If you haven't already, read Dereliction of Duty by H. R. McMaster. It is the byproduct of his doctoral dissertation, and a damn good--and sobering/maddening--read.
If you haven't already, read Dereliction of Duty by H. R. McMaster. It is the byproduct of his doctoral dissertation, and a damn good--and sobering/maddening--read.
The point of bringing up Afghanistan was to was to illustrate the parallel between Viet Nam back then and Afghanistan now. There are many of those parallels. Both societies were largely agrarian and uneducated. Both had long histories of resistance to what they saw as "invaders." Both had long borders with other countries. Both societies did not look at death like westerners do. Both societies have changed very little at their core for centuries.
One the one side (NVA/VC - Taliban), you have a group that is single-minded and will use whatever cruelty is necessary to accomplish their goal. When they are weak, they pull back and use classic guerrilla tactics, such as assassination and small hit & run raids. When they are strong, they attack in number. They do not worry about casualties because their core is fanatical. The Vietnamese and the Afghans have extensive histories of fighting "invaders," even if that means fighting for a century or two. They have developed extensive smuggling routes through some of the most inhospitable terrain on the planet.
On the other side, you have a group (SVN & current Afghan leadership) that is thoroughly corrupt. This group is easily portrayed by the other side to the mostly uneducated populace as being puppets of outside forces. This group cannot survive without being propped up by its' allies on a continuous basis. The general populace does not identify with this side and are fearful of the other side, so much so that they have to be coerced in some way (money, imprisonment, etc.) to join this side.
Again, without having the fortitude to take the war on a large scale (by that, I mean large numbers of boots on the ground) to the suppliers (back then - DRVN or even China, now- Pakistan), even the set backs of mining Haiphong or the large scale bombing in Afghanistan in 2001/2002 was just that, a set back. In the end, western democracies do not have the patience to out last that type of situation, especially when they have to spend vast amounts of their wealth to continue the fight and prop up their side while not seeing very much, if any, progress.
Now, I do want to say that I have enjoyed our discussion. It has been a pleasure to debate someone who has done their homework and actually knows something of the subject they are discussing. While I know that neither of us has changed the other's mind, I think it does everyone good to consider all information, not just their own. My hat is off to you, sir.
Thanks, fastreb, and I return the compliments.
My own interest in this question came in a ROTC class during the Vietnam War. The ROTC class was probably the only forum on campus in which one was allowed to think, much less debate, questions regarding Vietnam; something I very much appreciated as I tried to understand the War more. The ROTC department invited in a distinguished and world renowned--though decidedly cranky--professor who delivered a lecture about how the US Army was fighting the wrong war in Vietnam, using tactics of finding the PAVN and then attacking up a mountain to dislodge it, and then doing it again and again and again. I agreed that the tactics seemed dubious--basically ensuring a bloody war of attrition--but I had no idea of what the correct tactics were. So I asked the professor--who dismissed the question as being beneath him. He was glad to sneer at the Army's tactics, but had no idea of what tactics were appropriate. Nor, frankly, did our ROTC instructors.
So I started to do a lot of reading on war--what won wars and what lost wars? What wars cannot be won? I also talked to our Special Forces Master Sergeant; as General Abrams was purging Special Forces the Army sent a lot of the very senior and near- retirement SF senior NCO's to ROTC detachments to serve as riflery instructors and such. They were good at that, but they were also good at instructing generally because they had been taught that intensively and then had done it for years. For the most part they were far better instructors than our officers, who hadn't received much training in the field. They were also smart and very well read on military subjects (and not infrequently well-read generally--that generation of senior Special Forces NCO's were extremely impressive). Anyway, when I asked our Master Sergeant and some of his friends who came by to help teach us how one won wars, the answer was always the same--break the enemy's will. And if you couldn't do that at first, cut his main force units off from supply. A modern army cannot survive more than a few weeks without more supply. The pointed to engagements like Stalingrad, or the cutting off Japanese bases, or America's seizure of Sedan in November, 1918 (through which half of the German Army's supplies passed in World War I. The Army of Northern Virginia would never have surrendered, except that Grant finally cut Lee off from resupply in April 1865.
That insight--something not taught in ROTC classes, strangely enough--but explained by some extraordinary NCO's--along with fire and movement, fire and maneuver (which were taught in ROTC), and the German notion of the schwerpunkt (if I'm spelling that correctly) seem to me to collectively be a a pretty good summary of the ground-war tactics that are good at winning battles and wars.