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Strategies & Market Trends : Steve's Channelling Thread -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Rich1 who wrote (27500)	9/15/2001 6:28:30 PM
From: Bilow	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 30051

Hi Rich1; Re: "I doubt if we could win a war in Afghanistan...we couldnt win in Vietnam." This is very wrong for the following reasons: (1) Vietnam was supplied by a superpower with strong munitions manufacturing &c. Afghanistan is supplied by, well it's not supplied by anything right now. They're starving. This is a part of the world where the natives beat old pots and pans into bad bolt action rifles. (2) We never invaded North Vietnam, so its cities continued to supply the factories required to keep the soldiers in the South going. That would have been like trying to defeat Hitler without ever invading Europe. Bad idea, but Vietnam was a limited war due to factor number (1). (3) Military technology was much more equal between the US and Vietnam in 1969 than between the US and Afghanistan in 2001. Go read that article I gave the link to here: #reply-16355652 . You will learn things about how we've improved various weapons systems since Vietnam. (4) Vietnam had a lot more people than Afghanistan. (5) There are about 3~4 million refugee Afghanistanis that fled from the Taliban. They are likely to give us assistance. They're mostly in Pakistan, and Pakistan just gave us all the support we asked for (whatever that is). (6) Modern advances in combat systems have increased the need for good supply. For instance, American troops will be equipped with night vision goggles. The Afghans will probably have limited numbers of them too, but what will they do when their batteries run down? Imagine what it would be like to spend a dark night in the mountains thinking that every sound you here is an American soldier, protected with body armor, and preparing to put a hole in the center of your infrared image from 1000 yards away. The United States infantry will rule the night, and the Air Force will rule the day. (7) This war is being run by vicious, post-Vietnam Republicans. The lesson that you will not get into a shooting situation without the above (1)-(6) being in your favor was learned the hard way. Go read that article and see what the military planners do. -- Carl