Israeli-Palestinian Conflict and other Related Conflicts in the Middle East (read the rules in the first post)

I

Index

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plawolf said:
I guess here is a perfect case study in why and how America managed to get so little mileage out of its military dominance since its people refuse to face up to reality as that will damage their pride too much. So they end up never learning the core lesson Vietnam should have encoded in the very DNA of its military leaders and people.

Vietnam is THE perfect case study in how you can win every battle but still loose the war.

Wars are waged for a reason, that purpose, that central objective you go to war to achieve is how the outcome is determined by. Not how many battles you win or what K/D ratio you achieve. Granted, normally the two go hand-in-hand, but not always. Even game designers grasp that logic, and you can loose the match even if you have the highest K/D ratio in the game if you don’t play the objectives and simply farm for kills and hide away to avoid deaths.

Vietnam wasn’t even close to being the first example. If you want a more palatable example, look back in your own history and the American war of Independence.What was the K/D ratio and W/L ratio of major battles? Did the American colonists really break the back of the mighty British Army, or did you just managed to make the fight more costly than it was worth for them to continue?

Refusing to accept the reality that winning battles alone don’t win wars is why America got so bogged down in its ME misadventures.

Military might is only a means to an end, not the end in itself. Just look at Gaza. The Israelis have gone further than basically anyone else in modern history and the Palestinians are still standing and saying they can go all day. The only ‘military’ solution to that ‘problem’ is to go full Hitler/Genghis Khan and literally leave no one left alive to stand up to you.
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More than anything, Vietnam was a lesson in force conservation. Overconfident attacks caused unsustainable losses which caused defeat.

Were US to not directly lift even a finger against viet (and laotian) civilians and instead focus all airpower and artillery on the front, the war may have well gone differently, as it would have been the NVA that would have to justify a continued draft in the face of a mostly unharmed civilian population.

It seemed that US was so focused on punishing Vietnamese civilians that they didn't think through properly if they had enough hard power to punish them to begin with.

Even if US may have started off with mild or moderate advantages, those advantages were offset by breaking a cardinal rule of war: "know yourself and know the enemy".

This is all kinda off topic except the last part I guess. The armies in the middle east that can fight carefully according to those principles will have a great advantage, as the region is filled with all sorts of non serious actors.
 
G

generalmeng

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plawolf said:
So by your logic the Soviets never lost their Afghanistan war; the Axis didn’t loose WWI since it was only an armistice that was signed and not treaty of surrender; and the Qing didn’t loose the Opium wars etc.

The everyday equivalent would be like saying that running away after getting your ass beat isn’t loosing because you weren’t KO’d. It doesn’t matter if you landed more punches in the fight. All that matters is that you lost the will and/or the means to continue fighting first.
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I am going to put this thought out there. I do not mean to derail the discussion.

In some way, we can view the Qing as having never lost the opium war. The Manchu was an ethnic minority at the time, an invader, controlling a vast Han ethnicity. The Manchu never wanted to give the Han any power because the Han would overthrow the Qing. Qing losing is the Manchu winning because they only cared about preserving their way of life; they did not give a rat about the Han.

The Qing could never fully industrialized, because it would mean the Han would then out-produce and out-gun the Manchu.
 
M

Minm

Junior Member
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Index said:
Were US to not directly lift even a finger against viet (and laotian) civilians and instead focus all airpower and artillery on the front, the war may have well gone differently, as it would have been the NVA that would have to justify a continued draft in the face of a mostly unharmed civilian population.
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Good advice for Israel. Hamas would be history if Israel only killed their fighters and offered civilians a good way of life in a semi free country. Racism is blinding them and will force them to fight until either Israeli defeat or complete genocide of Palestinians
 
_killuminati_

_killuminati_

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Minm said:
Good advice for Israel. Hamas would be history if Israel only killed their fighters and offered civilians a good way of life in a semi free country. Racism is blinding them and will force them to fight until either Israeli defeat or complete genocide of Palestinians
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Israel doesn't care about Hamas; it is just a front to distract from genocide. Israel wants land and Jewish majority in the region. High Arab birthrate and low Israeli doesn't help.
tokenanalyst said:
Stooge reality check, as much as I think of the cowardly behavior of these Gulf and Arabs governments in this conflict I still fail to realize WHY these governments are willingly going to put a risk their oil infrastructure and worse, their legitimacy in the islamic world to defend Netanyahu and his many acolytes Neo-Fascist-Zionist-Fantasy of a government in israel, that see most Muslims as inferiors and specially Arabs as even more inferior. WHY?
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Those Arabs are screwed from every side. There is a fear of getting bombed by Iran and also a fear of getting bombed by Israel. Then, there is a fear of revolts from the domestic conservative population against monarchy which is forbidden in Islam. The Arabs have to walk on a rope, balancing each side. On their own, they're totally inept.

kwaigonegin said:
As to your Afghanistan example again erroneous dynamics. The Soviets invaded Afghanistan with the sole purpose of occupying it. The US NEVER wanted to invade nor occupy Vietnam.
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US: did not want to occupy Afghanistan.

Also US: occupied Afghanistan for 20 years.

...

Soviets invaded Afghanistan to keep a friendly government aligned with Soviet interests and potential access to the Arabian Sea via Pakistani Balochistan. US invaded Afghanistan for the exact same reasons. Both failed. US had even more objectives: energy pipelines of Enron and UNOCOL from Central Asia to Arabia Sea. That also failed.
 
CaribouTruth

CaribouTruth

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Minm said:
Good advice for Israel. Hamas would be history if Israel only killed their fighters and offered civilians a good way of life in a semi free country. Racism is blinding them and will force them to fight until either Israeli defeat or complete genocide of Palestinians
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The only problem with this is, if Israel did this, it wouldn't be Israel anymore i.e. an ethnostate. Like Sleepy Joe said about Israel, how they'd have to create an Israel if it didn't exist, Israel would have to create Hamas or some equivalent (which i'm sure many of us know the reality of) for the goal of extermination of Palestinians and capture of land they inhabit.
 
I

iBBz

Junior Member
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Minm said:
Good advice for Israel. Hamas would be history if Israel only killed their fighters and offered civilians a good way of life in a semi free country. Racism is blinding them and will force them to fight until either Israeli defeat or complete genocide of Palestinians
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Your advice was a requirement to be met since the creation of Israel in 1948 by the UN, including conditions such as the right of return of refugees (that they ethnically cleansed) to their homeland and implementation of a two-state solution. They never intended to meet these conditions and have been coming up with excuses not to from then to this day, because as @_killuminati_ said, they want all the land and a Jewish majority.
 
_killuminati_

_killuminati_

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5 Israelis dead after rocket strike in Metula
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New footage of Iran's missile attack, showing the very first barrage of missiles. It looks like the missiles were maneuvering in the terminal phase.
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Hezbollah rocket attack IOF base
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H

Heresy

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kwaigonegin said:
False equivalence but since this entire forum has become extremely anti-US in the last few years, there is no point for me to discuss further. I'm only responding to you because I've 'known' you for a very long time.
Anything post, discussion or notion that is even partially not 100% anti-US in nature is quickly mocked and ridiculed.
American or 'western' inferiority or lost is vehemently celebrated. I've always find this to be quite ironic considering I know for a fact that many members here reside in the US, Europe yet it as if they really hate their country of domicile.

As to your Afghanistan example again erroneous dynamics. The Soviets invaded Afghanistan with the sole purpose of occupying it. The US NEVER wanted to invade nor occupy Vietnam.
One of the primary reasons why the US pulled out was also the final realization that the S. Vietnamese leaders were totally useless and corrupted. Kennedy actually wanted to withdraw but got assassinated.
The US did NOT lose militarily. For you and others here to keep peddling that narrative is intellectually dishonest.
But hey, since I'm just one against many here who believe in the narrative that the US is just absolutely evil, while China, or in this specific case NVA, Viet Cong, HCM etc. are all pure and good and totally 'kicked US asses' with total military victories... there is no point for me to push my correction. It will fall on deaf eyes and only prolong unnecessary dissention.
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If you are upset about this forum's Overton Window being more anti-West and anti-US than is typical on the English-speaking Internet, you are always free to leave for such stellar places as r/China, r/FucktheCCP, r/ADVChina etc. on Reddit. Perhaps those places are more your speed.
 
T

tokenanalyst

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kwaigonegin said:
Depends on your definition of win. Hezbollah has definitely suffered more human and material loses than IDF. Their leadership have been decimated.
Israel cannot conduct a total war because it would be a political suicide for them.
Also Vietnam is a very bad example. Not sure why people keep bringing up that as some sort of a gold standard for lost LOL. It's as much a political war as it is a military one.
The US withdrew. It didn't lose. It withdrew due to political and social pressure stateside. A lost would be like Nazi Germany or Japan in WWII or Gen Lee's army in the civil war. It would be signing of defeat or surrender and incapitation of the political and military structure.
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"Victory" is not define by humans losses or even material losses but by goals reached, In the case of this Netanyahu Driven War, any claim of victory is laughable, despite of causing an humanitarian disaster in Gaza, Hamas is still launching rockets to Israel and lets not even talk about Hezbollah, no matter how much of the "leadership" Bibi kills, they only thing Bibi will get is no one to negotiate but I don't think that is what he and his fascist cult wants, these organizations are like hydras. The real victims are the Palestinians, The Lebanese and even the Israeli civilians who country economy and lifestyle is going to the down the drain and will probably never recover.
 
T

tokenanalyst

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Heresy said:
If you are upset about this forum's Overton Window being more anti-West and anti-US than is typical on the English-speaking Internet, you are always free to leave for such stellar places as r/China, r/FucktheCCP, r/ADVChina etc. on Reddit. Perhaps those places are more your speed.
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I don't think this Forum is very Anti-US or even Anti-West, I do think that a lot people all over the world have learned to identify the smell of the bullshit that Western Mainstream Media and think tank stooges propagate and call it out.
 
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