Israel/Hamas War Superthread

[Bengalzona]

(12-27-2023, 02:12 PM)Dill Wrote: Sorry I'm late responding--holidays, family etc. 

Agree with the bolded. The developing chaos forced Bush and finally Obama to take state-building seriously--but too late. 

When I say "conditions which created the Taliban" I am referring to the chaos and uncertainty created by multiple centers of power exercising deadly force in the same neighborhood. That's what created the Taliban back in the '90s, as Afghans came to prefer any order to no order. 

The Taliban were thoroughly defeated and awed by US airpower by spring of 2002. And many, probably a good majority of Afghans, were happy to see them gone if it meant order and more freedom. And that was the US opportunity  to build an integrated military, police force and government there which had some chance of holding the country by keeping order. Instead they re-installed war lords or simply defaulted to their local control, the locals taking them now to be US proxies. (Remember Rummy's ideal of slimmed down military fighting on the cheap?) Boom! the Taliban-creating-conditions were there again, only this time remotely affiliated with a central, US backed government.

I remember the last time I went through Individual Readiness Training (In Grafenwoehr, Germany) for Afghanistan. That was in 2011, and they made a big point of visually demonstrating how random killing fueled the Taliban by yanking soldiers out of their seats and lining them up before everyone to create a family "system" of fathers, brothers, uncles and cousins. Kill one and that entire cluster of men was suddenly blood-feud bound to avenge the death. Most soldiers watching weren't much interested in all that COIN stuff, though. Nor did it seem like enough were in Afghanistan. (Wish Bfine were around, to get his take on this.) By 2020, even many village women in non-Pashtu districts who wanted schooling for their daughters came to prefer the Taliban over the local anarchy, which killed off their husbands, brothers, sons, uncles and cousins in a steady drip drip of random killings and reprisals. (Great article on this subject: Arnand Gopal's "The Other Afghan Women"  https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/09/13/the-other-afghan-women.)

That sort of chaos, growing year by from 2003 on (especially after half the US occupation force was re-directed to Iraq) recruited new Taliban, and an unwillingness to resist them among those who didn't like the Taliban.

Anyway, some of this history may be fueling the Biden administration's pressure on Israel NOT to create more Hamas by mass killing of civilians, even framed as "collateral damage."  Israelis have already had their own lessons in this, especially from their occupation of Lebanon. If they did not learn those lessons, then I'm not sure the US can fix that. 

*Thanx!

Appreciate hearing about your anecdotal experiences and views on this.

As far as lessons learned for the Israelis, I think you sort of have to divide the population as to what they have learned between A) most of the nation and B) those who support Netanyahu. I truly hope that after this ungodly bloodshed there will be a political reckoning in Israel.