[Zhang Fei]

[Surely you are not equating the Taliban and their war fighting ability with Germany which at the beginning of WWII had a modern army, navy, air force and most importantly, a well developed industrial base.]

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Actually, the Taliban is far stronger than Germany in the sense that it has staying power resulting from the American unwillingness to commit atrocity. Using Alexander’s rules of engagement, the US could kill every single person in Afghanistan with conventional weapons while losing at most a few pilots (only when CSAR efforts go awry) and drones. Current technology gives us the ability to kill anything that moves, 24 hours a day, weather permitting. But current mores prevent us from even waterboarding Taliban suspects we capture let alone slaughter the entire population*. That’s where the Taliban’s superiority lies - our unwillingness to do things the Alexander way.

* It wouldn’t even have to be the entire population. Alexander needed to live off the locals. He killed masses of people as an example to the survivors, and the rest fell into line in order to be allowed to continue existing.

[mrsmith]

Alexander is an excellent example to make an excellent point!

But, practiically not very helpful.
There’s been a few thousand years of advance in counter-insurgency tactics. It’s not just a matter of mores, but success. As you say it takes a little longer.
Typical of today’s mehod is the yrian/Russian “descrimanate” (barely) bombing of rebel areas.