"They've already repeated all of our mistakes," [Russian ambassador to Afghanistan] Zamir Kabulov said, speaking of what the United States has done, and failed to do, since the Taliban were toppled from power in November 2001 and U.S. troops began moving into old Soviet bases like the one at Bagram, north of Kabul. "Now, they're making mistakes of their own, ones for which we do not own the copyright".
One of the basic tools of war is to study past campaigns to see what can be learned from them. The Germans learned a lot about maneuver warfare by studying the American Civil War, lessons they put to good use in 1939 and 1940.
The view of the Bush Administration and, yes, of the Pentagon seems to be that the American military can create its own reality and that the lessons of the past have no bearing on the present.
That doesn't seem to be working out very well.
The Afghan Campaign by Pressfield (I think) covers how not to conquer the tribes, but declare victory and move on - All, Britain, Soviet Union, and the United States should have read about Alexander the Great's war there and not bothered to repeat it.
ReplyDeleteBut we're Americans. We're, like, the biggest kick-asses in the world and stuff. Oh sure, those pitiful inferior peoples might have failed, but we're U S A fuck yeah! U S A! U S A! U S A! We're number one! We're number one! Yay!
ReplyDeleteAnd anybody who says that the USA isn't number one is, like, un-American! So there!
-- Badtux the American Exceptionalism Penguin
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