Quote Originally Posted by Bob's World View Post
JMA,

I think you are getting your apples mixed in with my oranges a bit here. Rather than agonizing over the tactual inability to "fix" the enemy, it may be more instructive to step back and ask what exactly the Brits were doing in South Africa and what exactly the US is doing in Afghanistan and what they hoped to gain from their respective operations.
Not sure I am Bob. Who would be crazy enough to want to take any of the larger/major powers with "much more conventional warfare"? Take look back at the South Ossetia war where Georgia made a miscalculation over Russian willingness to resort to military action (and the unwillingness of the US to support them in the face of and at the risk of some real war).

So in this and the previous response I am addressing the likelihood of "much more conventional warfare" in the future.

Yes, I guess one could step back and find a few small points about any different action/war which will render the lessons learned tenuous (in some peoples minds). I say that one (certainly the US) should learn (or better should have studied and learned from) from the British experience of fighting wars all over their empire and the world against disparate enemies. Most often arriving in a new land to face a new enemy with an arrogance in the officer corps (who knew it all from past campaigns) to ensure early reverses against any but the most inept enemy.

To excuse their history of more losses than victories the Brits will tell you that in a war all you need to do is win the last battle.

Like the Brits in the Boer wars who threw "numbers" rather than brain power at the problem so have the US begun to use "surges" as their means of overwhelming their enemies (as a variation on that theme). May have worked in South Africa circa 1900 and in Iraq but maybe not so good in Afghanistan (time will tell).

Neither were on their home turf, but my understanding is that the British intent was to stay, setup shop, and establish dominion and governance over the region and all who lived there. Killing off all who opposed such an arrangement works, as was well demonstrated in North and South America.
May I suggest you need to improve upon your understanding of the events around the two Boer wars

The US goals in Afghanistan are quite different. "All" (in quotes, because even this is infeasible) the President has asked us to do is “to disrupt, dismantle, and eventually defeat al Qaeda and to prevent their return to either Afghanistan or Pakistan.” I believe that would make the "enemy" AQ rather than the Taliban, and any earth that gets "scorched" in the process is not going to belong to either the US or AQ, now is it?
Is that what is happening on the ground?

But that does not matter. The fact remains that the US and Brit forces in Afghanistan has no chance of winning any war there against the Taliban, the heroin producers and dealers, or anyone else. Bad strategy, tactical restrictions and in too many cases just plain poor soldiering give a prognosis of no hope in hell.

[snip]

No, our problem is not a tactical one, our problem is that we have mischaracterized the nature of AQ in general, and then allowed ourselves to get into a supporting operation of helping the Northern Alliance gain power in Afghanistan and then defending them against the other half of the society that was represented by the Taliban.
The problem is a tactical one in that without tactical competence the goals (of the US president, what ever they may be at any given moment) cannot be realised.

[snip]