Pakistani Army ordered to retaliate against (US) raids

[IbnMardhiyah]

TrentReznor858 said

Well, all the will power aqnd resolve in the world will not win a war for you if you have vastly inferior weapons and firepower.

To put it bluntly, you're wrong.

Afghanistan is a great example. Century after century, they have consistently managed to defeat and expel invading superpowers by dint of their resolve alone even though they were out-manned, and out-gunned. It didn't matter that the British Empire was the reigning superpower when 18,000 of their soldiers were slaughtered over the course of three nights in that desolate valley. It didn't matter again when the Soviet steamroller came barging through, and it certainly doesn't matter now, when America is in town.

America had a taste of this when it was in Vietnam - its superior weapons didn't give it the decisive advantage it needed for clear victory. America [or any other world power] will do predictably great when in a direct face-to-face confrontation with the military of a weaker nation. Look what happened in the Falklands - the British whipped Argentina and showed 'em who's boss.

But when you're fighting an asymmetrical war against an enemy who knows how to use the land or other native resources or features of the country to mitigate the disparity in firepower, and that enemy also has greater resolve coupled with your Achilles heel of political support crumbling back home, then it doesn't matter if you have overwhelming military power. Powell's doctrine becomes supremely irrelevant in the face of such dynamics.

What does matter is who has greater resolve and tenacity. I could have the biggest badass machinery and firepower around but if I don't have the resolve or the confidence, then you can just come along and kill me with a rock smashed in my face.

Other examples include Dawoud vs. Jaloot, the Muslims vs. Rome and Persia, bin Ziyad against the Spanish, and so on.

What evidence do you have that America is suffering from imperial overstretch?

For starters, the hard cap on the American Army was set at 480K. A few years back Congress had to change that to allow it to go over 500K, and even despite that, the Army started issuing substantial stop-loss orders. Simply because they were getting stretched thin. They also had to start taking away resources from their mission in Afghanistan and putting them in Iraq because they just didn't have enough to go around. That caused their mission in Afghanistan to start suffering.

Secondly, the way the Powell doctrine is setup, and the underlying Cold War doctrine before that which was the main driver of American military preparedness, is that the American Army should be able to engage and win two major theater wars at the same time, at the opposite ends of the world. What they did not account for because they just couldn't imagine so, was what would happen if the American military got sucked into a grinding war of attrition with the intensity so low that it wouldnt cause massive casualties on a daily scale and yet, its still significant enough to tie down a substantial part of the deployed Army. Coupled with their responsibilities to bases they maintain around the world, the US military is stretched thin.

Whats likely is that there will be various Islamist and ethnic factions emerge in the event of a Pakistani defeat and arming them to the death and getting them to fight each other isn't so unpredictable. The Americans did it in Iraq against al-Qaeda, did it in Afghanistan against the Taliban, not to mention in various Latin American countries back in the day.

Thats completely besides the point. I couldn't care less if Al-Qaeda or Taliban have been defeated. There will still always be plenty of local resistance.

The point is, American resources and man-power are not infinite. If they are stretched thin, then somewhere they will start to tear and collapse. And America is not going to do that right now. Try as they might to project otherwise, they just aren't big enough to take on so many massive engagements at the same time and maintain structural cohesion of their Armed forces.

[jinnzaman]

IbnMardhiyah said

To put it bluntly, you're wrong.

Afghanistan is a great example. Century after century, they have consistently managed to defeat and expel invading superpowers by dint of their resolve alone even though they were out-manned, and out-gunned. It didn't matter that the British Empire was the reigning superpower when 18,000 of their soldiers were slaughtered over the course of three nights in that desolate valley. It didn't matter again when the Soviet steamroller came barging through, and it certainly doesn't matter now, when America is in town.

This is a myth. Afghanistan has been ruled by foreigners intermittently for several hundred years. Indigenous Afghan rule wasn't firmly established until the 1700s. The Afghans were ruled by the Samanids, Seljuks, Mongols, Timurids, Mughals, Uzbeks, and even the Safavids.

With that said, I think the difference between previous invasions and and an American military occupation is the use of airpower which renders geography fairly useless. Geography was useful because units could hide behind certain geographical pecularities or shield themselves from artillery by hiding behind mountains. The Soviet Union never had the level of airpower that the American military possessed or currently possesses.

If America has no intention of using ground forces, its difficult to imagine how irregular guerillas will be able to defeat airplanes that fly at a level that no country currently has.

[IbnMardhiyah]

jinnzaman said

This is a myth. Afghanistan has been ruled by foreigners intermittently for several hundred years. Indigenous Afghan rule wasn't firmly established until the 1700s. The Afghans were ruled by the Samanids, Seljuks, Mongols, Timurids, Mughals, Uzbeks, and even the Safavids.

There's no myth about it.

Yes we know that many other Muslim rulers held sway over Afghanistan. That's because after the arrival of Islam, the Afghanies accepted Muslim rule much more easily than non-Muslim rule. You mentioned the Mongols for example - just to point out a small correction - when their hordes were crushing all of Asia, they avoided Afghanistan because they couldn't subdue the southern tribes. Later on when parts of the Mongols accepted Islam, it was more palatable to those Afghanies who previously resisted.

[TrentReznor858]

jinnzaman said

This is a myth. Afghanistan has been ruled by foreigners intermittently for several hundred years. Indigenous Afghan rule wasn't firmly established until the 1700s. The Afghans were ruled by the Samanids, Seljuks, Mongols, Timurids, Mughals, Uzbeks, and even the Safavids.
.

The afghans were losing the war until millions of dollars of CIA money, weapons, and training helped them bring down Soviet Attack Choppers. Without those stingers, the afghans would have been dusted.

[IbnMardhiyah]

jinnzaman said

With that said, I think the difference between previous invasions and and an American military occupation is the use of airpower which renders geography fairly useless. Geography was useful because units could hide behind certain geographical pecularities or shield themselves from artillery by hiding behind mountains. The Soviet Union never had the level of airpower that the American military possessed or currently possesses.

If America has no intention of using ground forces, its difficult to imagine how irregular guerillas will be able to defeat airplanes that fly at a level that no country currently has.

That's not true.

America's much-vaunted air power was rendered useless in the current Afghanistan conflict.

Examples:

B-52 carpet bombing is rendered useless simply by digging vertically L-shaped trenches. You simply roll in and ride out the bombing. The bombs fall over a wide area as they are not pinpoint strikes. Statistically the chances of any of those bombs falling into the exact trench you're in is very low. America tried and eventually gave up the carpet bombing and what was particularly unnerving to American soldiers was to hear the laughter of opposing forces after hours on non-stop bombing.

Spec-ops' precision strikes were rendered useless when a critical flaw was exploited. For laser guided bombing to work, you have to have a spotter on the ground who paints the target with his laser and then the coordinates are uploaded to the satellite and downloaded to the jets circling overhead. The jets have to be circling overhead in a relatively tight radius in order to strike fast. The spotters were dressed in native clothing and would often wave a small flag to alert fighter pilots passing by low overhead so that the pilots would be aware of where their own spotters were. Native fighters simply copied those flags and waved them about when they saw US jets making low passes overhead. The result was so confusing that the entire system malfunctioned - the pilots couldn't distinguish friend from foe - and now pinpoint strikes in Afghanistan are very rare.

These are just two examples, I can give many more, the point is don't put so much stock in American air power. Its strengths and advantages can be neutralized far more easily than you know.

[IbnMardhiyah]

TrentReznor858 said

The afghans were losing the war until millions of dollars of CIA money, weapons, and training helped them bring down Soviet Attack Choppers. Without those stingers, the afghans would have been dusted.

That's not entirely true either.

Gorbachev had already made the decision that the war in Afghanistan wasn't worth it and it was time to pull out. The Stingers only made a bad situation even worse. They came in at the end of 1987 and the withdrawal was pretty much complete by early 1989.

No offense but its kinda tiresome to hear the same old, repeated and tired statements that American military aid was somehow the turning point. Two-thirds of American financial and military aid was pocketed by the Pakistani Army, and the one-third that did make it into Afghanistan was specifically sent only to very few of the two dozen or more resistance groups.

[jinnzaman]

IbnMardhiyah said

There's no myth about it.

Yes we know that many other Muslim rulers held sway over Afghanistan. That's because after the arrival of Islam, the Afghanies accepted Muslim rule much more easily than non-Muslim rule. You mentioned the Mongols for example - just to point out a small correction - when their hordes were crushing all of Asia, they avoided Afghanistan because they couldn't subdue the southern tribes. Later on when parts of the Mongols accepted Islam, it was more palatable to those Afghanies who previously resisted.

The Mongols didn't avoid the southern tribes at all. They suffered one defeat in Afghanistan, and then they came back and crushed the various tribes and devastated the territory. Afghanistan's economy never recovered from the Mongol invasion much in the same way that Baghdad never recovered. The reason why Afghanistan became an agrarian-nomadic society was because of the Mongols. They exterminated the entire population of Herat and Balkh. What ended Mongol rule was the Mongol's fighting amongst themselves. It had nothing to do with the Afghans.

[m_ali_qazi]

isnt pakistani military a lot more jihad friendly?

hence legitimizing a jihad against the US?

[jinnzaman]

IbnMardhiyah said

That's not true.

America's much-vaunted air power was rendered useless in the current Afghanistan conflict.

Examples:

B-52 carpet bombing is rendered useless simply by digging vertically L-shaped trenches. You simply roll in and ride out the bombing. The bombs fall over a wide area as they are not pinpoint strikes. Statistically the chances of any of those bombs falling into the exact trench you're in is very low. America tried and eventually gave up the carpet bombing and what was particularly unnerving to American soldiers was to hear the laughter of opposing forces after hours on non-stop bombing.

Spec-ops' precision strikes were rendered useless when a critical flaw was exploited. For laser guided bombing to work, you have to have a spotter on the ground who paints the target with his laser and then the coordinates are uploaded to the satellite and downloaded to the jets circling overhead. The jets have to be circling overhead in a relatively tight radius in order to strike fast. The spotters were dressed in native clothing and would often wave a small flag to alert fighter pilots passing by low overhead so that the pilots would be aware of where their own spotters were. Native fighters simply copied those flags and waved them about when they saw US jets making low passes overhead. The result was so confusing that the entire system malfunctioned - the pilots couldn't distinguish friend from foe - and now pinpoint strikes in Afghanistan are very rare.

These are just two examples, I can give many more, the point is don't put so much stock in American air power. Its strengths and advantages can be neutralized far more easily than you know.

I disagree, the overwhelming majority of guerrilla casualties has been due to air strikes and attacks. Its fairly effective whenever there are major forces congregating. If the US were to invade Pakistan, they would definitely have superior airpower and would use it effectively. Like I said, they may lose a few casualties here and there, but the Pakistani air force couldn't reach out as far as American fighter jets or bombers can go. If they did so, they would overstretch themselves and suffer high casualties.

Again, you presume that the Americans care about using ground troops at all. If the intention is to remove a challenge to India, the only way the US military can do that is by destroying the Pakistani military establishment since changing the government won't do that. The Pakistani military establishment can only be destroyed by warfare, not through insurgency or political changes. Once the establishment is destroyed, India's border will be relatively safe. There have been various news reports describing how the US has been giving India sensors, landminds, and other technologies to help seal their border. With the threat of a major army gone, India could then focus on its border with China, which is what the Americans want.

Moreover, you overlook one important factor: the guerilla war would probably devolve along ethnic or sectarian grounds. Even if they succeeded in evicting the Americans, I doubt any groups would be content with the restoration of a central government. The state would most likely fragment between warring factions which again, works in America's interest. India and the Americans would find a faction that caters to their needs and arm them to the teeth, just like the Saudis and Pakistanis armed the Taliban to work in their interests.

[IbnMardhiyah]

jinnzaman said

The Mongols didn't avoid the southern tribes at all. They suffered one defeat in Afghanistan, and then they came back and crushed the various tribes and devastated the territory. Afghanistan's economy never recovered from the Mongol invasion much in the same way that Baghdad never recovered. The reason why Afghanistan became an agrarian-nomadic society was because of the Mongols. They exterminated the entire population of Herat and Balkh. What ended Mongol rule was the Mongol's fighting amongst themselves. It had nothing to do with the Afghans.

I completely agree, but you will of course notice I said southern tribes. Herat and Balkh are in the north / northwest and those places were never known for the insurmountable spirit that the southern Afghans have made Afghanistan famous for.

[IbnMardhiyah]

jinnzaman said

I disagree, the overwhelming majority of guerrilla casualties has been due to air strikes and attacks. Its fairly effective whenever there are major forces congregating. If the US were to invade Pakistan, they would definitely have superior airpower and would use it effectively. Like I said, they may lose a few casualties here and there, but the Pakistani air force couldn't reach out as far as American fighter jets or bombers can go. If they did so, they would overstretch themselves and suffer high casualties.

I'm not disputing that at all - as I have said, in a head-to-head confrontation, Pakistan's military will lose hands down. No contest. But you cannot hold land by use of air power alone. No one ever has and no one ever will.

Again, you presume that the Americans care about using ground troops at all. If the intention is to remove a challenge to India, the only way the US military can do that is by destroying the Pakistani military establishment since changing the government won't do that. The Pakistani military establishment can only be destroyed by warfare, not through insurgency or political changes. Once the establishment is destroyed, India's border will be relatively safe. There have been various news reports describing how the US has been giving India sensors, landminds, and other technologies to help seal their border. With the threat of a major army gone, India could then focus on its border with China, which is what the Americans want.

No, I didn't presume that Americans would ant to send in ground troops immediately. What I was pointing out is that American cannot risk turning Pakistan into a completely lawless and uncontrollable breeding ground for insurgents and terrorists. That would cause way too many problems on both a regional and global scale which would in turn necessitate ground troops. And that is something America is not in a position to do.

Moreover, you overlook one important factor: the guerilla war would probably devolve along ethnic or sectarian grounds. Even if they succeeded in evicting the Americans, I doubt any groups would be content with the restoration of a central government. The state would most likely fragment between warring factions which again, works in America's interest. India and the Americans would find a faction that caters to their needs and arm them to the teeth, just like the Saudis and Pakistanis armed the Taliban to work in their interests.

I didn't overlook that at all. As I have been consistently saying, the risk is too great that a destabilized Pakistan will become a breeding ground for insurgents. It'll attract hundreds of thousands of insurgents and foreign fighters, and the long-term cost of that is greater than any benefit of breaking up Pakistan through outright military action.

[Good_ol_JR]

IbnMardhiyah said

I completely agree, but you will of course notice I said southern tribes. Herat and Balkh are in the north / northwest and those places were never known for the insurmountable spirit that the southern Afghans have made Afghanistan famous for.

Aren't Herat and Blkh predominantly Tajik/Persian regions? Pasthuns are the ones in the south if I'm not mistaken

[MossadConspiracy]

US air power shattered the Taliban's front lines and destroyed their communication network which allowed the Northern Alliance warlords to not only make their first gains against the nutjobs in several years, but to quickly sweep through the entire country and overthrow their regime.

In Tora Bora the limits of US bombers and missiles were made clear, but most of the earth is nothing like Tora Bora, and American special forces and marines couldve handled that fight if they had been unleashed in sufficient force

Against a powerful modern military like China's or Russia's, the USA is untested. But when it comes to the militaries of developing nations, theres really no way to neutralize US air power, keep military assets intact, and so on. Guerrilla tactics can hurt and even defeat America, but that only comes after the entire military has been destroyed and the government has collapsed

I wouldnt worry about Pakistan, they're much more likely to cooperate as they have been for many years. Also, even John McCain the "maverick" wouldnt be crazy enough to launch an all out invasion of Pakistan after so many years of war and no real way to win such a war

[jinnzaman]

IbnMardhiyah said

I completely agree, but you will of course notice I said southern tribes. Herat and Balkh are in the north / northwest and those places were never known for the insurmountable spirit that the southern Afghans have made Afghanistan famous for.

Those weren't the only cities conquered, those are the two cities whose populations were wiped out. The Mongols also conquered Kandahar, which is in the south, and even Peshawar (they went as far as Lahore, but never conquered it). They didn't avoid the southern tribes at all.

Here's a map of the Mongolian empire. They clearly conquered the entire country.

Image:Mongol Empire map 2.gif - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Not only that, they kept control of it for three hundred something odd years.

[jinnzaman]

IbnMardhiyah said

No, I didn't presume that Americans would ant to send in ground troops immediately. What I was pointing out is that American cannot risk turning Pakistan into a completely lawless and uncontrollable breeding ground for insurgents and terrorists. That would cause way too many problems on both a regional and global scale which would in turn necessitate ground troops. And that is something America is not in a position to do.

I didn't overlook that at all. As I have been consistently saying, the risk is too great that a destabilized Pakistan will become a breeding ground for insurgents. It'll attract hundreds of thousands of insurgents and foreign fighters, and the long-term cost of that is greater than any benefit of breaking up Pakistan through outright military action.

How many terrorists came out of Afghanistan after the Soviets left when the country was fighting itself? Very few. most terrorists are from fairly middle class backgrounds. I'm not aware of a single terrorist that was actually from Afghanistan.

Again, if the anarchy became a problem, the Americans and Indians would just arm their favorite faction and let them take over the entire country, just like the Pakistanis and Saudis did with the Taliban and the Americans and Indians did with the Northern Alliance.