Posted on 08/23/2017 7:19:07 AM PDT by Enlightened1
Historically speaking has any Empire won a war of counter insurgency? I'm hearing this talk about Afghanistan, and do not know the answer?
I think the odds are not good when you think of the American Revolution, Vietnam, Kashmir, Pakistan, Afghanistan, etc.. and an added bonus the "rules of engagement".
For the record, I am very strong President Trump supporter. Love the guy and will support him 100%.
Just looking for good answers. Thanks!
I though Malaysia kicked out U.K.?
England defeated the Malaya insurgency in the 1950s.
England defeated the Boers in 1900.
We defeated the Plains tribes by destroying their “base camps” ( villages
and horse herds), cutting off their food supply (buffalo) and confining those captured in massive POW camps (reservations).
To defeat an insurgency, you have to destroy their bases.
To defeat the Afghan insurgency, we have to destroy their Pakistan bases
and cut off their money supply.
Simple, actually.
We let the Viet Cong have bases in Cambodia and Laos an N. Vietnam,
and never cut off their supplies or destroyed their bases outside of S. Vietnam.
Result: we grew tired, and gave up.
Don’t need nukes. Use B52s with HE and incendiary bombs, one city at a time, from east to west. Drive the survivors, if any, into Iran.
Khitan General: My fear is that my sons will never understand me... Hao! Dai ye! We won again! [Cheers] This is good. But what is best in life?
Khitan Warrior: The open steppe, a fleet horse, falcons at your wrist, and the wind in your hair.
Khitan General: Wrong! Conan, what is best in life?
Conan: To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women!
Khitan General: [Cheers]...That is good.
Bingo!
Yeah a war of attrition.
I know with Vietnam we lost 50k and Vietnam lost over 3 million.
Short answer is yes. But you have to be prepared (willing and able) to kill them all, including woman and children).
Before you say we could never do that, look back at WWII. We were carpet bombing cities. We were in fact willing and able to kill civilians, men, women and children. As harsh as this was, it ended the war.
Since then we have fought wars in half measures trying to spare the “innocents”. The harsh truth is there are no innocents when two nations go to war. The men fighting on the front line would not be able to fight without the support of the people behind them.
This is also true in a guerrilla war. Without the people’s support they would not be able to fight for long.
To win a war you need to break the will of your enemy to resist. One way to do that is by killing their families.
Terrorism will continue as long as they know their families are safe from reprisals.
I’m not suggesting a war of attrition.
Neutron bomb.
There were peasant rebellions across Europe in 1849. Almost universal.
I don’t think that counts since the victors were native to Spain.
Malaysia did leave the Empire. But the war was fought over Communist infiltration[Primarily Chinese] into Malaysia.
So, you see the U.S. as the bad guys?
You’re kidding, right?
Lighten up, Francis.
I don’t think the Spanish Civil War is the same thing as an empire fighting off an insurgency. Both sides of the Spanish Civil War were mainly Spaniards, and they were both fighting in their home country. This is what makes it so difficult for an empire to deal with local insurgencies. The insurgents have a “home field advantage” in so many respects — including local knowledge of the geography as well as local knowledge of the people.
China surrounded? Might want to check your geography.
Yes, China did on several occasions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_rebellions_in_China
World War II was the last war the U.S. fought as a sovereign nation against other sovereign nations.
Since World War II, every U.S. military conflict has involved the U.S. as a global empire building and maintaining its foothold in other countries. That's why these military campaigns were fought using "half measures." You can lay waste to an enemy nation and leave it as a smoking ruins if you are fighting for the survival of your country, but that approach is pointless and completely defeats the purpose when the aim of your military campaign is to defeat your enemy so you can do business with him.
Yes, the British put down Sean Fein in the early 20th with counter-insurgency. It’s not a matter of tactics, it’s a matter of will:
“Horror has a face. And you must make a friend of horror. Horror and moral terror are your friends. If they are not then they are enemies to be feared.
They are truly enemies. I remember when I was with Special Forces, seems a thousand centuries ago. We went into a camp to inoculate the children. We left the camp after we had inoculated the children for Polio, and this old man came running after us and he was crying. He couldn’t see. We went back there and they had come and hacked off every inoculated arm. There they were in a pile, a pile of little arms. And I remember, I, I, I cried, I wept like some grandmother. I wanted to tear my teeth out. I didn’t know what I wanted to do. And I want to remember it. I never want to forget it. I never want to forget. And then I realized, like I was shot, like I was shot with a diamond, a diamond bullet right through my forehead. And I thought, my God, the genius of that. The genius. The will to do that. Perfect, genuine, complete, crystalline, pure.
And then I realized they were stronger than we. Because they could stand that these were not monsters. These were men, trained cadres, these men who fought with their hearts, who had families, who had children, who were filled with love, but they had the strength, the strength, to do that. If I had ten divisions of those men our troubles here would be over very quickly. You have to have men who are moral and at the same time who are able to utilize their primordial instincts to kill without feeling, without passion, without judgment, without judgment. Because it’s judgment that defeats us.”
There are two ways to defeat enemies: brutality and utter suppression, as with the Indians and the Filipino Muslims, or establishing a new ruling group, as we did in West Germany and Japan by suppressing the militarist factions and empowering pro-Western groups. The United States will not engage in massacres of noncombatants, torture far surpassing waterboarding or sleep deprivation, and profanation of the Muslim religion that worked in the Philippines. But the Muslim nations of the Middle East do not have the level of education and history of civil society that West Germany or Japan had. At best, we may be able to bring in leaders like Assad, Saddam Hussein, or Qaddafi, secular Arab nationalist dictators who were brutal but at least opposed to radical Islam.
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