It seems almost every attempt the US at doing this since Vietnam has failed. Is it actually viable? I'm not saying it is better to just gun everyone down
Does "Hearts & Minds" actually work in war?
It seems almost every attempt the US at doing this since Vietnam has failed. Is it actually viable? I'm not saying it is better to just gun everyone down
It can be viable, but you have to either go all-in or not at all. The US has been very bad about half-assing Hearts & Minds. Either you don't go after anybody, shoot literally only the people you can actively see engaging you first, and never so much as give a mean look to the local population, or you go Genghis Khan on their ass. Any attempt to temper either of these options ends in failure.
>Invade country
>Kill patriots defending it
>wreck infaestructure
>bomb hospitals
>why don't people love us?
I don't know anons, is a mistery
Implessive
Why was the guy on the top right so important to deserve 2 series?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Manadel_al-Jamadi
I ain't reading that whole fricking article, Anon. I report, you decide.
Can you wumao microdick losers throw yourselves off the suicide nets so we don't have to deal with your spergouts? China will never be a super power.
you're more of a golem than a chink could ever be
your masters hate you, and you not just obey, you mistake their interests for your own
>Either you don't go after anybody, shoot literally only the people you can actively see engaging you first, and never so much as give a mean look to the local population, or you go Genghis Khan on their ass. Any attempt to temper either of these options ends in failure.
This is bullshit. Most conquests in history were somewhere between these two extremes.
To succeed, you mainly just need persistence and sufficient force to impose order *most of the time*. That way the locals can make peace with the new order of things. It usually takes about a generation for resistance to die down to background levels, the US simply has no political patience for conquest.
It’s near impossible to win the hearts and minds of a nation with a completely different sociocultural views. The US can and has won the hearts and minds from nations it has occupied in the past with a western cultural mindset such as Europe, South America etc. in order for the US or any western nation to win the hearts of minds of Middle Eastern nations it would take a cultural genocide because it is impossible
Hearts and minds is no substitute for stability and sufficient opportunity. Of course people are going to resort to violence if you frick up their country and leave it hopefully bankrupted.
Afghanistan became more rich and stable in two decades of American involvement than it had been throughout the rest of its history. People who think the U.S ruined Afghanistan don't realize that the country was literally bandit territory in the 90s. And look where they are now, back to being bandits. Sometimes money can't solve systemic cultural moronation.
Having said that the U.S totally fricked over the Iraqis.
True but in the 60s it was actually compariable to western nations, then we armed religious extremists because they were willing to fight the USSR. Those armed extremists then armed other extremists until you get the modern ME.
The US didn't. The US transferred arms to Pakistan for distribution, who gave them to Islamist groups connected to the ISI.
The rise of Islamic extremism is largely independent from western influence and predates the US involvement in Afghanistan.
>Islamic extremism
basically just evangelical christianity
>cover up all the women
>allow child marriage
>ban drugs and alcohol
>worship le heckin wholesome blue-collar prophet
and let's not forget
>short time of year with arbitrary dietary restrictions
>fundamentalism
Resonates with brainlets. Religion-lite is the only way progress can be made.
>in b4 BUT WHAT ABOUT <you know what> that rhymes with fannies
>Religion-lite is the only way progress can be made.
doesn't mean anything, Marxism could be defined as "religion-lite" as could North Korean cargo cultism
Evangelicals don't really follow Lent. At least from my childhood experiences. That was always more of a Catholic/Orthodox thing.
I was under the impression that it was very prevalent in the south but I could just be moronic
It could be! Didn't grow up in the South.
extremism
>basically just evangelical christianity
Didn't know there was an Evangelical State of Alabama and Georgia.
>Iraq
Jesus no wonder we invaded
just a reminder, there are beautiful women in every country on the planet* and limiting yourself due to ignorance, racism, and stupid personal bias is super counterproductive
*except india they're literally dogs
>except india they're literally dogs
There go like half the english speaking women on the planet, just from what you granted.
vgh..
afghanistan went to shit in the 70s cuz the soviets backed some cracked out hardcore marxists that killed the normal commie in office and went around killing a bunch of the trad country side leading to the mujahadeen
Probably because we dumped billions into a shitty, corrupt and incompetent government. Honestly we should’ve left every ANA and politician in Afghanistan to let them suffer from their own ineptitude
fwiw there are tons of areas in Afghanistan that were considered impassable by journalists and tourists because of rogue gangs and bandits that are now safer because of the Taliban. Afghanistan has marginally more stability, but who knows how long that will last with the economy in shambles and ISIS on their doorstep.
What'll be an interesting question for historians is how much the Taliban changed as a result of the U.S. occupation of the country. One of the odd things about war is how it changes the participants in ways you might not expect, like it's sad these beards that became popular in the latter half of the 19th century were brought home by British troops after the Crimean War.
You see Americans wearing beards after the wars. American military guys looking kinda like the Taliban possibly because they were trying to blend in a little bit while they were there. Now you have Taliban patrolling in American military vehicles. The U.S. brought a little bit of Afghanistan home with them, and the Taliban absorbed a little bit of America.
*said not sad
afghanistan was perfectly more stable in the 1960s than america was.
if you want to be engaged in a discussion you can't spew nonsense and expect to be taken at face value
That's literally what it means. It isn't about being nice to the occupied population, it's about convincing them that you can provide better governmental and adjacent services than the insurgency you are fighting against. And avoiding placing yourself in a situation where you'll likely cause the perception of aggression against the population.
>t. has read all of David Kilcullen
I think people underestimated the power of racism.
Consider your country is invaded and occupied.
Wouldn't you fight harder if that invader was from a drastically different culture, an opposing religion, trying to push points you don't agree with, and on top of that looks completely different from you?
The Chinese have that figured out and crack down on their muslim minorities.
It can be done but it requires more longevity, predictability, and stability than we gave the people of the Middle East. If the CPT building rapport with the village elders gets replaced by a dude who unironically uses the terms "raghead" and "sand Black person" after 12 months then your overall efforts will suffer, no matter how many pallets of cash you ship overseas. On the opposite end of the spectrum, having senior leaders like the President and SECDEF rotate every couple years also makes it hard to continue a coherent strategy for years or decades - the next guy might axe the rapport-building program because the other party supported it and he wants to look like he's changing things for election season.
This. One of the biggest issues the coalition forces had was continuity. what we needed were longer tours, not for every grunt but for some. We needed people to volunteer for like 5 year tours of the country, for military officers to volunteer to hold a commission in the ANA for like 4 years and spend their time non-stop mentoring and building up a specific company. The basic model would have been the East India Company regiments. But that would have been untenable because of "muh imperialism" and political consequences of sending people away for such long periods and the likely difficulty of getting volunteers.
The brits had a similar model in Oman where junior officers volunteered to take command of a Omani company for like 2 years. With the result that Oman has one of the better militaries in the middle east now.
>volunteer to spend 5 years in Afghanistan
who the frick would do that?
You don't seem to grasp the concept of" sovereign country", is ok, previous generations of burgers, more intelligent than you were also unable, and you are zoomers so...
You worship a false god. The captain can be the nicest most caring man, that doesn’t change the local populace from seeing him as an “other” with so much hatred that they’re willing to strap bombs onto their children to blow him up.
>annihilation
>assimilation
Those are your two options. Either get them to become apart of you or kill them off. That is how it’s been done since the dawn of time and the ramblings of shit politicians attempting to make more more humane to get the votes won’t change that.
Not for a culture rooted in the middle ages, filled with an inbred people with an average IQ of 75.
Abrams' approach was probably better yhan Westmoreland's if that's what you're asking
Yes but the people have to believe you have their best interests in mind so if you dispose a hated leader they will like you but if you then occupy them for a decade while your oil companies extract their resource wealth they might start to question your motives.
The biggest reason for the massive insurgency In Iraq was the fact that the U.S. actively disenfranchised the Sunni Muslim minority with they put the Shiites in charge who effectively banned them from political and public life, giving rise to ISIS.
Honestly demoracy can't work in the ME or Africa because they are so tribal they see it as "if we kill enough of the other guys we win every election".
Doesn't help that all the borders were placed by bongs with no idea about the people or the area.
>Doesn't help that all the borders were placed by bongs with no idea about the people or the area.
The Empires did know. In the negotiations for the borders, they had to consider other Empire's claims and how easy the borders were to defend.
Many incidents and conflicts happened between the Empires before the lines were properly negotiated.
It also worked in their favour if the borders were a bit wonky. Divide and Conquer is still very much reality.
>the fact that the U.S. actively disenfranchised the Sunni Muslim minority with they put the Shiites in charge
As they should. Shiite moslems are the only halfway decent ones and that's mainly just from Persian influence. Sunnis are pure irredeemable scum.
Based. Frick Abu Bakr and his lying prostitute daughter.
If it's actually the top down goal from the beginning maybe.
You start a war on a medley of political motivations and expect the boots on the ground to keep things amicable then hell no.
The US needed to send in all their coomer legions and impregnate all their breedable women. The only way to truly take over a land is to cleanse its people or interbreed with them. What can haji do if all their kids are amerimutts?
Russians tried that kek, although it is interesting to read about the Soviets who stayed in Afghanistan after they pulled out. This guy converted to Islam and married into a family and has like 6 kids
No. If you need to go to war, you go to win. Total destruction of the enemy. As other Anons have said, if you are dealing with cultures very different from yours, it's a waste. Not an edgelord, you have to go in with the mindset of clearing a cave of snakes. You kill mature, juvenile and the eggs. Otherwise frick it, just stay home.
It's an important aspect of Counter-Insurgency strategy, but it's not enough on it's own, and can be misapplied very easily. firstly, you have to adapt whatever you wish to impose on a population to the native mindset rather than the other way around. If you want a country to be a democracy, it has to be the kind that they're comfortable with rather than the kind you think is best. This is one of the big mistakes the U.S. made in Afghanistan, where they tried to force things like women's suffrage on the natives rather than allowing them to resolve the issue on their own terms. Secondly, the ideals have to be backed by force. If you can't provide a level of safety and stability to the people you are trying to garner support from, they're less likely to remain loyal and can become more sympathetic towards the insurgency. If you manage to keep them alive and relatively comfortable however, you're more likely to keep them friendly and cooperative.
The US mainly just placated local warlords I thought. Like in Afghanistan, when they just let Bacha bazi continue unabated, because their 'allies' were doing it.
It depends how far the occupier and the occupied are willing to go Britain did hearts and minds in Oman, Malaya, Kenya and Cyprus and it worked in the first three but not Cyprus. British tactics of systematically clearing, relocating, isolating, mass punishments/fines of civilians worked in some cases of destroying the insurgents and turning more of the population against the insurgents whilst creating some new insurgents in the process. They also used different ethnic groups against each other, and in the case of Oman sold radios to the Omanis that when destroyed by the communists would turn people against the communists. If the other side doesn't have any or large ethnic differences that can be exploited then the British strategy doesn't work very well because its not a 2 v 1 but a 1 v 1 and the occupied largely stood together against the British.
So what you're saying is diversity helps to suppress the local population of a country by preventing a unified resistance. Interesting...
No unless you actually establish a colonial government to uplift the locals. Otherwise enjoy funding your drug lords while the occupied population grows ever more resentful. US foreign policy is basically bomb the shit out of them and then wait for democracy and muh freedumbs to sprout on their own and bring prosperity. I'm still unsure whether that's just idiocy or malice.
>Is it actually viable?
Yes but like enemy centric strategies only under specific conditions.
>It seems almost every attempt the US at doing this since Vietnam has failed
This is not so much a result of an inherent weakness in the population centric approach but rather that the insurgents in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq had many advantages already working in their favor that made any COIN campaign unlikely to be successful; vast rural areas, inhospitable environment, lack of effective indigenous police and military, easily accessed bordering states willing to give safe haven, exploitable pre-existing ideologies and grievances, significant external support (e.g.,money, arms, political support), poor and uneducated populace that is easier to recuit/sway to their side, etc.
It works too well
The U.S. exports Americana wherever it goes. Americans bring America with them, for better or for worse. You almost wanna have two minds about it, because if America didn't do that, it wouldn't be America anymore because the power of your example is supposed to inspire everybody else like the Hulk Hogan song:
It's about "doing the right thing" and so on. But it's also about the music you listen to, the food you eat, the clothes you wear. Americans stick out a lot when they travel. But in a military environment, that can lead to trying to export how badass you are to everyone else around you because you think that'll make it less likely people will frick with you, but the more aggression you create, the more it's gonna come back on you eventually. If you're operating in a Middle Eastern country and you're zippering in front of people or you shoot up their car, it's not like people just forgive somebody for doing that.
You go into a British-style organization, they don't go native exactly, but it's closer to that. They eat local food. They just read the street a little better. They don't feel like they're operating in a foreign country as much. There's a reason why the most famous British movie franchise is about a spy who is totally comfortable in whatever exotic location you place him in.
Also another example of this: that B-52 flyover of Estonia on their national independence day. For an American, that's something to be proud of because (in a Hulk Hogan voice), "I've got your back, brother" and that's the "right thing to do" and the Estonians are waving their little flags and proud to be Estonians, but really they're like little Americans who are coming out and they're being proud too and the pilot leans out the window and salutes the little kid like he's Superman or a WWE superstar.
It's like bringing out that drive in other people through your own high performance. It's brash and loud but it kinda "works" in this context although it wouldn't work in others. I'm not sure Estonians actually do see it that way, but they probably on the whole would prefer to have their sovereignty covered by the American nuclear umbrella. But that's what I think Americans want to do, or how they wanna be seen, if that makes sense.
I'm Latvian, when I see a big american plane like that I feel safe, but most importantly I feel like we have a fighting chance if russians try anything funny. Unlike afghanis and iraqis we are willing to fight, but we need some help and it's always great to see that some of that help is already here!
>I'm Latvian, when I see a big american plane like that I feel safe
do you now
I'd imagine it would remind you that in case of a large war, our region is firmly in the category "price we're happy to pay" for people that control burgerland
People(me included) thought so about Ukraine too. So we'll see what they gonna do or not do, when and if it comes to that.
but what do you mean? US worked to increase the odds of a war, since that suits imperial interests, and Ukrainians are just ammo
and after the war, US will work PR magic, try to create an illusion that they will rebuild the country, and ultimately it will a drop in the bucked compared to the damage the war caused
You don't understand. Revenge is what matters here, our feelings towards russians, stories from our grand-parents override all that conspiracy stiff you just said. Trust me - if russia is left in a crippled state Ukrainians don't care if west heps them rebuild, they gonna scrape by like they always has. What matters is revenge and victory.
>conspiracies
sure you gullible moron, US has your best interest in mind
no really, if you think it's in your interest to have our region ruined for 'revenge and victory'
you better not be a real human beaning
The desire for revenge is very human but this is also nationalism we're talking about here. The Russians have their reasons for what they do, but through that, they somehow create nationalists who don't like them where there weren't nationalists before (or as many). Which is the paradox of the war. It might even be true to some extent that Ukraine wasn't really a nation as the Russians would like to say, but somehow through the war, Ukraine is being forged into a nation, and the war becomes existential so victory or death are the only two options.
People get politicized against their own will in many cases.
>US worked to increase the odds of a war,
It doesn't matter how much you repeat it, it will never be true.
Russia is an irrational actor, like autocracies eventually become, and invaded for no reason.
>"muh donbawe children"
Nothing to do with the US, and the Russians have thoroughly depopulated luganda qnd donbawe
>muh nato border
Russia is supposed to have nukes, so anything having to do with "muh plains" or "muh ground invasion" is cope and 65IQ tier justification. Russia was never going to be subjected to a ground invasion.
>muh cnn rhetoric
Now you're reaching, snowBlack person.
What's the goal of the military action? To instate a friendly government, or depose a hostile government, or ignore the government and have individuals like and respect your culture? If all you need is stability, then the threat of overwhelming force and the offer of clear consequences to actions will do the job.
I don't know about places, but whenever I get to see US veteran who was stationed in Afghanistan I will buy him lunch and say thanks because he (incidentally) guarded southern border of my country (Uzbekistan)
No, but America is especially bad at it anyways.
Winning hearts and minds is a psy-op expression for:
"We're invading your country and you don't like it, but it's whats best for you, and also you don't have a choice in the matter".
*Now please tell us where the bad insurgent guys are or else we'll rape your sistsers and cousins*.
no it's mainly for their domestic political purposes
you don't win occupations no matter how much free shit you give them
it only works when the enemy is completely destroyed like after WW2
Hearts and mind has value but it can't make up for half measures. Taking Afghanistan as an example at it's peak had 100k troops, a a loose state with no solid identity can't properly be locked down with this number of troops especially while trying to prop up a dilapidated government. Afghanistan at a minimum should have had 300-500k troops and at least in the early stages assumed direct control over the government and it's institutions like they did with west Germany.
afghanistan is a country on paper on only. the costs of turning it into a real country were simply too high and the whole conflict was pretty much just a way to justify defrauding the american tax payers.
dominicans and serbs will tell you it's because of goat herder superiority or something
I still believe the main goal was to capture the vast mineral resources and the strategic position in Central Asia. It will be very funny if China manages to win Afghanistan with soft power after all the unsuccessful attempts by Americans, Russians and British to strongarm Afghans into submission.
>Does "Hearts & Minds" actually work in war?
If you know what the enemy civilians want and give it to them. If you offer them something they don't really care about it, and use stupid grifters for your intermediaries, then you'll get no results. Americans don't get raghead culture (and when they do get it, they find it repulsive), so they tended to offer nothing they really wanted besides money.
The phrase hearts and minds is about accordance with the moral law, which is what upholds rulers and decides wars. It's about public support, a strategic decider in insurgencies especially. Sun Tzu writes on this.
What happened here is that our government lied to our country, our people, our military, and our men that truly went to serve our country. Who faced and endured death simply because our "leaders" commanded it. Pure loyalty, bravery, honor, duty, courage.
Our soldiers, who actually fight the government's wars, are more virtuous and noble men than the politicians that use them like fodder for selfish and corrupt reasons.
The war is bigger than the soldier.
And our soldiers are better than our "leaders" in Washington.
I can trust a Patriot, I love America, that's our common ground here.
But I've never been able to trust the lying zionist puppets to be perfectly honest.
It could be but it takes a very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very long time
Worked well enough for the cartels in Mexico
Frickers got big for a reason
hearts and minds works when the civilian populace are willing to accept an increased quality of life. when they're content with mediocrity all outside influence is a threat to their way of life.
What's the alternative? Endless occupation until they are all dead?
genocide, conquer land
You’re better off recruiting the local warlords to go terrorize villages that resist you than attempt at winning them over with “hearts and minds”. The ironic thing about it all is that the few military campaigns that COIN theorists cite as shining examples of it are operations that saw success via terrorizing the populations and exterminating everyone that has any association with the insurgents. COIN is not a special form of warfare separate to normal warfare. Ethnic cleansings, coercion and petty warfare is what wins these wars. Not empty rhetoric.
>"hearts and minds"
you mean a mozambique drill?
No, that’s a Famas
It works only when the enemy is fully buck-broken, all the cities flattened and millions of civilians have been killed to teach the survivors to not frick around with God aka the US Army. See: Japan, Germany
The US won minds of Tajiks and the Hazara in Afghanistan. So it can work if you have the same enemy. That said, it's difficult to win hearts of people who hate your guts and are very different from you in almost every aspect like the Pashtuns. But at the very least you shouldn't alienate them
Worth noting that they completely fricked up the hearts and minds approach in Iraq by firing everyone from government and the army (massive part of the population) and then doing arbitrary raids and mass arrests at the first sign of the insurgency.
Here lies the real answer. It works but only if grunts live there for a while (say a few years) and actually LIVE with the locals, inside houses or compounds close to area of fighting. They have to learn a bit of the local language/customs, have good interpreters, sympathize with local elites (priests, mayor, local football club manager, local weed dealer and whatnot), to prove that they are here to stay, prevent intimidation/weapon storage/racket by insurgent and to collect intelligence. You CANNOT win the hearts and minds by packing uneducated boys in overprotected FOBs and sending them once a month in the local slum to give the kids candy and share a few words with the local tribal council, and then sending them back home after a few months.
Take a look at
>Marines combined action platoons in Vietnam
>French special administrative section and special urban sections in Algeria
>Whatever the Brits did in Kenya
By definition, it can't work on heartless and mindless people such as muslims.
It works in some places, it doesn't work for others. Places like oraq and Afghanistan didn't work because power vacuum bullshit and secular violence. Those 2 problems prevents the concept of hearts and minds from becoming ripe. If the U.S. dealt with the power vacuum before it grew, then their hearts and mind policy would have been better.
The issue is that hearts and minds require providing the people with stability. When the US imposes a regime change or attempts to prop up a pro-US government, it places itself in an uncomfortable situation. After, for example, destroying the Taliban government; the US needs a replacement, but all the competent bureaucrats were in the Taliban government and either executed or are enemies of the US. So now the US needs to create a core of experienced bureaucrats that aren’t endemically corrupt, a process that takes some countries centuries to do. Or the US is forced to prop up an incompetent government and just hope that it sorts itself out (it never does)
you cant just replace the government in afghanistan when the "country" doesnt want to be governed in the first place. there is no infrastructure and no means for a government to do much outside of the urban areas.
how can americans run a country that doesnt have roads?
I would like to remind all the brainwashed americ**ts ITT that their country bombed critical infrastructure on purpose in Baghdad and then made a concentration camp where they put almost 150000 random civilians abducted from their homes which they ransacked for no reason, then tortured and murdered said civilians in Abu Grahib, again, with no evidence of any crime or any justified reason, inciting the flames or rebellion a lot more than before these events.
And since you're morons I'll also explain what 'critical infrastructure bombing' means.
It means that while your politicians were talking about nation building with a puppet regime run by crypto american "locals" -Baghdad descended into anarchy as people had no power, no water, and no food. (also no parents since you kidnapped lots of those too)
> it's the part where we pretend key infrastructure isn't a legitimate target
Boo hoo homosexual
Bombing out water treatment and power stations yields no tactical advantage on the ground and is definitely not a legitimate military target unless you're trying to genocide the civilian population.
The only thing you accomplished is anarchy post occupation.
>do what I tell you to do and pay my taxes
>"no"
>*bombs away clean water and food infrastructure*
>*goes to new area
>do what I tell you to do and pay my taxes.... or else
>"...o-okay"
Violence works exceedingly well.
It actually doesn't and led to a huge increase in hostility with the locals, resulting in the whole IED spam that smoked your dudes so much.
Everything you just said is the opposite of what actually happened.
it doesnt work when your culture is steeped with thousands of years of incest, blood fueds and a hyper-trad religion that permeates every part of your society
No. The only times the US has successfully reformed former enemy countries were Western Germany and Japan, and that was after waging a conventional war against their expansionist government, and where no guerrilla warfare was performed afterward.
What Winning the Hearts and Minds actually means?
For us, it meant that a psyop chick came to our FOB with the mission to win the H&M of the locals.
She started by spreading the news that we would povide free healthcare to the children 3 days later. Every mother in the area brought their kids down the mountains, some walking 6 to 8 hours with kids on their back. In less than an hour, we ran out of drugs, and she sent the sick kids back with some candies. Fricking awesome job.
Then she tried to open a girl school, but the talibans killed 2 girls and it was the end of it.
While we were breaking the walls of their mud huts looking for weapons, she, a woman, talked to the elders sitting on the ground with their hands zip tied. She
asked what she could do to help them. They really needed their their pumps repaired so that they could water their fields again. We collected all their broken soviet pumps, and the mechanics tried to clean and reassemble the few salvageable ones. But they were missing some critical parts, so she convinced the higher ups to go through the hassel of organising a convoy to Kahbul to buy the parts at the market.
After driving all the way there, the local shops had the pleasure to see a bunch of soldiers driving their customers away so she could go shopping safely with her translator. And they didn’t found the parts.
On the way back, as is procedure, we shot in front of every car driving in the other direction to kindly ask them to stop on the side while we drove through. One guy panicked and rolled over on the side, instantly killing his teenage son that was on the back of the pick up. I’m sure we won the heart and mind of all his relatives.
2 weeks later we were ordered to abandon the FOB, and she gave back the still broken pumps.
The Talibans took the valley back, and I’m sure they were really nice with all the locals that had been friendly with her.
That’s what H&M really was. It’s just a good PR topic to talk about in the offices of HQ.
Don't care if it's true or not, sounds like it could be, but still thanks for sharing.
this is actually an interesting post. thanks for making it
Hearts & Minds only works in conjunction with strong and stable governments. The Iraqi, Afghan and South Vietnamese governments were anything but strong and stable. We should've learned from the British who spent centuries colonizing the world; Establish an occupational authority, root out corruption, promote loyal locals. Worked when applied in South Korea, Germany and Japan.
its extremely effective. those are the two best places to shoot to kill someone as fast as possible
The problem is you might get some guys who actually care to do a decent job with the hearts and minds mission, but by and large the clandestine government elements will ultimately just run roughshod over the populace because they have no oversight or accountability, and then leave Joe Army to clean up the mess and face the heat for them. It's sad. We should try and (peacefully) excise these hostile, harmful clandestine elements within our government.
it's called politics really
even if you genocided the entire population of afghanistan you still wouldnt wipe out the taliban because they would just step over the border and then they would have a very easy time recruiting people angry at the US.
How could the US military ever hope to wipe them out?
No. Total war or no war. Those are the only two options. Either the enemy surrenders unconditionally and accepts the victors' rule without resistance, or the enemy as a group/nation/ethnicity is completely annihilated. Men, women, children, pets, livestock, crops, language, culture - wiped forever from the face of the earth, destined to exist only in the footnotes of the victors' histories. That's the way it should be. History repeatedly shows that trying to achieve some wishy-washy hearts and minds path to peace is always a futile effort. Kill everyone and everything until total, permanent capitulation or until there's no one and nothing left to kill. Allowing any space or hope or memory whatsoever for opposition ensures failure, guaranteeing that you or your children or your children's children will have to fight the same enemy for the same reasons again.
Compare the PLA's total success in crushing the Xinjiang insurgency to the abysmal American/Soviet failures in Afghanistan and it's pretty easy to see that overwhelming violence against hostile populations is the correct answer to counterinsurgency.
Same thing with Guatemala and the Spanish Civil War. Wasting lives and money trying to convince your enemies to become your friends is futile and only shows how weak the hand you have to play is.
>pretty easy to see that overwhelming violence against hostile populations is the correct answer to counterinsurgency.
That will never fly with the American public hence why we always lose these wars
>Does "Hearts & Minds" actually work in war?
Yeah, they are part of what is called the 'CNS' (central nervous system) take one out and you have yourself a dead person.
In all of recorded history "hearts and minds" has never worked. The greatest conquerors straight up slaughtered and/or raped thousands-millions to obtain stability.
t. Death Metal listening Edgelord
Not always, if it does good, if it fails do as the Roman did: make a desert and call it peace. (Kill the men, enslave the women and children and March them off their land). Unfortunately the west is too busy being the "good guys" but failing miserably at convincing people of that and throwing the locals in camps and replacing the local population with your own is "bad" but acceptable if you are china since you control the narrative towards your own people.
HEARTS AND MINDS DOES NOT ALWAYS MEAN WINNING THEM... MAYBE THEY WANT ISLAM MAD ENOUGH TO GO HOT GLOBALLY
some people same pointless as enemies and as allies
It does. The only way to truly win is to legitimately be the good guys, or as much as you can be given the grim reality of survival. America is, in theory and in law, a truly good place.
Not historically accurate.
If you look at the causalities of the US vs the Russians in Afghanistan. Clearly hearts and minds reduces insurgents. Won't win the conflict but it certainly makes it easier.
More importantly I bet the Afghans starving after the US left might have wished they cooperated with the US more.
No. You’ll never find a brown peasant who won’t gladly take your gibs and kiss white ass, but that doesn’t translate to battlefield success. Nor does it translate to fewer enemies. Everybody liked the Westerns in Afghanistan, but the Madrassas were turning out Taliban all the same.
The US can't do hearts and minds because the US mindset is 'USA number one, everyone just wants to be like us, so will just try to turn this place into America'
When the locals don't want to become America, and just want to farm and carry on what they were doing, maybe have some clean water or infrastructure built to make life easier without warlords killing them, the US forces get confused and don't know what to do.
Instead of talking to tribal elders and trying to get them on side, they would do shit like try to talk to the women to find out what their opinions on the current goings-on were.