear, you are advocating terrorism as a legitimate tactic? Targeting civilians to break a military force's will? Maybe murder some wives and children to get the men to lay down their arms?

Do I understand that right?

 

Let's play a video link game. I'll post terrorist beheading videos and you post beheadings by US soldiers. We'll see who runs out of links first.

 

Does the matter of one dying really change things?

Sniper versus beheading?
Bomb from a warplane versus a car bomb?

 

Things that makes you go hummmmmmmmmm

Are you saying that if US soldiers start beheading people they would actually win "war on terror"?