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ironpony
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17 Aug 2021, 9:02 pm

Well I don't understand why according to the news, the Taliban have taken over Aghanistan and the capital pretty much now. Why is the taliban able to do this as soon as the US leaves? What good was staying there for 20 years almost if they couldn't defeat them in that time?

In WWII, the American army, defeated the Japanese army in much less time. Why have they seemed to not make much progress here?



RetroGamer87
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18 Aug 2021, 4:30 am

ironpony wrote:
Well I don't understand why according to the news, the Taliban have taken over Aghanistan and the capital pretty much now. Why is the taliban able to do this as soon as the US leaves? What good was staying there for 20 years almost if they couldn't defeat them in that time?

In WWII, the American army, defeated the Japanese army in much less time. Why have they seemed to not make much progress here?

The Japanese surrendered after they got nuked. The Taliban hasn't been nuked yet. That's the difference.


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ezbzbfcg2
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18 Aug 2021, 4:38 am

RetroGamer87 wrote:
ironpony wrote:
Well I don't understand why according to the news, the Taliban have taken over Aghanistan and the capital pretty much now. Why is the taliban able to do this as soon as the US leaves? What good was staying there for 20 years almost if they couldn't defeat them in that time?

In WWII, the American army, defeated the Japanese army in much less time. Why have they seemed to not make much progress here?

The Japanese surrendered after they got nuked. The Taliban hasn't been nuked yet. That's the difference.


In the mid 1940s, Japan was a quasi-industrialized country with a highly compartmentalized political/military structure; after the first two atomic bombs, it was made clear the THIRD bomb would be on Tokyo if they didn't surrender, which would have been totally disastrous for Japanese society, more so than being defeated.

Afghanistan is a mountainous, rural country with impoverished people still living at near-subsistence levels. Nuking Kabul won't get rid of the Taliban in the hinterland. You can bomb a bees' nest and take out the bee colony. It's very difficult to go around and try to arbitrarily kill individual bees here and there. Nuking Afghanistan would very much be a here-and-there exercise in futility.



ironpony
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18 Aug 2021, 9:04 am

That's true but I thought there was a lot less Taliban compared to Japanese unless there are a lot of taliban, close to Japan's population?



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18 Aug 2021, 1:29 pm

"9/11 is a hoax!" "More airport security? I demand to speak to your manager." *Someone gets arrested for getting belligerent with airport security* "It is my right to get on a plane without hassle!" "I'm going to organize a protest!" *Someone gets arrested for calling in a bomb threat as a prank against the 'Dems' who are behind the policy change* "Just you wait until my lawyer hears about this." "Do you know who I am?" *Someone gets arrested for going on a violent rampage at an airport in protest* "I heard on Fox News that this is all a conspiracy by the Dems to increase their control over us!" "You've messed with the wrong person." *Many people get arrested for doing all manner of stupid things at airports*



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18 Aug 2021, 3:32 pm

ezbzbfcg2 wrote:
RetroGamer87 wrote:
ironpony wrote:
Well I don't understand why according to the news, the Taliban have taken over Aghanistan and the capital pretty much now. Why is the taliban able to do this as soon as the US leaves? What good was staying there for 20 years almost if they couldn't defeat them in that time?

In WWII, the American army, defeated the Japanese army in much less time. Why have they seemed to not make much progress here?

The Japanese surrendered after they got nuked. The Taliban hasn't been nuked yet. That's the difference.


In the mid 1940s, Japan was a quasi-industrialized country with a highly compartmentalized political/military structure; after the first two atomic bombs, it was made clear the THIRD bomb would be on Tokyo if they didn't surrender, which would have been totally disastrous for Japanese society, more so than being defeated.

Afghanistan is a mountainous, rural country with impoverished people still living at near-subsistence levels. Nuking Kabul won't get rid of the Taliban in the hinterland. You can bomb a bees' nest and take out the bee colony. It's very difficult to go around and try to arbitrarily kill individual bees here and there. Nuking Afghanistan would very much be a here-and-there exercise in futility.



Actually the atomic bombs had NOTHING to do with it.

Japan was already defeated before Hiroshima. The atomic bombs shortened the final stage of the war, and saved lives on both sides. But Japan was already defeated.

The difference was (a) it was symmetrical warfare (and not assymetrical warfare), and (b) Japan was the aggressor.

Japan had conquered the important coastal regions of China, all of korea, all of Southeast Asia (including oil rich indonesia, the Phillipines, and essentially the entire western half of the Pacific.

Both sides had conventional armies, navies, and airforces. Both had to project power over great distances. By late 1945 the US had fought its was across the pacific, had surrounded Japan, was starving Japan out of both food, and oil, had bombed every major Japanese city to the ground using conventional bombs (more Japanese civilians were killed by conventional bombs than by the two atomic bombs combined), and was poised to invade with ground forces.

In Afganistan we were on the enemy's home soil. They had thousands of years of expertise in guerilla warfare. And they just waited us out. The situations were so different that there is no comparison.

Morally Al Queda was "the aggressor" by using Afganistan as the base for the 9-11 attacks (which are likened to Pearl Harbor). But tactically and strategically the US was the party the did the invading. So the Taliban were in their own back yards. Both the Japanese and the US forces were fighting each other in OTHER people's back yards ( ie hapless Pacific Islanders). Had there been no atomic bombs, and we did invade the Japanese home islands it would have been more like Afghanistan. But still not exactly like it.



ezbzbfcg2
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21 Aug 2021, 4:41 am

naturalplastic wrote:
Actually the atomic bombs had NOTHING to do with it.

Japan was already defeated before Hiroshima. The atomic bombs shortened the final stage of the war, and saved lives on both sides. But Japan was already defeated...


I agree, Japan was effectively defeated before the bombs. But without them, the Soviet Union would have gotten involved and Japan would have turned out the same way the Korean peninsula eventually did. (To this day, Russia still holds onto the formerly-Japanese Kuril Islands. They would have kept pushing into northern mainland Japan.)

I agree, symmetrical warfare. But, I was referring more to the nation-building/rebuilding afterward. The USA defeated Japan and rebuilt it. The USA overthrew the Taliban and took control of Afghanistan, but never successfully rebuilt that nation. The Taliban were more like revolutionaries that had no incentive to cease, as opposed to an official military that had been conquered and disarmed.



naturalplastic
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21 Aug 2021, 5:12 am

ironpony wrote:
That's true but I thought there was a lot less Taliban compared to Japanese unless there are a lot of taliban, close to Japan's population?


The German army, and the Japanese army, were both larger than the Taliban.

And they both killed a lot more American soldiers than the Taliban killed.

And they both lost far more men than the Taliban lost (we killed more of them too).

Not sure what you're asking.



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21 Aug 2021, 5:45 am

ezbzbfcg2 wrote:
naturalplastic wrote:
Actually the atomic bombs had NOTHING to do with it.

Japan was already defeated before Hiroshima. The atomic bombs shortened the final stage of the war, and saved lives on both sides. But Japan was already defeated...


I agree, Japan was effectively defeated before the bombs. But without them, the Soviet Union would have gotten involved and Japan would have turned out the same way the Korean peninsula eventually did. (To this day, Russia still holds onto the formerly-Japanese Kuril Islands. They would have kept pushing into northern mainland Japan.)

I agree, symmetrical warfare. But, I was referring more to the nation-building/rebuilding afterward. The USA defeated Japan and rebuilt it. The USA overthrew the Taliban and took control of Afghanistan, but never successfully rebuilt that nation. The Taliban were more like revolutionaries that had no incentive to cease, as opposed to an official military that had been conquered and disarmed.


I get what you're saying.

If we had not had the A bombs the war might have gone into a second phase that wouldve been more comparable to Afghanistan...sort of.

We had stripped Japan of access to Japans own conquered territories and the resources from those territories. And had wiped out their navy. The next step would have been us invading the home islands of Japan. But we didnt need to do that because we had the A bombs. If we had not had the A bombs then the invasion of the Japanese homeland might well have been more bloody for both sides then the whole rest of the Pacific War up to that point. And Japan was preparing to wage asymmetrical warfare on our invading armies. But the emperor came to his senses with the dropping of the A bombs and told his people to surrender.

I disagree with you using the term "rebuild". RE build?

Unlike Germany, Japan, Italy, and even Iraq, Afghanistan was never "built" in the first place. :lol:
So you cant rebuild it.

Further...unlike with Germany, Japan, Italy, and even Iraq, we didnt need to destroy much to take over the country.
The three Axis powers all suffered vast destruction by the allies, and to some degree so did Iraq later.

The Taliban just fled to the mountains, and then waited us out for 20 years. Put up very little fight. So there was little destruction. On top of the fact that there was little there to destroy anyway. The place was and is primitive even by third world standards.

We failed to "build", not to "RE build".

And therein lies the rub.

You could say that "the US should have built up the country and made it a viable state", but the American electorate had gotten so sick of "us spending trillions on building up foreign countries, and ignoring our own decaying infrastructure" that that was a big factor in driving the electorate into the arms of populists like Sanders, and Trump. And thats what drove Biden to "cut bait" in Afghanistan so abruptly.



ezbzbfcg2
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21 Aug 2021, 6:04 am

naturalplastic wrote:
I get what you're saying.

If we had not had the A bombs the war might have gone into a second phase that wouldve been more comparable to Afghanistan...sort of.

We had stripped Japan of access to Japans own conquered territories and the resources from those territories. And had wiped out their navy. The next step would have been us invading the home islands of Japan. But we didnt need to do that because we had the A bombs. If we had not had the A bombs then the invasion of the Japanese homeland might well have been more bloody for both sides then the whole rest of the Pacific War up to that point. And Japan was preparing to wage asymmetrical warfare on our invading armies. But the emperor came to his senses with the dropping of the A bombs and told his people to surrender.

I disagree with you using the term "rebuild". RE build?

Unlike Germany, Japan, Italy, and even Iraq, Afghanistan was never "built" in the first place. :lol:
So you cant rebuild it.

Further...unlike with Germany, Japan, Italy, and even Iraq, we didnt need to destroy much to take over the country.
The three Axis powers all suffered vast destruction by the allies, and to some degree so did Iraq later.

The Taliban just fled to the mountains, and then waited us out for 20 years. Put up very little fight. So there was little destruction. On top of the fact that there was little there to destroy anyway. The place was and is primitive even by third world standards.

We failed to "build", not to "RE build".

And therein lies the rub.

You could say that "the US should have built up the country and made it a viable state", but the American electorate had gotten so sick of "us spending trillions on building up foreign countries, and ignoring our own decaying infrastructure" that that was a big factor in driving the electorate into the arms of populists like Sanders, and Trump. And thats what drove Biden to "cut bait" in Afghanistan so abruptly.

It's odd. You're agreeing with me without even realizing it. I'd pointed out Japan was quasi-industrialized ("built") during the war, making it different in comparison to Afghanistan, which I'd said was always under-developed. I'd said nuking Kabul would be meaningless. The bombs on Japan very much hastily ended the war. Even if the Japanese had planned to engage in asymetrical warfare in the homeland in a bombless world, the Soviets (no longer fighting the Germans) would also have gotten involved.

Plus, we had a national figurehead in the way of the emperor, whom we retained, as some sort of uniting force for the Japanese people. He was there before WW2, during WW2, and well-after WW2.

I distinctly said nation-building/rebuilding. Note the SLASH and dual terminology. Don't misquote it. I never simply said "rebuilding." I did that on purpose, as definitions can be a bit gray. Some argue that any conquest and restructuring of a nation in any form is "rebuilding," so I allowed for all possible interpretations. Not sure why your harping on that phrase and misquoting what I wrote.

But, no, we never really rebuilt Afghanistan...that was my ORIGINAL point. We rebuilt an already "built" but devastated Japan. Afghanistan was a different animal entirely.

It's like you disagree with one post I made. When I respond, you then disagree with the second, while validating the first that you previously disagreed with. Very strange.

Also note the populace of a "built" country may more readily be apt to returning to such a "built" way of life after a devastating war. A populace that never experienced a "built" country in the first place, neither pre-war, during war, post-war, doesn't have the same incentives to accept a post-war administration.



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26 Aug 2021, 2:25 am

Well it seems that there are a lot of Americans stranded in the Afghanistan, and are trying to get the airport it seems, at least according to what I read, and the news.

But if America invades a country, and then years later, want to leave, is it customary for the invaders to want to leave by using commercial airports of the nation they have invaded, in order to leave? Why didn't the American government just fly them by choppers like they did in Vietnam for example?



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26 Aug 2021, 11:18 am

ironpony wrote:
Well it seems that there are a lot of Americans stranded in the Afghanistan, and are trying to get the airport it seems, at least according to what I read, and the news.

But if America invades a country, and then years later, want to leave, is it customary for the invaders to want to leave by using commercial airports of the nation they have invaded, in order to leave? Why didn't the American government just fly them by choppers like they did in Vietnam for example?


America pulled out of Vietnam in 1972, but the Saigon government didnt collapse until 1975. So Americans in Vietnam were already long gone when it did collapse. Different situation. It was Vietnamese who were fleeing on the heliocopters. Not Americans for the most part. And the heliocopters (short range aircraft) were able to land on US Navy aircraft carriers offshore.

Afghanistan is a much more primitive country than Vietnam was even back in the day, and unlike Vietnam its a landlocked country hundreds of miles inland, with no sea ports. The one airport in the one central big central city of Kabul is the ONLY way out except for remote mountain passes at the border- which are controlled by the Taliban by now.



ironpony
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26 Aug 2021, 12:56 pm

Oh okay, but if you are considered an enemy invader in another country, wouldn't the largest airport of that country be the last place you would want to go, because you are going to be caught by law enforcement there? Why do all these Americans think that going to the airport is a good idea? Do they think the government is just going to let them leave?



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26 Aug 2021, 1:22 pm

How else are the Americans going to get out of Afghanistan? They can't exactly hitchhike!



ironpony
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26 Aug 2021, 2:08 pm

But the Americans would have to take over the airport and hijack the jetplanes forcing the pilots to fly them out. Because the Afghan government is not going to just let them out. Is that the Americans' plan?



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26 Aug 2021, 3:13 pm

I guess the Americans would have to negotiate, somehow....or else take over the airport.