this post was submitted on 28 Jan 2024
1091 points (94.8% liked)
Political Memes
5487 readers
3489 users here now
Welcome to politcal memes!
These are our rules:
Be civil
Jokes are okay, but don’t intentionally harass or disturb any member of our community. Sexism, racism and bigotry are not allowed. Good faith argumentation only. No posts discouraging people to vote or shaming people for voting.
No misinformation
Don’t post any intentional misinformation. When asked by mods, provide sources for any claims you make.
Posts should be memes
Random pictures do not qualify as memes. Relevance to politics is required.
No bots, spam or self-promotion
Follow instance rules, ask for your bot to be allowed on this community.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
The US did famously well against groups with just guns and IEDs.
That stint in the Middle East was a quick 20 min adventure.
Vietnam turned out to just be a tropical vacation.
There's no Viet Cong in Texas. I don't see Meal Team 6 dig tunnels in the thick Texan jungle.
Yes and no. We played that game by rules only we abided by.
Had we gone in and stayed without those rules, it would've been over within a year. But then we'd have committed a genocide and would be ruthless savages.
I feel that's some hubris chief. Similar to Vietnam the military objective was met, but the reason for war, and so the victory conditions, are the political objective. We failed those. And breaking our rules does not de-motivate the insurgency or move us to the political objective. Let's remember that one of those is a democracy and US ally in government in those countries.
We did not exhaust all options in Vietnam either, we tried to achieve a near impossible victory while restraining the level of violence we could achieve.
The Soviets didn't exactly hold back in Afghanistan...
Apples and oranges