[watertom]

Afghanistan was a live combat training exercise. It gave valuable experience to career officers who will lead the U. S. Military for the next 30 years.

Russia and China can’t deploy troops in their own country. The U.S. military can land 10’s of thousands of troops, with a support supply line any where in the world on less than 24 hours notice, along with all the firepower that comes with those troops.

To “win” in Afghanistan would require slaughtering about half the population of the country, something the U.S. military could easily do, but it would make the U.S. into an international pariah, and that would be bad for business.

If the U.S. sovereignty was actually threatened all but the nuclear weapons would be unleashed, including all the top secret weapons that have been developed since the Gulf War, it would probably seem like Star Wars.

[kodah]

> Afghanistan was a live combat training exercise. It gave valuable experience to career officers who will lead the U. S. Military for the next 30 years

I served in the Marines and we were well aware people, especially those with combat experience, were leaving hand over fist. Amos was commandant during my time, and this article tells some of the story about what happened: https://taskandpurpose.com/news/the-marines-corps-needs-to-c...

[maybelsyrup]

> Afghanistan was a live combat training exercise. It gave valuable experience to career officers who will lead the U. S. Military for the next 30 years.

Experience at losing embarrassingly. (To guerrillas it created, no less!)

> The U.S. military can land 10’s of thousands of troops, with a support supply line any where in the world on less than 24 hours notice, along with all the firepower that comes with those troops.

You'd think that, wouldn't you? But it's a paper tiger: post-Vietnam, the US takes great (but quiet) care to ensure that the big song and dance is only deployed on some dirt-poor hellhole with no capable conventional fighting force to withstand the first few episodes of an erect Wolf Blitzer watching B1's firebomb civilians. After a little while, it either leaves in "triumph" (Panama, Grenada, Gulf War I) or it stays and gets bent over the barrel by the insurgencies that inevitably form from the remnants of the regime it invaded (Afghanistan, Gulf War II). It's only good at shooting fish in a barrel and making it look like Michael Bay movie. But after falling on its face so hilariously in Vietnam it knows it can't handle much more than that.

> To “win” in Afghanistan would require slaughtering about half the population of the country, something the U.S. military could easily do

You know I almost agree with you, but it's plain that when the US military sets its mind to something, failing miserably at that thing can't be far behind. (Unless that something is using our Nintendo pilots to remote-control-incinerate a high school graduation. So you may be right after all.)

> but it would make the U.S. into an international pariah

More than it already is, somehow?

> If the U.S. sovereignty was actually threatened all but the nuclear weapons would be unleashed, including all the top secret weapons that have been developed since the Gulf War, it would probably seem like Star Wars.

A cursory glance at the average BMI of our professional fighting forces leads me to suspect that the only similarity to Star Wars in such a scenario would be to scenes involving Jabba the Hutt.