Hi Rich1; Britain fought the Afghanistanis with the same weapons (rifles) that the Afghanistanis defended themselves with. Britain had no air support, so they were unable to tell where the Afghanis were. In addition, Britain pissed off the locals.
There is no doubt that we will have full control of the air. Control of the air means that we don't have the supply problems that hounded the British. They had to haul all their ammunition by mules over the Kyber pass. Read this:
geocities.com
"There now was left only the question of a suitable punishment of the Kabulis. Some officers wished to destroy the Bala Hissar, some to burn the whole city. In the end Pollock settled for blowing up the great covered bazaar, one of the marvels of Asia. So strong was the structure it took Pollock's engineers two days to successfully complete the job and in the meantime the British troops embarked on an orgy of looting that affected both friends and enemies of the British alike." [From the above link.]
The Russian situation is different, but similar. Russia went in against the Afghanistanis and we supplied them with sophisticated antiaircraft weapons. That eliminated the Russian air control advantage. Oh, and they really pissed off the locals, with atrocities similar to the one quoted above. The result was similar to the problems that the British had.
If the US government really were unable to permanently pacify mountainous territory controlled by proud resourceful people (without the assistance of another power supplying them with arms), we'd still be fighting with the Apache:
charleslummis.com
In other words, what's the difference between the Apache and the Afghanistani? Pretty obvious. No one was sitting around giving the Apache all the stinger missiles they could use. In the Vietnamese as well as the Afghanistani wars, (and for that matter, the American revolution) it was only possible for the small country to prevail because an enemy of the big country was helping the small guy out. If this weren't a truism of history, the American Indians would still be controlling places like Aspen.
I wouldn't worry too much about Afghanistan. Like I said, all indications are that it will not be bloody at all. It is possible that you will see a happy mob scene similar to the one when US troops rolled into Kuwait. The Taliban has been running the country into the ground, and there's a lot of indications that they're tired of it. We'll probably let the Muslim countries take care of overseeing elections and replacing the Taliban with something democratic. Heck, Turkey is a Moslem country, and they've been in NATO for decades. You could be booking a vacation in Kabul summer after next.
-- Carl |
