Quote Originally Posted by Bob's World
...I turn to Holly and say, "you realize this entire series is an analogy for the US occupations of places like Afghanistan and Iraq, right?"
It reminds me of The Last Valley from 1971 which was an analogy for the Vietnam War, albeit set some 330 years earlier and based upon a book written well before Vietnam...

Quote Originally Posted by Bob's World
The twist in this show is that the audience immediately identifies with and builds empathy for the resistance. But in Vietnam, in Afghanistan, in Iraq, this was not our role. We were, we are, the alien invader. That faceless entity employing superior technology and power to impose our will onto others. We too build local security forces, employ drones to spy and kill, and disregard rights of justice we see as fundamental in the US Bill of rights in our hot pursuit of the terrorists of the resistance.
That glosses over the nuances of each conflict, particularly where Vietnam is concerned.

Vietnam
Ho Chi Minh may have had more legitimacy than the various leaders of the South due to his struggle against Japanese and French occupation, but to impose Communist rule on the north required Stalinist methods, including the mass murder of Northern civilians. Despite local adaptation, Communism was not indigenous to Vietnam and had to be imposed by force.

The United States certainly misunderstood the dynamics of Vietnam, including those between the Buddhists and Catholics, but there were clear parallels to the situation in Korea: mass murder, imprisonment and deportation was required for each northern and southern state to survive, and would be required again after unification. Better intelligence would have determined that Ho was not Kim and that a Vietnam united under Communism would not have been an outpost for Soviet or Chinese expansion.

Iraq
The issue was not cultural but political. The de-Ba'athification policy was sheer folly and created the Sunni Arab insurgency. Had the US found suitable Ba'athist leaders to govern Iraq and transition it into a more inclusive society, the situation would have turned out differently.

Afghanistan
Afghanistan has been a failed state gripped in a civil war since before the Soviets invaded. It has suffered whether foreign powers are interfering or not. If the US had secured northern Afghanistan and left the south as a no-man's land subject to UAV patrols, there might be a viable state...