This Is What Winning Looks Like – Afghanistan War Diary

Re:This Is What Winning Looks Like – Afghanistan War Diary by bane on Monday May 27, 2013 @07:07PM (#5777072)

"These involve components though that are unacceptable in modern warfare. e.g. the threat and execution of collective punishment against large populations. The smaller force doesn't need to subdue the entire population at once, just a chunk at a time."

In other words, be the Taliban.

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Re:This Is What Winning Looks Like – Afghanistan War Diary by YZF on Monday May 27, 2013 @07:51PM (#5777205)

Not by far. The Romans would kill a large portion of a rebellious city/village (or all) and the rest would be shipped away as slaves. You wouldn't want to mess with them.

The Taliban is part of the local population. They will definitely intimidate, kill, terrorize but it's not the same.

EDIT: Just to be clear... I'm not proposing the US behave like the Romans used to. If anything, given the limitations it should have been more careful in the way it applies force.

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Re:This Is What Winning Looks Like – Afghanistan War Diary by dmpk2k on Tuesday May 28, 2013 @06:13AM (#5779137)

Another fine example were the Mongols. They achieved a lot with very few soldiers. They also left mountains of skulls (literally) and cities where they murdered everything (including animals) in their wake.

Suffice to say, after a while nobody wanted to fight the Mongols. The subjugated did what they were told, because anything was better than the alternative: they might keep your prettiest daughters as sex slaves (if the daughters were lucky), kill you and all other members of your family, kill your dogs, kill your cows, kill the chickens, and then burn down the entire city for kicks. Maybe they even killed the rats.

Then they'd send back a scouting party a couple days later to execute any survivors who someone escaped the first massacre.

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