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Amaya wrote:

I wonder what American forces could have done better. Their is the problem that nations other than Afghanistan and Iraq are training and harboring terrorists, which is detrimental to the war effort.

I learned all about the Malayan Emergency during commando training, we were taught heaps about it as it was the subject of several lectures, and in a nutshell, you can win a jungle war pretty easy, just not a massive one the scale of Nam.

If it wasn't the size it was, and you did the exact same thing (empty all the villages, make all the natives live in secure areas, and then rotate US troops through two week rotations) you would have pissed the war.

I have fought in the jungle, you fully hang out of your arse. The longest I was ever "in the trees" without a break for was 12 days and I was proper fething baggage by the end of it. If you deny the enemy a staging area, and they are forced to live on hard routine in the jungle (no fleeing back to the villages) while you rotate your own troops through the jungle on fighting/standing patrols and OPs (say two weeks on, one week off) inside two months, I guarantee the VC would have been absolutely dangling. While the fresh US troops slot them all with impunity!

This also stops them blending in with the civvies, US troops getting super pissed, and then butchering innocent people, thus helping recruitment for the enemy.

A small jungle war would be a piece of piss to win though. People who say "Oh the Vietcong could just live in the jungle easy!" dont know what they are talking about, because it doesn't matter if your born and bred in Vietnam, its still honking living out of a daysack in the jungle for more than a couple weeks at a time.

They also dont know how well professional, physically fit, motivated, pasty white boys can learn to fight in the jungle at short notice with some good training and a bit of effort.

I cannot say im qualified to say this but the US could have won the war against the Taliban if they had invaded with US troops instead of using NA troops and focused on Afghanistan instead of invading Iraq.

Warrior Squirrel wrote:I cannot say im qualified to say this but the US could have won the war against the Taliban if they had invaded with US troops instead of using NA troops and focused on Afghanistan instead of invading Iraq.

We weren't at war with the Taliban. They got in the way.

Warrior Squirrel wrote:I cannot say im qualified to say this but the US could have won the war against the Taliban if they had invaded with US troops instead of using NA troops and focused on Afghanistan instead of invading Iraq.

They, and we, haven't lost a war against the Taliban, and it is very doubtful we will.

Sorry what are NA troops by the way?

Northern alliance. They were the warriors who fought the Soviets before fighting the Taliban. They were used as proxies by the US and it was they who did most of the fighting. They were also lead by the very talented moderate muslim guerilla leader Massaud who sadly was assasinated by the Taliban. And since the americans used the NA troops and relied on Pakistan to guard the borders,tons of Taliban leaders and soldiers escaped.