A large portion of the army particularly the IRG simply faded away as the invasion rolled on and they were well prepared to then launch an insurgency. They had large caches of weapons, ammo, ordnance, everything they needed hidden throughout the country with a plan to eventually beat us in a war of attrition.
After about a year and half things really went to hell as the country broke down into sectarian violence and the Shia started pouring in thousands of foreign fighters who turned it into a much broader insurgency aimed at eventually giving Iran control.
“The mission then shifted to even more focus on the Taliban but that was like hunting ghosts. Every time we thought we were going to finally put them down they just faded into the populace until the pressure was off and they’d then reconstitute themselves as a fighting force and come back.”
This sounds an awful lot like Vietnam and I believe Rumsfeld had learned that lesson.
If Rummy had learned his lesson he would have vetoed going in with too small of a force to secure the borders preventing the flow of arms and fighters from outside the country.
That was the single largest error of the entire war effort. It was also what allwed the communists in Vietnam to eventually win the war of attrition because we never destroyed the supplies and outposts in Laos and Cambodia that maintained the communist effort throughout.
We have sadly learned over the past 60 years that undeclared wars run by quants become problematical.
Trump was willing to absorbe rocket attacks from Iran both in Saudi Arabia and Iraq and hopefully will allow the locals to finally defend their own Afghan country, or not. We don’t live there.
It was neither Obama nor Trump.
George Bush 43 (in the tradition of his father) started the whole bullshit.
War Afghanistan was a lost cause (for America) from the get-go and a perfect mission accomplished for Zionists to create a permanent war between Christians and Muslims.
I am going to disagree with you on that! I was there serving a specific function of oversight in the green zone to which I was I privy to certain information. Most of the weapons cache was secured until the army was disbanded! Then after certain decisions were made all hell broke loose. The kinetic phase was pretty much over after the first month of the invasion. Most Iraqis were gutless wonders, and are all too familiar of being a conquered nation throughput it’s history and had no stomach for war. Why do you think they cowered to isis so easily after US forces vacated? The insurgency happened because unemployment shot up to over 50% thanks in large part a lot of its citizens were employed by the military and were pissed off that we took their jobs away by disbanding their army. We also didn’t secure the weapons depot something that the chain of command knew about but wilfully ignored.
You would think that they would be happy to have us leave or maybe the bureaucrats of Kabal are actually scared that once US forces leave that shithole their cushy jobs will be no longer when the warlords come in and topple their fragile government? Maybe they want to find any excuse to keep US forces around for this reason?
You’ve never ‘conquered’ any country, never mind in less than a month. All you did in Iraq was to give the sects and their multiplicity of off-shoots and jihadists time to get their acts together and plan their strategies by deposing the only man who knew how to control them; and look what’s happened since? In other words they ran rings around you and us. Stop deluding yourself because you’re beginning to look stupid.
Oh do shut up with more bullshit! You weren’t there, nor were were a service member in any theater, so you make more stupid opinions only sitting behind your dumb computer, same shit different day! So yeah, each day you out do yourself by making more ignorant comments! Its you that is the retard!
You’ve never ‘conquered’ any country, never mind in less than a month. All you did in Iraq was to give the sects and their multiplicity of off-shoots and jihadists time to get their acts together and plan their strategies by deposing the only man who knew how to control them; and look what’s happened since? In other words they ran rings around you and us. Stop deluding yourself because you’re beginning to look stupid.