Does "hurr-durr we would've won if it wasn't for

>>33435390
>Winning unconventional wars
>"Winning" an occupation
haha good one

>>33435421
well in case it needed spelling out I was referring to the major unconventional wars the US has been involved with since WW2: Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq all of which were occupations as well, so yeah good one.

"ROE lost us the war" fags BTFO

>>33435520
>wars
>conflicts
Read a fucking book once in a while.

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>>33435520
And I'm saying you don't "win" occupations.
The closest thing I can think of a successful unconventional war is Chechnya, or the outcome of it at least. Kick their ass, then pump money into the area and put it under the control of someone they like and someone that likes their handler as well; basically rebuilding it to your and their liking. This could possibly work in Iraq, but a lot of people in the area don't want Iraq in any position of power/influence, so that's not happening. Obviously this wouldn't work in Afghanistan due to the lack of a influential centralized government outside of the cities.

>>33435706
you know what I mean, take your autistic nit picking and bad comebacks somewhere else faggot

>>33435830
thats a good example of a success though I think its pretty borderline really given that the population of Chechnya was just over 1 million meaning the insurgency could actually be destroyed by attrition, which is pretty unachievable elsewhere such as Iraq where the population of one city alone is upto 1 million, also the fact it was right on Russias doorstep and was largely comprised of people of similar ethnic background was the only factors that allowed Russia a second go at Chechnya, and finally the fact the insurgency was cut off from supply or significant outside support for the most part by the second war really made success of some sort inevitable for Russia.

The fact it took the Russians two wars to get things in line just highlights there incompetence rather then sets any example of how to win an occupation, getting such beneficial circumstances is basically impossible anywhere else in the world.

First off, what a straw man argument; I have never heard anyone say that the ROE caused us to "lose". Conversely, I've never heard anyone seriously argue that the restrictive ROE didn't make our job far more difficult.

I am sick and tired of this meme that the US "lost the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Vietnam". We didn't fail in the war, where the AMERICAN LEFT always fails is the nation building period that must take place after the war itself. History shows that the proper way to conduct such things is as follows: defeat, humiliation, occupation, rehabilitation, and, finally, partnership.

We conduct the first two phases extraordinarily well. However, it's politically expedient for the left to use war to rile up and galvanize the American electorate into voting them into power and making the egregious follies.

This invariably leads to the tying of our military's hands and the denial of the forces required for occupation (see The Surge, which was a very modest request in terms of the scale of the project).

just when we are finally seeing stability and results we are forced withdraw our forces for political reasons; we sustained remarkably few casualties for an invasion and occupation--especially when one considers the period of time we were there.

We prematurely hand over the reigns of government and law enforcement to inept officials because we are forced too.

So what happens? Well, I think we all saw the whole region implode after we left and deteriorate into the petty tribal and religious conflicts shortly after we left. I think this, more than anything, highlights the successes we did see. We had established a functioning republic, established law and order, built infrastructure, and had begun to westernize the nation. As soon as we leave, that all goes away.

We forfeit success because we lacked the willingness to do what's required: stay, in force, indefinitely. Just look to our great successes in Europe, Japan, and Korea.

>>33436629
The issue here is what you're proposing is more properly an invasion and annexation. Conquest.

The Left see that as unacceptable, and are perfectly happy to sabotage the effort not just to stop what they view as "immoral" conduct, but also to make the Right less likely to try in the first place (as they won't do steps 1&2 if they feel the Left will always kibosh steps 3+).

>>33436629
>>33436805
>why america will not win another war until a time where the left wont sabotage it.

>>33436019
>The fact it took the Russians two wars to get things in line just highlights there incompetence
>incompetence
Wow it's almost like their entire country collapsed not too long ago!
Generally when every aspect of a country implodes, everything kinda goes to shit, ya know?

>>33435390
>Vietnamese peasant supporst US
>commies shot traitor of communism in the head
>its ok its their ROE
>commies won Vietnam
Makes you think...

>>33436629
Anybody that says we didn't lose Vietnam is pants on head retarded. We had so many mistaken assumptions about the conflict and the way we fought was so laughably ineffective that it's a miracle McNamara and Westmoreland retain even a shred of respect by people today. Those serving under them certainly hated them.

1. If we took out North Vietnam with an actual invasion, China would've gotten involved with its gorillion man army and we would have a really sticky situation ahead. We have the secret documents these day to prove it.

2. Endless bombing campaigns did jack shit to keep the NLF from maintaining a military posture. To keep fighting they only needed 5% of all supplies from North Vietnam and China to reach their destination in the South. But dropping the entirety of WWII on a tiny naiton is sure to endear us to its population right????

3. It's retarded to think that the war was the result of Northern aggressors. The insurgency was almost entirely indigenous, and the NLF was a coalition of all kinds of political groups, united in their hate for the shitty government in Saigon.

4. Speaking of which, whenever we ended up finding evidence of NLF in a village like a bunker they were persuaded or threatened to dig, it was grounds for calling the entire population "potentially hostile". Then we'd burn the village, slaughter the animals and transfer the population out of the place. NOW they hate our guts even more and they're labeled "refugees".

cont.

>>33436629
>>33438899
5. Whenever soldiers got pissed that villagers had all their limbs in an area littered with mines point 4 still applies.

6. Search and destroy was catastrophically stupid. The overwhelming number of engagements were instigated by the enemy via ambush, whereupon they would shortly disengage, leaving American forces with their bombers over the air and their dicks in their hands. The entire reason for this shit was to use grunts as bait to attract ambushes so that they could pummel the area with gunships, artillery and bombs, but this shit stops making sense the instant you realize all that shit could be in the service of grinding up 1 blackshirt with a scoped rifle.

7. Air cav was dumb. Any mobility advantage is negated by the fact that the enemy can tell where you are 5 miles away and can choose if they want to deal with your shit that day. The jungle is a shitty place for an LZ, hot LZs hobbled ops right from the get go, and prepping LZs again lets everyone know where you are, and it was often wasted since the NLF more often than not just set up ambushes a few days after landing.

8. ARVN was completely useless since most were pressed into service like 18th century sailors, they hated their shitty government just as much as the NLF, the training sucked, their rations malnourished them, and they were spit on by their own people. Why the fuck would they want to risk their lives to fight against people exactly like them in the service of a dictator (maybe the second one that year) that kept the landlords in power that had been taking 40% of your harvest in rent each year.

>>33436805
No, not annexation. Partnership. It's akin to Korea, Japan, and Europe like j mentioned earlier.

>>33438899
1. I concur with this point; this is why our goal was to maintain the existence of South Vietnam, not unify a pro-western Vietnam. Buffer states are important, just ask Korea. I'm NOT arguing it was a good idea to go into Vietnam, but it was a worse idea to half ass it and worse still to leave

2. The problem with the air campaigns is the same problem we always see with the politically expedient idea that a war can be won from the air alone. We didn't present the enemy with an unwinable dilemma that an immediate follow up with ground assets would have; there are ways--passive and active--to negate the effects of air raids alone

3. Yes and no. There were those in South Vietnam who realized the evils of communism and saw the evils China and North Vietnam had already wrought. IMO, this was more of an anti-colonial fight against the French and the commies were natural allies against a western nation.

4. We are always fighting a hostile populace. There are ways to deal with it, both carrot and stick. See W.T. Sherman. There are successful ways to do COIN, but no clean, fast way.

5. See 4 (sort of)

6. Again, yes and no. Search and destroy wasn't flawed so much as the "body count" metric of success was. Western brass in general has a hard time understanding that defeat=/=destruction of the enemy and vice versa. Find their center of gravity; not the clauswitzian "center of strength" but the critical vulnerability.

>>33438899
7. Again, I'm forced to say "yes and no". We could use the noise of the helicopters to our advantage (deception) and often times the noise would be hard to pinpoint anyhow. The terrain was awful; our alternatives were hacking our way on foot through the jungle or using the waterways which was also awful. Air Cav is extremely useful, but it is a tool to be used or misused. There was certainly both in Vietnam, but it was perhaps the best and only logistical option most times.

8. Of course ARVN was inept. The NVA and VC were too. They had the advantage of being able to fight the guerilla war against conventional forces (both US and ARVN). They wouldn't become proficient until years of occupation and rebuilding after an armistice.

My measure of success is the existence of S. Vietnam while we were there. The 1973 Paris Peace Accords (suggested by an extraordinary battle weary NVA) ended hostilities and gaurenteed the existence of South Vietnam. The US makes an incredible stupid move and leaves under domestic political pressure. For two years, more or less, there was peace and the Vietnam war was over, ala Korean War.

In 1975 North Vietnam flagrantly violates the peace agreement, thus once again proving the hostile, aggressive nature of communism, and the US chooses not to get involved in a Second Vietnam War.

The South falls and that's that. It's certainly not a rousing victory, but it was most certainly not a defeat.

>>33435390
Germany after WW2
>we expected a 4 year minimum insurrection
>brutal torture of German prisoners made them give up their friends in hiding
>brutal carpet bombing of civilian population made the civilians eager to help the Allies stop any Nazi holdouts.
"bolstering Insurgent movements" is liberal professor non-sense
"occupying another country" has never been a goal.
Islam attacked the US on US soil, the goal was to take the rest of the fight to Islamic countries so we fuck up their lands while we fight the war they started.

>>33439877
>>33439941
Believe it or not, I really appreciate you having taken the time to respond in a concise and thoughtful manner, especially considering how vitriolic I was initially. I just can't envision a clear victory in the war that didn't utterly depopulate the south, or establish an official American protectorate of Vietnam -something that I personally feel would have been antithetical to our stated mission of creating an independent, democratic South Vietnam.

The war was something completely avoidable by so many presidents, particularly LBJ, who violated his anti-war stance that he took to defeat Goldwater. By sending 100,000 troops to a fight nobody in America really cared about, he sucked us into an nigh untenable position with little reward to be reaped even if we succeeded. The whole war is just tragic to me, so I may have sperged out a bit.

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>>33435520
>war
>didn't win
They were policing.

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>>33440061
>Islam attacked the US on US soil, the goal was to take the rest of the fight to Islamic countries so we fuck up their lands while we fight the war they started.
Wrong lands though. But no surprise here when your leader was literally drooling retard.

>>33435390
>Seriously I want someone that genuinely believes this to explain to me how further disregard for civilian casualties and even more inhumane treatment of captured combatants (which is basically what it comes down to) would achieve anything other then further inflaming the local population/bolstering Insurgent movements.
It worked since the dawn of history, why would it stop working right now?

The problem lies in inability to make proportional response. You can reward locals for helping you, but you can't punish them for helping your enemy. Guerilla movements can do both. Now the thing is that guerillas are also unreliable, often they don't have resources to do both, which should give regular armies advantage but inability to punish them for helping guerillas means that they will be friendly to you, but help the insurgents(because they will burn and kill everything and everybody they have if they won't help). This is the most "economical" answer for how to handle that kind of situation and villagers in some remote Afghan village may be uneducated but they aren't stupid - they know what to do when shit happens.

ROE is really different thing, in Vietnam for instance, the military couldn't raid into Cambodia or Laos until very late in the war despite Vietnamese crossing the borders whole the time. They couldn't bomb Hanoi either, because politicians feared that Soviet/Chinese advisors could die in bombings which would start WW3. They couldn't take any ground either for the very same reasons. They couldn't mine NV harbours where all the foreign aid was given to them. Once they've started doing those things, NVA officials showed up on the peace table, eager to talk about ending the hostilities. That they've later broke the peace without consequences is entirely different story about a failure of US administration, but you can clearly see that extended ROE=Win.

>>33442420
Korea is again a lesson of de-escalation. They could've break NK/Chinese defences in 1951 but in reality hardly anybody has ever performed actions with forces in size bigger than a company for the 1951-1953

The reasons were politically motivated
1. After McArthur wrecked NK people's army, Chinese intervened. Truman as well as Eisenhower were scared that if they'd wreck the Chinese, USSR would join the fun too
2. Once peace talks began, Truman administration wrongly assumed that if you don't push the communists too much, they will be willing to negotiate. In reality they delayed the talks whole the time
3. The war became heavily unpopular. Initially "sold" as a police action it was everything but it. Every single casualty was met with gigantic outrage from the same loudmouth journalists that talked about great and worthwhile sacrifices during WW2

As such all large scale operations, that could result in USSR intervention, communists refusing to take part in peace talks and huge casualties were suspended. NK/China was quite happy about it because they didn't have much problems with anti-war dissent while America was bound to have tons of it in such a long war

Now Eisenhower actually knew what were communists doing and he managed to get armistice signed. Later administrations lacked that understanding and that's why Vietnam dragged on for so long. But back to Korea. After winning the presidency, Eisenhower fast-forwarded programs which resulted in that nuclear warhead firing artillery. Got it shipped to Japan and started rumours that it will be used in Korea. Communists started being friendly and submissive during peace talks overnight. The reason was simple - bomber-dropped nukes were inaccurate and couldn't be really used on tactical scale, but artillery-fired ones allowed for it, which in turn led to manpower advantage communist nations had being negated. So they've signed peace to hold on to what they've already had, rather than continue to lose it all

>>33442395
Dubya was not a good president, and made a number of decisions that were bad for most Americans (great for him, tho), but he is not stupid. His southern drawl that makes him sound uneducated is an accent he learned as a strategic move when he went to run for governor of Texas, but it is not a Texas accent, none of his family has it, and if you look up old videos of him speaking he is northern and articulate.
The presidency is a ruthless meritocracy and if you think it is not extremely unlikely that a stupid person can win the job you are hopelessly naive. Being intelligent and ruthless do not mean you will be a good stateman and make the best decisions for everyone, unfortunately.

>>33435390

It does beg the question "If you know the RoE isn't working, why aren't you changing it?"

>>33435421

Korea was won. The Philippines were won. Fucking Japan was won. What did we do different all those times that we didn't now?