US sends in B-52s in desperate bid to stop the Taliban seizing key Afghan cities - where British troops fought and died - as fighters seize prison and set all the inmates free in latest town to fall

dailymail.co.uk ^ | August 7, 2021 | DARREN BOYLE FOR MAILONLINE

[USAF1985]

Absolutely. We need to stop being liberators. Go in, conquer them and the leave. Let them pick up their own pieces. Keep doing it enough and maybe they’ll figure it out.

[Vlad0]

You can not conquer Afghanistan unless you are willing to be brutal enough to kill all opposition.

Kind of like Saddam Hussein, or Qaddafi.

Yes, ruthlessness by a strongman has shown to be one way to retain power in the Middle East, until the strongman dies, at which point the country they ran disintegrates.

Essentially that's what happened with Bush's poorly thought out war in Iraq, and then again with Hillary and Obama's even worse war in Libya.

Seems to be the only strategy that works, unfortunately.

But that's not what has happened in Afghanistan. The Taliban already lost their original leader to a drone strike more than a decade ago. They are an ideological movement (like the USSR), so while a strong leader is always a good thing, it's not what defines the Taliban.

The cultures over there just fight with each other until a "strong horse" shows up and murders anyone who shows the least resistance. If I remember correctly, Saddam actually said words to that effect to some of the young Americans who were guarding him. He actually seemed to be somewhat fond of them, or at least some of them.

Actually that's probably the most famous quote of Osama bin Laden:

"When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, they will naturally want to side with the strong horse. When people of the world look upon the confusion and atheism of the West, they see that Islam is the strong horse."

Bin Laden wasn't a strong man leader, in the mold of Saddam. He too was a part of their ideologically based movement. Those are much harder to shut down. You can't just cut the head off the snake, like we did in Iraq.

[Steely Tom]

Bin Laden wasn't a strong man leader, in the mold of Saddam. He too was a part of their ideologically based movement. Those are much harder to shut down. You can't just cut the head off the snake, like we did in Iraq.

Yes, I had not looked at it that way, and you make a good point.

Ideologically-based movements (to use your term) must be fought at the level of information, of experience, of people seeing for themselves what works and what doesn't.

Which is why we're seeing an information war, carried out at multiple levels in the world's information management systems.

That war is being fought with misinformation (the "Big Lie" tactic), with censorship (the "Cancel Culture"), and with the subversion of the young (through the "education establishment"). Our side seems to be behind, although on the whole reality is on our side, or should I say we tend to side with reality; this gives us a fundamental advantage that our opponents greatly resent. That's why they constantly play with the definition of words, rename themselves, rename and redefine their mistakes, while redefining our successes as failures.