During the Obama era there was a rule that said the military could not drop ordnance on a building unless they could verify there were no civilians inside. That means the Taliban could freely shoot at Americans and nothing would happen to them. This gave the impression that the Taliban were strong and America was weak. That's how the Taliban won over rural areas.

>>65104862
Valuable in areas where the locals are cooperative, carrot and stick. The US has a nasty habit of believing that if they give enough carrots everyone will suddenly like them, but forgot what happend in WW2 to get Germany and Japan to accept the carrots.

>>65104862
>Is "Hearts and Minds" a viable counter insurgency tactic or is it just a handicap?
It's a handicap. No matter what you do, they will hate you. So, may as well not bother wasting time trying to win their hearts and minds. Just kill the hostile ones and be done with it.

>>65104880
>>65104878
So really all you can do is try to fight strategic targets with civilians but operation success first in foremost but also not go full z-ork? That honestly sounds hard as hell to balance. What happens if the insurgency hides behind crowded civilian centers? Then you have to go all Israel and just end up bolstering the insurgent cause..

>>65104870
If only there was a weapon the was longer range than a knife but less destructive than a bomb.

The idea that you can kill your way to victory against an insurgency is complete fantasy. If you are good enough at military stuff it becomes much more like law enforcement, which is where most militaries stumble.

It can help, but it depends a lot on where you are, how receptive the population is and why the insurgents are fighting. Like there was never any winning over the Afghan hicks, because they have no loyalties beyond their immediate family and don't give a shit that you built a dam in the next town over because anybody beyond their valley is an out-group. Plus the Taliban brought in opium bucks, and would pay random locals to spot for IEDs or throw grenades. Whereas those in Kabul really appreciated all the hospitals and shit, because they already lived fairly westernized lifestyles (by the standards of Afghanistan) and were already amenable to that sort of thing from memories under the soviets, so not blowing up their houses and killing their kids does genuinely make a difference.

>>65104878
They also forget what happened after WW2 to make them accept the carrots - an attractive alternative that did not infringe on the core cultural values of germany and japan. In afghanistan they tried to impose liberal values of secularism and feminism on an essentially medieval society, while being unable to truly offer prosperity. No shit it didn't work.

Like some italian once said: it's better to be-a feared than-a loved, wahoo!

>>65104862
>he thinks America lost the war because of muh "Hearts and Minds"
holy cope lmao

>>65104890
>bolstering ins-
Look at Japan and Germany 1945. When you outright DESTROY the ability of a nation to resist and either inturn or outright take command of all military aged males there is simply no insurgents left.
>Israel
Is actually too kind, the population of Gaza should have been dead in the first 90 days, they really need to stop treating the Palestinians as a military inconvenience and rather as a existential threat.
>reeeeeeeeee
The stated goal of Palestinians since day one is the complete extermination of all Israelis, and it has not ever changed.

>>65104862
Well think how you would feel if the PLA rolled into your town and started handing out candy and shooting anybody armed. Depending on your circumstances, you might welcome them even though they make things worse, or you might turn insurgent in spite of their presence improving things.

>>65104899
>lifestyle
BONKBONKBONKBONK. Keep applying the stick. If your mentality is to keep resisting to the last breath then it should be obliged.

>>65104910
>pla
>handing out candy
No, they would kill everyone.

>>65104914
>Let's just go to another country and commit genocide until they submit
>Wait, why does everyone in the world suddenly ally with china
You are as stupid as you are evil.

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Sometimes you just gotta kill has many as you can and scatter them to the wind.

>>65104909
But Japan and Germany were fighting conventionally not guerrilla style non uniformed insurgency

>>65104909
>The stated goal of Palestinians since day one
Are you talking about Hamas, or are you saying that everyone born within Palestine is preprogramed with a mandate?

it comes from the flawed assumption that all people are equal and all culture is the same
it's not

>>65104862
Fun story. There is this 23 year old Iraqi zoomer working at my company. He was living in Iraq during the war, and he learned English by being one of those kids who'd follow the US soldiers around when they were on patrols. He was literally one of those kids. Said sometimes Americans would throw shit at him and call him bad names and he was laughing when he was telling me about it as if it was a good time

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>>65104927
>preprogramed with a mandate?
jews are just to ugly to look at

>>65104931
>sometimes Americans would throw shit at him and call him bad names
why would they do that?

>>65104940
imagine having large numbers of stressed 18-21 year olds in all together in a war zone

>>65104862
Depends a lot on how you do it, build things like hospitals and schools people see every day and it can. Just give money to "elders" and hoping they won't pocket it doesn't.

>>65104940
>throwing shit at children
>why would they do that?
Because 16yo 4chan tourists think it's edgy to say stupid shit that never happened in order to collect internet handjobs.

Good luck winning against a modern a counter-insurgency without one.

People love to talk about the failure during GWOT but it was clearly done in the most hairbrained way possible where the institutions of counter-insurgency failed to cooperate:
>the locals seems to be complaining about the warlords and police we're propping up but that doesn't count as hearts and minds... because then it would be awkward
>let's spend millions on water treatment facilities for our bases, then refuse to purchase from the local farmers that spring up and act surprise when it all becomes poppy fields
>sure we'll take out that Taliban stronghold for the 11th time but we're not sticking around

Although given how Katrina went it's hardly confined to winning hearts and minds abroad.

>>65104878
How did that go in Vietnam and post-colonial wars generally?

>>65104899
>In afghanistan they tried to impose liberal values of secularism and feminism

Am I in 2016 again? The Taliban faced protests about kicking girls out of school. Fucking nobody is cool when it becomes their own mothers and daughters.

>>65104900
Machiavelli said that it's best to be BOTH. And even when you have to choose and go the fear route, you can't make people hate you by interfering with their women and property.

>>65104910
I mean do you really need to go PLA on this, how would an American city react to Europeans and Canadians? Even deploying the National Guard out of state was getting a little scary a few months ago.

But if you said that you're there to hang paedophiles, deal with bow-legged Mexican joker cartels and lower the price of gas then I bet you would get some compliance.

>>65104898
This was the mistake that a lot of people in charge seemed to make. They didn't truly appreciate the gap between urban and rural populations. It's not like in the US where the difference is a surface level of culture. Going from Kabul to the countryside is like going from 1950's LA to a medieval village. It's a fundamentally different kind of existence and because of that their values and moral standards are equally disparate. Nobody outside of the main cities was willing to fight for or even necessarily wanted democracy.

>>65104862
You are facing up against the population's ability to develop cognitive dissonance and the rebels' ability to sew it. I'd just kill all the murderers, thieves and rapists regardless of the cultural norms.

>>65105008
>>65104898
So instead of hospitals you give em brand new tractors, cattle and help replenish the soil and plant new seeds for their harvest.

Hearts and Minds is literally based on the Bongs tactics in Malaysia.
>Chinese ethnics start chimping out
>Malaysian ethnics want to start purging
>Other groups mix and match
>Bongs solve this by rounding up every Chinese ethnic and bunging them in a camp
>Give them better housing than they had already (comparatively), give them running water and electricity and other comforts
>Give them food, but mark every single packet and record who you gave it to, so if it is found on a rebel you know who to go have a 'chat' with
>Eventually the population which was trying to rise up lost all their support in the civilian sector because they were being treated better than they were under their supposed 'liberators'
>Few of them wanted to leave the camps to go sit in the jungle and be eaten to death by bugs and having even less food to eat
Of course, didn't stop other ethnics doing horrible shit and the odd Bongs too, but that was where the idea to do it came from. It's just that in GWOT everything seemed to be done one bit at a time and never in conjunction.
>Taliban/whatever stronghold nearby
>You blow it up
>You don't then move in and show the civilian sector that was supporting this stronghold (willingly or unwillingly) that you're the better option
>Don't follow or investigate local 'officials' and 'security' to make sure they were corrupt
Had the USA systematically deleted strongholds and then hung around the local area to make sure they didn't pop back up and showing THEY were the better alternative while making sure the ANA weren't retards, then Taliban wouldn't have won when USA left.

The issue was the 'mountains' but you could have worked on training special units to go and camp in those mountains and remove any returning Taliban, keep doing it until they stop coming.

>>65104862
It is A strategy. So is “kill them all, and let god sort them out”.

>>65104870
NCOs in my first unit told me that during their 2016 Afghanistan rotation, their ROE was often to not even return fire unless a human being was wounded. Guy leaning out of his window with an AK? Can't shoot him. He fired at you? Nope. Dumping lead into your up-armored humvee window? Gotta wait til a round gets through :D

Still don't know if this was exaggerated or not, but more than one person said it. On a related note, BCT drill had another stupid ROE story - known Taliban bombmaker, in a known farmhouse/compound. And he knew they knew. Would wave at them tauntingly. And he knew he was completely safe because there were civilians around him. Eventually after like 6 months of watching this guy, they literally caught him with his pants down, going outside to take a piss shortly after dark. I guess that was enough distance from the civilians to airstrike his ass.

>>65104975
Yeah people love to say the
>hurr durr America cant be occupied because behind every blade of grass

When all you have to do as an occupying force is
>Build free housing to the displaced
>give free housing to the homeless
>give free Healthcare to all
>give guaranteed employment with competitive pay via employing them to build said homes and repair infustructure or manufacturing jobs for their war effort
>and a adequate UBI for pensioners,unemployed and disabled
>set affordable price on consumer goods and public sportsball spectacles in occupied areas

And with a sweet cherry on top of publicly trying and hanging plutocrats and technophiles that everyone on both sides of the spectrum hate like the Koch Brothers, Thiel, Zuckerberg, and Bill Gates and also razing Hollywood to the ground

And you wont just suddenly have 75% of the entire America population laying down their arms. Theyd put on your damn uniform and beg for you to deploy them.

America would be one of the easiest nations to occupy and extinguish a counter insurgency. Cause we pretty much laid out every grievance out on the table and no one really believes its worth defending poltically. And most already beleive its under occupation depends on which side you lean but one will say the jews or Blackrock the other will say rich wall st oligarchs and Blackrock. Hell I wonder how bad the manpower shortage would be here if the US military didnt offer such good benefits for joining.

>>65104894
>The idea that you can kill your way to victory against an insurgency is complete fantasy
I mean, you CAN if the political will is there

>>65104862
burn them all. no psychology, no terror tactics, no aid, no welfare, no allies. just death. death. DEATH!

>>65104878
Ridiculous to compare counterinsurgency with appeasement

>>65104975
>Machiavelli said that it's best to be BOTH
Machiavelli wrote a satire

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>>65105098
You have very clearly never been remotely close to anywhere in middle America

>>65105099
>>65104894
You can and cant and theres only a single digit number of cases and thats mostly because of leaders that went full retard like the Khmer Rouge or Paraguay in the Triple Alliance war that were genociding themselves or were trying to trade blows with a vastly superior force head on while being less concerned with a cholera pandemic happening within there own forces cause I guess they thought diarrhea makes you fight harder.

>hearts and minds
america stopped doing it after korea, it was all a mic adventure after korea

>spain plus her colonies
america let cuba go despite killing thousands of them, only asking for guantanamo bay in return
america kept puerto rico, guam and the philippines
the uprising in the philippines killed millions yet america was beloved in that country because all of the soldiers were sent home and engineers and teachers replaced them
>japan
despite being nuked twice they were marshall plan'd to firstie status in the early 60s and macarthur was revered as a god white man emperor
>germany
after the failed attempt of denatzeefication america simply reinstated everyone and left the remaining natzees to police themselves, quite an achievement
the first west german military and bonn gubmint were all former natzees who still hated kikes up until they started dying of boomerism in the 70s-90s
>korea
despite what nork propaganda claims, all norks were saved and rescued by american + un troops if they wished to move south even if their sork allies did not trust them and despised them as filthy gommies

>>65105113
You clearly watch too much Yellowstone if you honestly think some dude in Wisconsin is gonna be Soros' greatest soldier and fight for his high mortgage and medical debt.

>>65104890
>That honestly sounds hard
Well, yeah. Only retards believe war is easy.

>>65105114
No, you're missing the background of the concept; it's rooted in anti-rebellion tactics from throughout history. Up until a couple hundred years ago tops, rebellions would happen fucking constantly, because everyone was uneducated, poor, probably starving, and had like 10 kids so they could replace the ones that died within a few years. Nations that had too many small rebellions would tear apart at the seams before long.

It wasn't long until intelligent rulers figured out that being merciful to rebels, even when they had legitimate grievances and were perhaps even loyal to the crown (and merely rebelling against a local lord), invited disaster. You need to be merciless because otherwise, people in the next town over, and in the next generation down, will start to think that they can't lose: either the rebellion is successful, or they get let off with a slap on the wrist. Now compare this to a town in which every man woman and child is slaughtered and/or sold off as slaves after a group of them rebelled. It sets an example, and people the next town over will bow their heads, since not only are their own lives at stake, but also those of their friends and family.

Modern insurgency does not operate on fundamentally different principles. It is arguably even worse now, since social media can spread the "holy shit they're going to kill all of us if we keep protesting" or the "they will just let us riot and loot as much as we want" message far and wide. And like in ages past, modern leaders are going to wise up sooner or later.

>>65105122
You clearly watch too much RT if you think a foreign occupying force in America wouldn't be slaughtered to a man.

>>65105118
>america was beloved in that country
No they weren't. They saw Americans as traitors and liars. Thought they were getting freedom from Spain and just got a different yolk instead. Should go an read some actual memoirs and diaries of people from that time and how they felt. Even Mark Twain was against it.
>macarthur was revered as a god white man emperor
Ah, you're just shitposting or going off what you want to think, rather than what people actual thought. Alright.

>>65104894
>If you are good enough at military stuff it becomes much more like law enforcement, which is where most militaries stumble.

That requires large amounts of soldiers and support. More than were ever deployed.

>>65104862
The only counter to Insurgency is genocide. But that was never going to work because the American population wouldn't support it.

By the way we were in Afghanistan purely to restart and promote the Opium cultivation after the Taliban outlawed it in summer 2001. Got to make fat stacks on prescription drugs you know.

>>65105128
Cool sotry, bro. Meanwhile in relaity, people who decided to go full Assyrians all the time ended up like the Assyrians.

>It is arguably even worse now, since social media can spread the "holy shit they're going to kill all of us if we keep protesting" or the "they will just let us riot and loot as much as we want" message far and wide.
Or rather, it is even more pertinent to NOT be perceived as "holy shit they're gonna kil leveryone" now, becuase that message will spread far quicker, and thus make you a hated pariah who's fair game to be annihilated far quicker.

>>65105132
A foreign occupying force would have half the country fighting for them in short order just by supporting or owning the libs.

>>65105145
>The only counter to Insurgency is genocide.
History disagrees with your edgy armchair general take.

>>65105157
simply because nobody went through all the way. when the enemy realizes they're facing an existential threat and the only thing that will stop the war is their utter annihilation, most will simply escape, rather than fight to the death.

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>>65104870
>>65105081
A story from Nick Irving: he was engaging a Taliban fighter in a building, the fighter gave his mom his weapon and told her to run away with it. Nick saw a person with a weapon and killed her. The Taliban fighter thought he could run away safely because he didn't have a weapon and Americans wouldn't shoot him mom because she's a woman.

>>65104975
>then refuse to purchase from the local farmers

But they did. Especially in rural areas.

>>65104975
>How did that go in Vietnam and post-colonial wars generally?

Very well. The locals were happy. The problem was outsiders.

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>>65104894
>The idea that you can kill your way to victory against an insurgency is complete fantasy
It's very easy to win against insurgency by using communist Holodomor.
>confiscate all food and agriculturelal land and tools
>provide rations only to loyalists
>...
>profit!
And it's absolutely legal and just. Nobody blames communists that it was genocide or something.

>>65104975
>The Taliban faced protests about kicking girls out of school.

A vocal minority that barely got any attention because most Afghans don't care.

>>65105181
most countries in the world consider the holodomor genocide you dumb fuck

>>65104909
>>65104927
Israel needs to maintain a minimal population of kafir to do all the menial labor that's too good for Jews. It's more accurate to look at the Israeli/Palestine conflict as a civil war.

>>65105194
thatsthepoint.jpg

>>65104870
Ah yeah poor us govt if only they were allowed to bomb kids that would have won the war!

>>65105237
>hearts and mi...ACK!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Spikelets

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>>65104862

It's pretty core element of any successful COIN and is certainly more effective than arbitrary terror (which is basically a free recruiting tool for the enemy). It just needs to be coupled with ruthless, but highly directed violence towards the enemy and willingness to tolerate casualties.

*see the Malayan Emergency

To borrow from what Reagan once said, you want to kill the bastards for sure, but you also don't want there to be more of them in need of killing.

>>65104909
>The stated goal of Palestinians since day one is the complete extermination of all Israelis, and it has not ever changed.

Hamas =/= All Palestinians, calm down Scholmo, go bomb some Majoos instead

It works if the people you're winning over have actual political capital. Iraqis and Afghans did not. Giving a kid a candy bar just means he'll be slightly quieter about murdering you when the extremists with AKs roll up and start forcibly conscripting 16 year olds.

Fag shit doctrine,

remisced about by fags whose military careers were a meme

>>65104862
Only after you have killed 1-5% of the fighting age male population or more.

>>65104870
>>65104894
Rome and Colonial Era empires did it all the time. You just can't fuck around and put up with bullshit.

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Kill every women and children, then rape all the men to let them know who is the boss.

This will mind break them and they would resist.

>>65105321
>rape
I don't fuck uglies

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>>65105317

The Romans and pretty much all European colonial empires went out of their way to recruit foreign levies. It was always more

>Romans plus Jews they had bought off/joined them because they wanted the perks of Roman citizenship vs. Jews who wanted to remain independent of Roman rule

than just

>Romans vs. Jews

>>65104862
Yes, but not in the sense that handing out candy for dropping a JDAM on some guys lawn.

The true hearts and minds tactic is establishing technocratic states and ruthlessly forcing it on the population. You, as the invader, need to become the ultimate intermediary for everything and you have to ensure you are the only issuer of goodboy points that allow human life to be sustained in your AO.
you want to drive a car? Time for a driving test with the occupier driving school.
You want the water/food rations being handed out? No problem, here's your iraqi EBT card that we can control and turn off when we choose to. No your brother needs to get one too if he wants a ration. Yes, all your 16 cousins need to show up themselves. You're a farmer? Well register at the occupational district office with your biometrics please then we'll allow you to pick a days worth of fertilizer. Want to farm opium? Sure, just be sure to get your opium farming license and expect some boys coming by to inspect your farm for "compliance".

Meanwhile the violent part of the counterinsurgency should not so much follow on prosecuting insurgents directly, but rather prevent insurgents from undermining your authority. I.e. If you have to decide between blowing up a black market or a top level insurgency meeting you go for the black market. Burn down the farm of the guys who didn't get their opium licenses.

That way you create a permanent incentive structure where supporting your occupation means: water/food/medical supplies/jobs/electricity and resisting your occupation means life as a fugitive.

>>65104862
It never works. You won't win hearts and minds without outright subjugating the people first, to do it the other way around is just giving away free stuff that will be forgotten or even used against you later.

>>65104917
It's Chinese candy, the two might not be mutually exclusive.

>>65104862
If you are invading a country, the locals will always hate you.

>>65105098
>believes this
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

>>65104862
It is important; it can be a handicap if improperly implemented
If the locals hate you, the insurgents have an effectively unlimited recruitment pool, can move freely, hide anywhere etc.
If the locals like you more than the insurgents, they will not join the insurgent cause, will actively shun them, which cuts them off supplies, and will actively snitch on them
However the key to that is that their lives need to tangibly improve from the pre-invasion status quo, which is frankly really difficult and expensive to do effectively

>>65104924
Guerilla warfare is not a sophisticated strategy which magically invalidates common military doctrine. It is just a a weaker force focusing on hit-and-run tactics rather than enganging their adversary on open field. What the Japanese did on the islands or in Burma was for the most part not too different from how the Vietcong or the guerillas in Myanmar fought.
Fact is, Japan and Germany got defeated and after WW2 not a significant numbers of natives were willing to raise up Arms against the American Occupiers.

>>65104870
It's almost like they expected soldiers to actually shoot the enemy and not hide and wait for an airstrike like a bunch of pussies they are.

>>65106016
I think they were trying to keep the causalities to a minimum on both sides.

Remove water privileges from nearby villages that don`t comply and fully cooperate.

>>65106016
What if they kill a civilian when they shoot the building?

>>65104862

>Hearts and minds
Nobody cared about that
>The boy fucking warlords embezzling our funding are somehow better than the boy fucking warlords who won't take our money
Is the more realistic situation

>>65105098
>all you'd have to do
>take care of their every political grievance, respect their values, tend to their smallest difficulties, and generally just serve them unconditionally while fighting their former masters

>>65105098
You don't genuinely believe this right? Do you understand how enormously expensive that would be? You'd need the GDP of a nation just for the fucking healthcare, nevermind the housing, pensions and UBI

>>65104862
its viable just too granular like you obviously want to hit vitals a headshot/heartshot is ideal but in a fight you just shoot as much as possible and hole you hit something

>>65105161
You're just repeating the same bullshit at me. Again, tell it to the Assyrians. They actually tried your idiocy.

>>65105176
>Vietnam
>The locals were happy.
You don't actually believe this, do you?

>>65104862
>Is "Hearts and Minds" a viable counter insurgency tactic or is it just a handicap?
Handicap. The people who have their minds set on hating us are not going to change because we give them slaps on the wrist.

>>65106237
I'm just repeating what Vietnamese people told me.

>>65105436
This is an interesting prospect
Has such a scheme worked before?

>>65105332
Id go as far as saying breakway states/regions joining Canada or Mexico wouldnt even qualify as foreign occupation given how integrated culturally and economically the US's two geographical neighbors are.
Certainly not the same as China sending an amphibious flotilla to Miami to conquer it by force, or something.

>>65106324
Of all places why Miami

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>>65105332
>>65106324
There is no path where a US breakaway could join Canada because Québec would veto a huge influx of English-speakers trying to join Canada.

>>65104862
"Hearts and Minds" works when you apply it to the right people. There is no unified "heart and mind" of an entire country, you win over the ones who can get things done, and turn a blind eye to what they do the other groups.
>>65104894
>If you are good enough at military stuff it becomes much more like law enforcement
This was solved thousands of years ago. Dump your own population in the newly conquered area, and make the day to day peacekeeping their problem

>>65104924
Germany tried, Western allies heavily utilized death squads to take out male lineages, and Soviets forced mass population relocations.

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>>65104862
Hearts and minds is a factor of COIN operations. It is not the only one. That's what we learned from Vietnam. Just going for a body count doesn't work. Naked metrics like k/d ratios are not useful in and of themselves, though they are useful to demonstrate military superiority. The point is to take out insurgent elements while not instigating conflict with the native population and therefore make more insurgents. The failure of Afghanistan wasn't that were were building their nation up. It's that we weren't ruthless enough about it. What we should have done is educate their kids with our teachers. Tech them our language, raise them to be the future leaders, stateside if necessary, and then send them back to rule in our stead. We had 20 years to do that, and we didn't.

>>65106324
The civil war scenario that was posted a few years ago kinda highlighted why any invasion isn't worth the trouble. The geography alone is a functional repellant.

>Rolling grassland, no cover
>Rolling grassland, no cover
>Rolling grassland, no cover
>Wide river with a narrow fucking bridge
>Rolling grassland, no cover
>Misty forests
>Mountains
>Cement factory shoved in mountain's armpit
>More misty forests and rolling hills with little to no cover
>CASINO!

>>65106516
Estonia is still here, Chile could've worked, Germany never did any of that shit.

>>65104862
it is, unless it's just play pretend for PR while dronestriking weddings and blowing up reporters

>>65105294
How is it that fucking pregnant Anne Frank poster knows this, but nobody else wants to accept it? The fact is that politics always gets in the way. It's the same reason the Kurds won't fight for us in Iran, because last time we used them, we left them out to dry for the sake of appeasing the fucking Turks of all people.

>>65106324
The US is far more likely to build itself into a multinational union state through closer integration with Canada and Mexico than to break apart only to have its pieces absorbed by its neighbors.

>>65106140
Not if you hop state by state

>>65104862

Counterinsurgency begins with providing legit governance. Nobody wants to admit this but Taliban won by being less corrupt than the US puppets, that went a long way in building community support. Hearts and Minds only works when the government you're trying to legitimize can rule outside of the nations capital.There's a reason Kharzai was nicknamed the President of Kabul.

>>65106557
The failure of Afghanistan wasn't that were were building their nation up. It's that we weren't ruthless enough about it. What we should have done is educate their kids with our teachers. Tech them our language, raise them to be the future leaders, stateside if necessary, and then send them back to rule in our stead

That might give you a few elected leaders here and there but reaching the poorest areas (the Taliban strongholds) would still be impossible.Your puppets would still be motivated by money flowing from the US, they'd still have embezzling, they'd still have western corruption,all of that is pure gold for the Taliban to exploit.

>>65107503
(forgot to greentext)

>The failure of Afghanistan wasn't that were were building their nation up. It's that we weren't ruthless enough about it. What we should have done is educate their kids with our teachers. Tech them our language, raise them to be the future leaders, stateside if necessary, and then send them back to rule in our stead

>>65106446
Quebecois hate Americans enough to accept it out of spite.

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>>65106324
First off, the Chinese navy would have to get within striking distance of Florida, Taking the long way around the globe past every friendly nation and satellite. This gives the US military ample time to see them coming and stage forces in the Atlantic, gulf and Caribbean.

But let's just say by some miracle the Chinese invade florida.
The east coast is one long 100 mile track of an endless city that stretches from Jupiter to south of Miami in Homestead. Densely populated by millions of "Florida-men" and their arsenal of privately owned weapons. not to mention organized gangs in Miami, Lauderdale, and Palm Beach county. Navy and airforce bases located in the keys and panhandle and several national guard units.

The west cost, from the gulf side isn't much better with only 2 major ports capable of supporting logistics and miles of shallow draft sandy beaches that lead into impassable swamps crisscrossed by narrow roads for choke points. No elevation to place artillery on making it a treacherously slow, exposed advance across hostile terrain.

Northern Florida
Is very close to Savannah, Home of the 3rd ID and 1st Battalion 75th Ranger Regiment And while an amphibious landing here would offer less resistance it would effectively put them on the back door of Eglin Airforce base and surrounded on all sides by military units from the north south and west.

Go on, Invade Florida, I dare you.

>>65104862
Hearts and minds is the only viable counter-insurgency method, unless you want to just genocide the lot.
The US just didn't reach any of their hearts or minds, because instead of seeing things from the locals' perspective, the jackasses tried to export Democracy and Freedom to a backwater Islamic shithole. Same shit as happened in Vietnam. Burgers are too self-centered at every level of thought to even be capable of understanding other peoples.