@@jessicamason2526 , sadly, that's always a reality of armed conflict. I think a lot of people have the idea that armed conflicts won't necessarily have collateral damage or civilian casualties, but that's pure fantasy. Armed conflict is an ugly, nasty business where almost no side ever has clean hands. I would personally argue that's why armed conflict is always best avoided whenever and wherever possible. Glory and horror always come in the wake of war, but seldom do they ever come in equal measure.
@@chthulu27 yes and no, yes armed conflict always involves a risk to civilian Populus but armed conflict involving the civilian populus brings even greater risk as FoF is as murky as it comes resulting in unarmed innocents mistaken for armed fighters, and this is without mentioning any form of government dealing with an armed citizenry fighting against it will inevitably crack down on the non-combatant citizenry in turn, if an insurgent group attacks farms to steal resources, who suffers? if they attack warehouses, who suffers? if they disrupt supply lines, who suffers? in all of these questions the answer is never the government.
@jessicamason2526 , "in all of these questions the answer is never the government. " Yeah. I'm inclined to agree. Bureaucrats at desks ordering the deaths of young men from continents away always seem to sleep soundly. Pity.
@@OTW18Vietnam as well. America's only victory I can think of against guerillas/insurgents were in the Philippines, where the rebels (that's what we called them, at least) lost hope and began fizzing out after a pro-war government won the US elections during that time. Even so, it was a close call since the enemy was suffering from infighting and was unable to properly launch coordinated attacks or even defenses.
Take care when you seek to enact justice that you do not find yourself the oppressor. You hate those above you for their injustice, do not become the same. Do not fight evil with evil. God calls us to lead the world by example so teach yourself to be kind, just, and loving first.
@@spazemfathemcazemmeleggymi272 I guess if God wanted to fix things he could so I guess he's ok with it. If thats the case God is definitely ok with punishing. Like the 70,000 innocent individuals that lost their lives because David took a census. Who is evil really? 4.5 children starve to death each year.... Who really is evil then?
Its not that they rarely win, its that they usually lose battles but not the war. Guerilla tactics are meant to make the war to costly for the enemy to continue while constantly gaining local support to keep refilling troop reserves.
exactly! its not as cut and dry as win or lose. iits death by 1000 cuts strategy and it usually works. guerilla groups know they will lose in head to head combat against most state actors but its not the point
@christinaotero8913 you can't kill an idea. Most of the time, throughout history the side using guerilla tactics is the force being invaded, which gives them a massive advantage. Guerilla tactics are effective because they are easy to teach, its literally stay hidden, strike, leave. The longer the engagement goes on the more it swings to the organized force. Also guerilla logistics are a lot harder to hit and disrupt without destroying local infrastructure which leads to more fighters against you.
@@kalash_5.45 You kill ideas by killing everyone who holds them. Guerilla tactics only work if they are proped up by an outside force; if they aren't, the occupying power just depopulates the area until the issue stops.
Here's an excerpt from an article i read years ago: During one of his liaison trips to Hanoi, US Army Colonel Harry Summers had his now famous exchange with his North Vietnamese counterpart Colonel Tu. When Harry told him, "You know, you never beat us on the battlefield," Colonel Tu responded, "That may be so, but it is also irrelevant."
Not a good example as the USA chose not to win from the beginning. The strategy was containment and USA solders were just there to delay the advance of communism in the area. The final endgame ended up ceeding the area to communist China. South Vietnam was thrown under the bus but that was the cost the USA willingly paid.
Mcdonalds restaurants all over Hanoi, what exactly did they preserve? They died to decide who would get to rule them as a puppet state in the Cold War, the Russians or Americans.
The guerrilla wins by not losing, but the State loses by not winning. All the guerrilla has to do is stay alive and remain in the fight long enough for the State to lose the political will to fight. This will happen when the people have gotten tired enough of the State's abuses, so the guerrilla must be seen as a friend to the people in order to now quickly turn them against the State.
It's situational though, guerillas can't just win by having overwhelming by the locals or lasting the war long enough. It really depends on geography, logistics, enemy awareness, allies through the resistance and more to win against the State.
@@apgaismiba I always felt that only 'foreign allies or proxies' get tired and leave but the 'locals' tend to be able to last==IF they were alone from the start: I mean, look at Colombia, or Burma or even the Philippines--the FARC, the BCP or the NPA or Abu Sayyaff just goes on and on, but neither side can put down the other permanently.
You forgot the Yugoslav Partisans, who did manage to liberate their country with limited foreign support. That's why Tito was able to form a Communist Yugoslavia that wasn't completely controlled by the USSR after the war.
Yugoslavia was fighting Germany, a country fighting the USSR, the US, Britain, and half of Italy. And their only main ally was on the other side of the planet. Bringing up Yugoslavia as a successful example is a bit of a stretch.
@@noco7243 im from former yugoslavia. You obviously have no idea what you are talking about. The OP is right about our situation we won practically on our own.
@@carter.z1266 Americans have short memories and they edit out the parts that aren't in line with what the society wants them to remember. Most of my fellow boomers can't remember rightly what was going on when they were 20.
At those point I am convinced that somehow Americans, I’m one so I can say this, are being brainwashed to believe outrageous things. Even in school do we learn Vietnam was a loss. How people think otherwise, especially when they have their own country now is mind boggling.
Americans are raises to only think predominantly about whats in fact of them and repeat things they are told The cope is off the charts, Fabain tactics have worked to repel greater empires and armies for thousands of years and will continue to work. Most think ‘winning’ is killing the enemy fighters and and putting your flag on their building, as as afghanistan proved that’s not quite as easy.
Because they now have to fight wars across oceans which is an entirely different beast and because a lot of the time they win but you do not hear about that because that’s boring. Case in point almost nobody talks about South & central America. Another thing people don’t seem to understand is that ironically enough the United States did fund a very successful career complain via the Mujahedin against the Soviets. It backfired a bit but considering how much the Soviets suffered this was no small deal.
The Taliban axiom "They have all the watches but we have all the time" rings rather mendacious. The Coalition killed every major Taliban player and a few middling and minor ones, but that doesn't matter because a new generation of warfighters would be recruited through fundamentalist Islam. Therefore, as long as your idea-not you-survives, the future generation gets to claim victory. It's honestly depressing.
@@dmacarthur5356The Mongols lost while fighting the Arabs, eventually, and were pushed back, with many of his descendants converting to Islam. Mughal empire in India comes to mind. Maybe the West should convert to Islsm, is what I think you are really saying.
US Army Colonel Harry G. Summers Jr.: "You know, you never once defeated us on the battlefield." NVA Colonel Tu: "... That is true. But it is also irrelevant."
TL:DR - 1971 US goes off gold standard, 1972 Nixon opens to China in the height of Sino-Soviet tensions, 1973 Paris Peace Accords signed. The man on the ground can't see over the horizon.
@@SaltStackActualVietnam proved once again that no empire can break their spirit, China tried to do it, France tried to do it and the US tried to do it. All of them were forced to leave, and i think no vietnamese gives a fuck about what americans did after that, just that they were gone, like all the others before. And that's what matters, that was the whole point of their guerrilla. What happens in other places of the world is irrelevant.
@RoyalPain_isaG look at my post above. They wanted to stop influence from the USSR. After we partnered with China, the NVA deaths, the VC deaths, the civilian deaths, the US soldier deaths, the ARVN deaths, none of that mattered to them anymore. Your country didn't matter. They were gone because you weren't needed anymore, for anything. The whole thing, by the time Nixon shook hands with Chiang, lost its relevance.
@@SaltStackActual Total cope lol it ended because America could not accomplish the mission just like in Afghanistan (which now is opening up to China who America is trying to contain thus destroying your argument. You have zero clue what you’re talking about).
@@SaltStackActualcope harder bro , you sent your own countrymen to die for nothing lmao , now they're homeless, drug addicted , high alcoholic rates , mass suicide , but "erm at least our corrupt politicians made profit" tens of thousands have committed suicide from Afghanistan alone . You should join them
Except they do lose. They lose all the time. Which is the entire point of the video. Would you say that just because some Japanese soldiers on some Pacific islands held out for decades after surrender that Japan didn't lose? Of course not, because those soldiers had no meaningful impact whatsoever.
@@tomasbillian4907 they lose all the time, explain, Boko Haram, Taliban, ISIS, AQ, Al Shabab, MS 13. Explain. Irgun, the PLO, Hamas and Hezbollah. African National Congress and ZANU PF You have no idea of what you are talking about
@@tomasbillian4907 Considering the Japanese got to keep their Emperor, didn't lose their core territories besides Sakhalin, and got merciful peace terms compared to Germany, it seems like the threat of fifty million civilians fighting to the death with sharp sticks and homemade bombs did its job.
@@aregulargamer1 That had little to do with potential guerilla fighting though. Even with the two nukes expended America was perfectly capable of just leveling Japan from the air with conventional explosives (reminder that the firembombing of Tokyo killed more people than either Hiroshima or Nagasaki). Your post also ignores that Japan had a lot less contested territorial claims, that the loss of East Prussia and Silesia was more to compensate Poland for the annexation of its Eastern lands by the Soviets, and Japan still lost all of its overseas possessions like Korea, Machukuo, and Formosa just to name a few. Finally, its punishment had been intended to be a lot more severe, but then the Cold War happened which changed priorities drastically. Fundamentally America accepted because it was convenient for it. The only condition for the Japanese surrender was that the emperor keep his position, and that was that. Everything else was for the Allies to decide.
@@aregulargamer1 You have no idea the damage dealt to Japan, and it shows. Japanese culture was nearly entirely rebuilt in the occupation. Yes, the Japanese got to keep their Emperor. But they lost their core territories. They were occupied. The only reason they retained control was because America was interested in building an allied anti-Soviet nation. Otherwise they would have went the way of the Philippines. Also, it wasn't the threat of civilians that stopped America from invading on the ground. It was the prospect of genociding the Japanese people. Because America was more than happy to continue firebombing Japan into the ground. The Tokyo fire-bombs killed far more people than either nuke. We stopped because we really *really* didn't want to genocide the Japanese after what happened in Germany.
the american mind instead of trying to comprehend guerrilla warfare, they change the definition, and say: "uh uh, we didn't lose that war, we killed more people 😄". You did lose the war. The ultimate goal of a war is to drive the enemy out of the battlefield. If your enemy won't fight, he doesn't have negociating power, so if the enemy leaves the battlefield, you won. When the USA pulls out of afghanistan, it loses the war.
As much as you want the Taliban to be some fierce army full of scary soldiers, they actually were cowards who sat in caves who occasionally went outside to lay pitiful traps. They didn’t do any “driving” us out either because we used their nation as a training ground for many years, until we eventually got bored and left on our own accord. Keep coping Taliboo.
It kind of sounds like you're asserting that the Taliban simply "redefined" victory in Afghanistan. How can anyone say that Afghanistan was not victory for the Taliban? They absolutely got everything they wanted since 2001. They are back in control of Afghanistan, they have established their Islamic state and every presence of US or Western Armies is gone. Arguing with meaningless statistics of casualties is really weird and misleading. In the end it does not matter.
Let's say during the Cold War, the Soviets had driven the US government out of Washington, killed all its officials and military leaders, with a small contingent of the military escaping to relative safety in some caves in Mexico. For 20 years, the Soviets empty Ft. Knox and the Manhattan Fed of its gold, drain a bunch of oil out of American oil fields, and mine as much mineral wealth as they can. Eventually, the Soviets get sick of the expense of administering the region and withdraw, leaving a token puppet regime to defend itself, though it inevitably falls to a reconstituted "American military" which has almost no connection to the one that used to be in power, other than the name and ostensible ideology. Would you consider that series of events a victory for Americans, vs. not falling to the Soviets in the first place? Another way of looking at it: the time between the US driving the Taliban out of power in Afghanistan, and the Taliban returning to power with the US withdrawal, is roughly equal to the time between the end of WW1 and the beginning of WW2. If the standard is, allowing the defeated government to take back power after 20 years counts as a "loss", then the Allies actually lost WW1 as Germany came back more powerful than ever less than 20 years later.
In Afghanistan the Taliban achieved victory. For 20 years foreign forces occupied their land and hunted them like wild animals. It’s the very definition of a Pyrrhic victory. Had the west actually tried to take control of the state by any means necessary the Taliban would rule over the ruins and graveyards. The problem with notions of victory and defeat is that not every victory and not every defeat are equal.
To make it simple think....can you conduct guerrilla warfare or insurgencies with no weapons, no bullets, food, water or morale? Vietnam was supplied weapons by China and Russia. Afghanistan was supplied by the USA and decades later by Pakistan. Ammunition and weapons are not infinite and indestructible. Especially when fighting for decades. Think of it like fighting to defend an island in ww2.....without outside forces to provide you goods you will eventually run out. I can't think of many guerrilla forces that won or could have by themselves
@@SaltStackActual Insurgencies are marathons not sprints. They span generations. If you plan and fight under the assumption that you will live to harvest the results you got the wrong mindset. A determined people's desire for freedom will be achieved except when they get brutally oppressed, genocided and displaced. And even after genocides they may succeed (Armenia) especially when on an empire's periphery. The Circassians in the Caucaus weren't subdued until the Russian Empire genocided them and forcibly displaced many. Two generations after the Chechens were spread all throughout the USSR they fought two brutal wars and enjoyed a few years of independence. If your enemy's rules won't allow for drastic measures your insurgency will win. If it's clear a short term win isn't likely then plan your actions to set up your offspring for success. As a 16th German farmer rebellion song puts it "Geschlagen ziehen wir nach Haus', uns're Enkeln fechten's besser aus" (Defeated we march home, our grandkids will fight better/force better terms).
@@aguspuig6615 Kinda that but also majorly that it's made in a materialistic and individualistic mindset. Guerilla wars most often span generations. If you plan for the short term - that you yourself will see the end of the conflict - then you will see the end very soon, alright, just not the one you were hoping for. Majority of times your role in an insurgency is not the gunfighter. Maybe it's financial, logistically, maybe you hide part of your harvest for the resistance to eat. Maybe you live through foreign occupation and collaborate while carefully aggitating your political and social surroundings so your children may be successful in the conflict. Revolutions against occupation start slow. Years, sometimes decades, of preperation leading up to armed revolt. And most never commit too fully in a way that prevents them from returning home if it fails. You could study the resistance to occupation by napoleonist France in Germany by Freikorps or Tyrole by the legend Andreas Hofer. Many failed attempts, many men declared heroes because they died, but they forced some concessions, the boot to be lifted a bit. The end of Napoleon was not just decided in Russia and Waterloo. At Leipzig the biggest battle in history up unto that point took place when the vassal states of Austria, Prussia and Mecklenburg alongside Sweden forced Napoleon out of Germany, gaining independence and chased Napoleon through all of Germany and into Belgian Waterloo where the Prussians (in revolt against Napoleon) fought the majority until the brits showed up. It's a marathon and one ought to tread carefully if they want their bloodline to continue AND to see a succesful end. As a old German song about the farmer revolts in the 16th century puts it in its final verse: "Geschlagen ziehen wir nach Haus', uns're Enkel fechten's besser aus" - "Defeated we go on the march home, our grandkids will fight it out better/force better terms". Stay safe
@@aguspuig6615this video shows he doesn’t get it, and that comment shows he doesn’t get it. Weird how someone who doesn’t know how insurgencies work would make a vid about them
I understand not counting non-US death since one may argue that the creation of a native allied army is a direct byproduct of the invasion, but I feel like this is misrepresenting the effectiveness of guerilla. For instancce, there were 313,000 south vietnamese military death.
Wanted to comment this. ARVN was there too, and was mainly involved in taking the L in the whole war. Not mentioning them is an unobjective opinion which paints North Vietnamese victory in the war (by annexing South Vietnam) as completely insignificant. US goal in the region was to keep prolonged existence of South Vietnam, and to stop spread of communism. That goal failed, and the definition of victory was, naturally, redefined.
Never believe official death counts. They say that there were 58,000+ American deaths in Vietnam but there are still people dying every day directly from their service in Vietnam. Any official toll is the absolute minimum that can be contrived. The real toll of Americans is over one million.
Ehm... the highest stimate for RVNMF (ARVN was only the Army) is actualy 254k, the overall dead count of all the FWMF (Vietnam War equivalent of the ISAF) during the War doesn't go over 320k, in comparission, PAVN and NLF deaths usually go from 1.1 Million Dead to over 2 Million.
@@martinusaokishiro Well most of their Ls were during the early stages of the War, during the US Intervention period (1965 to 1971, as from that point on there were bearly any US ground-combat units) they did pretty well, like defeating most PAVN and NLF forces during the Tet Offensive. After that they also did it pretty well taking into account the circunstances, the problem was that the US effectively cut most of their military and economical aid to South Vietnam, while the Norths friends like the USSR and the PCR didn't. Combined with the 1973 Oil Crisis effectively ruining the Souths economy (hyperinflation go brrrrr), the war was turned into a proxy war between 2 third world countries each supported by their own super power, to a war between 2 third world countries with only being actually supported by foreign powers. This also doesn't take into account the massive advantaje the North Vietnamese had with the Laotian and Cambodian Border, which gave them a MASSIVE frontline in a very thin territory, while also not having to worry about to defend it as after Lam Son 719 the RVNMF wasn't interested in attacking there any more.
Isn't this effectively handwaving every time an irregular force won politically (ie, actual victory) by coping with the "they didn't win on the battlefield" remark? Like, did National Party-led South Africa win in Angola then? Did SWAPO, ANC/MK etc lose?
Those movements had a lot of Eastern Bloc help, including actual commando units from places like East Germany and Cuba doing a lot of special ops stuff. Ironically, these operations participated in accelerating the fall of those countries by bleeding them financially, but they also helped bring about the end of Rhodesia, Portuguese Angola, and so on. The Soviets did a lot of diplomatic work in addition to providing material aid in those theaters.
So you criticized the use of “winning” and the supposed “redefining” of the term, then never actually set the definition you believe is correct. “Winning” is exactly what happened to Al Qaeda, the NRA in China, the Vietnam Cong, etc if we consider their stated goals. How would a political victory not constitute a “win” especially if that political victory was the goal in the first place?
@@strongestgamer2501 wrong community support is your intelligence gathering apparatus. If you don't have it, you will never know what your enemy is doing. Furthermore, if you don't have community support, the guerrillas will cease to exist.
Says Vietnamese "lost" and afghans "lost" but Americans "won" against British. They all won. Because foreign occupiers left. Clearly some major bias here lol
@@SaltStackActual if we're gonna measure victory in K:D ratios and not the accomplishment of the actual objectives of the groups involved then Russia won Afghanistan too
@bingbong2257 Then just take a look at these. The faster someone can become a business partner like Germany and Japan, the better. Occupation is costly and may not end, like Korea. After the main objectives were accomplished, pretty much what was in press releases until 2011, it was just a matter of can they work with us. That proved to be a no, due to corruption. As early as 2016 there were 10 soldiers killed. 10. I'm not minimizing that suffering, but the American machine doesn't pay attention to personal sacrifices. Wars have always been about resources. In 2020 we gained Mexico as the number one trading partner, Iran showed it corkscrew handle a mass casualty event, and there were new issues arising for to China and their New initiatives in trying to emulate the US. Here: A Marshall Plan for Afghanistan? (2008) - www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/a-marshall-plan-for-afghanistan/ Pakistan's Baluchi Minority Eyes Autonomy, Wealth, And Rights (2008) - www.rferl.org/a/Pakistans_Baluch_Minority_Eyes_Autonomy_Wealth_And_Rights/1338024.html Large oilfield discovered in northern Afghanistan (2010) - www.france24.com/en/20100815-large-oilfield-discovered-northern-afghanistan-natural-ressources-shiberghan-balkh U.S. Identifies Vast Mineral Riches in Afghanistan (2010) - www.nytimes.com/2010/06/14/world/asia/14minerals.html $1 trillion motherlode of lithium and gold discovered in Afghanistan (2007-2010) - www.mining.com/1-trillion-motherlode-of-lithium-and-gold-discovered-in-afghanistan/ Afghan gold mining project approved (2010) - www.express.co.uk/news/world/217335/Afghan-gold-mining-project-approved Dreams Of A Mining Future On Hold In Afghanistan (2012) - www.npr.org/2012/04/04/149611352/dreams-of-a-mining-future-on-hold-in-afghanistan Natural Resources Were Supposed to Make Afghanistan Rich. Here’s What’s Happening to Them. (2015) - www.thenation.com/article/archive/resources-were-supposed-to-make-afghanistan-rich/ Afghanistan's corruption epidemic is wasting billions in aid ( 2016) - www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2016/nov/03/afghanistans-corruption-epidemic-is-wasting-billions-in-aid Afghanistan Tries to Win Trump Support With Lithium (2017) - www.voanews.com/a/afghanistan-trump-mining-lithium/3798585.html Why is Afghanistan unable to extract its vast mineral wealth? (2019) - www.aljazeera.com/features/2019/5/28/why-is-afghanistan-unable-to-extract-its-vast-mineral-wealth Illegal mining costs Afghanistan millions annually: UN (2020) - www.aa.com.tr/en/asia-pacific/illegal-mining-costs-afghanistan-millions-annually-un/1952838 Chinese investment in Afghanistan’s lithium sector: A long shot in the short term (2023) - www.brookings.edu/articles/chinese-investment-in-afghanistans-lithium-sector-a-long-shot-in-the-short-term/ Attempted theft of Afghan lithium by Chinese shows realities of dealings with Beijing (2023) - afghanistan.asia-news.com/en_GB/articles/cnmi_st/features/2023/02/07/feature-01
@@SaltStackActual Chinese corporations are primary economic facilitators, not the US. The US has basically zero active business interests in Afghanistan since withdrawal. Taliban wants nothing to do with us. If you approach it with this logic, then China won the war in Afghanistan.
@@bingbong2257 A pyrrhic victory is not a good one, and yet the Talibn didn’t even get that. They sat in caves until the U.S eventually decided to leave. The Talibn is now irrelevant, and “their” country is in ruins and disorder.
That take on Afghanistan is some pretty hardcore copium. Bin Laden was gone from Afghanistan within months and we knew it, then the US spent 20 years and about two and a half *trillion* dollars trying to prop up the Afghan National government, even for *10 years* after Bin Laden's death. At a certain point you have to admit that the objective changed and that the USA took a massive and undeniable L.
You're completely ignoring the arguments made, and it honest makes you seem just like someone mad enough to leave a comment. Also, what did you expect the US to do, sit in Afganistan forever firing artillery into the mountains and playing border watch for a government that can't get its shit together? If we were supposed to be there "forever", which is ridiculous, why did Britain leave long before the US? Was Britain also "defeated" then? I'm very interested to here what mental gymnastics you will come up with in your reply.
@@hastur-thekinginyellow8115 The goal of the US was to defeat the Taliban and make the Afghan national government a stable and democratic US ally. Since they withdrew without accomplishing this under military pressure from the Taliban, they were defeated. The fact that the Afghan government was dysfunctional doesn't change this; the US simply picked a fight it couldn't win. The argument in the video, which I directly addressed, was that the "real" objective was "only" to get Bin Laden (and Al-Qaeda), not to stabilize Afghanistan. This is copium as I explained above. As for the British, this is the funny part. Now, in short, yes the British *were* defeated in the same way, whether you're talking about this century or the last. What's funny is that you seemingly can't imagine that I would be willing to say so. I guess you saw my profile picture, assumed I was British and projected onto me your own unwillingness to admit that your country failed. It's ok man, you don't need to get heated, it's not an attack on you personally.
That is completely incorrect though. The stated mission objectives for Afghanistan were primarily to kill Bin Landen and remove the group Al-Qaeda from the nation - in the process also "de-throning" the Taliban's iron fisted rule over that area. You're saying that our "mission" was to "prop up" the Afghanistan government, which... it really wasn't. If you go back and look through any DoD press released during Operation: Enduring Freedom they state cleanly what their objectives are, as well as Presidential interviews from when Bush (jr.) was in power. The Taliban were overthrown in less than a year, and while it took a while to get Bin Laden, that was because he was hiding out in Pakistan and it's not exactly easy to have government operatives go into another nation you ware on peace-terms with and kill somebody in that nation. US intelligence knew he was in Pakistan for years, but it took exactly that long to get everything for the "all clear" through diplomatic channels in order to launch Operation: Neptune Spear so that it didn't immediately become a massive international incident. How do I know what our objectives were? Because I was literally there, as a U.S. Ranger and after my three tours chose to stay in the industry working in securities as an analyst. Again, the U.S. did it's best to prop up Afghanistan government and spent trillions of dollars - much of that money was mismanaged or outright stolen by government officials in the country. You still didn't answer the primary question addressed to you. What did you expect the United States to do. Be an occupying force in Afghanistan FOREVER, giving stern looks every time the Taliban looked like it was going to try and cross the Pakistani border in force again? Did you honestly expect the United States to be an occupying force for eternity? We are not the world's border guard, and while I know people like you love to use any opportunity you can whatsoever to shit on America, it is objectively not their problem. We left and the Taliban easily pushed aside the regime, again, because it spent two decades dwelling in corruption and mismanagement and wasn't ready for the departure of American assets. The people of the United States wanted our troops gone. We had been there for long enough, protecting a nation that was either throwing our money away or literally stealing it via corrupt officials.
False. I've seen a good number of educational contents that used the brainrot editing style. Humorous education works like a charm. This is not to diminish the regular style, by the way.
@@SimplyDuker Humour is one thing. but there is a big difference between Geography now's gags and a jump cut every 3 second with semi coherent text and sound effects
Guerilla is extremely effective in civil wars, yet near usless against outside invaders. You cannot diminish a invader's ability to wage war though blowing up stuff in your country.
Posted something similar on the old vid, but I'll repeat it here. Guerilla movements rely on a few consistent factors to succeed. The first, and most important is broad public support. The general populace has to overwhelmingly directly support the guerilla fighters with shelter, food, water, money, ammunition, weapons, and new recruits. Next, they need adequate terrain. They require vast tracts of poorly developed wilderness with poor infrastructure to operate within. On top of providing concealment, this enables them to run circles around conventional forces, striking them when weak, and retreating when they are strong. This results in these conventional forces eventually becoming bottled up in concentrated areas. This allows the guerilla forces, with their broad local (and, ideally, also international) support to fully exploit their freedom to move around and operate and re-organize into larger, more well equipped and commanded conventional forces. Finally, they besiege the now concentrated and isolated enemy force and eventually drive them out. This eventual victory is, very likely, going to be incredibly phyrric. You are talking 10, 20, even 50 to 1 kill ratios to win, in a conflict which will devastate the region and probably utterly unravel the culture's social and economic fabric. Likley facing international sanction that stunts or even actively prevents recovery. You will "win" and all it will cost you is everything. The bulk majority of guerilla revolutions fail. The ones that win very, VERY rarely do so without first repeatedly having to redefine what winning even is.
@@SaltStackActual My friend, we spoke prior on my experiences with fighting unconventional forces in Afghanistan and Iraq. We're talking about seeing entire **bloodlines** erased just to gain a bit more ground, or win **just a bit more** international support.
Don't forget also about post war trauma on the population, a whole generation of young men who didn't play in the sandbox, go to school, held an average 9/5, only thing they know is their rifle and how to shoot from it, how do you convince this man to put it down, go into job training, work on the job for decades, start a family. I wanted to mention other things but I don't speak the language well, so that's that
All true, but our socio-economic fabric is already unraveled, and there won't be just one revolution or one unified resistance group in America, but hundreds. Every neighborhood has the potential to field a different group. The State will encourage and support some groups against others, just as they're supporting the BLM and ANTIFA terrorists against patriotic Americans right now. It will be horrible, and nobody will be able to go anywhere without passing through multiple checkpoints.
@@gastari429that’s one thing I hope can take place in Afghanistan, cause it’s those things that stabilize a region, and can lead to tyrants/ warlords to loss their power ( if they allow the people to live their lives freely) I’ve seen a super car company start up in Afghanistan, pretty much a glorified kit car cause they gotta borrow a lot, but the more private business, and just living life people do, the less war mindset they have or tolerate.
When we speak of the guerrilla fighter, we are speaking of the political partisan, an armed civilian whose principal weapon is not his rifle or his machete, but his relationship to the community, the nation, in and for which he fights. Robert Taber. War of the Flea: The Classic Study of Guerrilla Warfare
Notice how in iraq there were many journalistic reports on war there(abu ghraib) Compare to afghanistan where literally NO speech of mullah omar ever got out and reporter being tortured and killed(journalist offices were outright bombed) the yet we here no stories from afghanistan back then it was worse than iraq
They justify their losses to themselves by saying "we killed x amount of them" "we killed their leaders" "we achieved everything we needed to" or my favorite, "we destroyed so much of their nation that it couldn't possibly be a win for them" I don't know why they obsess over such things when they could be working towards preventing failures like afghanistan, iraq and vietnam. But that would mean you didn't win. It'd mean that every house you bombed, child shot, and man waterboarded, left you with less than you entered with; and those years, even decades were for nothing. Which is too much for the ego to handle
@@ab-ol3pn you know who really won the war ? I'll tell you, Black Rock, Haliburton, Lockheep Martin and other legacy corporations who swindled 2.3 Trillion bollars from the American taxpayer pocket.
This kind of thought process is exactly why the US lost in Vietnam and Afghanistan. It’s not about the death toll, it’s about people’s loyalty to a cause. Very weird how with all we know about insurgency strategy today, videos like this are still being made. It’s almost willful ignorance at this point to believe guerillas rarely win.
Vietnam permanently scarred the people we have in office right now. They think that's what winning looks like lol. People who say that the Taliban didn't win are experiencing the exact same cope as we had about Nam. It doesn't matter they needed help. It doesn't matter we won every fight. It doesn't matter we had some small successes. We didn't follow through and everything we bought with the war was undone in a few months. The Art of War is very clear who wins in these situations and it's the side that is able to keep fighting until they get what they want. Not the side that gets what they want after a few quick victories and then leaves after a few years because war is expensive, so everything goes back to how it was before as if they were never even there.
@@aidanmattson681these organizations are effectively the same. NLF leaders received training in the north, they received supplies from the north, when their numbers ran low, they were topped off by northern troops, when their AOs overlapped they fell under northern command. They were a guerilla arm of the north. Asking who came into Saigon first in 1975 is like asking who got to Baghdad first in 2003, the army or marines? There is an answer but it’s irrelevant because both forces operated under the control of the same state. At no point was the NLF an independent organization.
@@aidanmattson681 The Vietcong were an arm of the North Vietnamese State to begin with, so the distinction is moot. The fact is that the Tet Offensive simultaneously killed almost half of NLF and utterly crushed US morale. The point of an insurgency isn't to win battles. It is a political tool used to drain the energy of your opponent and win legitimacy for your state or protentional state. Insurgencies do not take place in a vacuum. Insurgency purely for the sake of killing your enemy on the battlefield accomplishes nothing if you can't either beat them outright by eroding their political support or gathering support to put pressure on them from afar. The original point of the NLF was to get support from the people of the south for a general uprising, a thing that almost never happens. What turned out happening is that the NLF succeeded in exhausting the American people at relatively little cost to the North. So while it did not win, it also did not lose. In the same way that Korea was an American Victory despite a stalemate and a perpetual ceasefire, Vietnam was an American loss not because the NLF and PVA won the war but because the RVN didn't survive the peace and subsequent renewal of conflict.
@@lordsheogorath3377 Afghanistan is the main source of opioids in the region, this is why everyone tried to capture it. British Empire didn`t go to Afghanistan to steal their sand and goats, it was because opioids were and remain one of the main major products used in pharma. The US tried to control its production and even managed to increase it, but obviously dudes with calculators sat down and figured out its not profitable enough. And Vietnam was about rubber, it was one big French rubber plantation that supplied all major French auto brands, from bicycle tires to car tires, Tour De France and famous cute little French mopeds from romantic movies were all made with rubber from Vietnam, where France took away land from farmers in the North, forced millions into poverty and then used those people as slave labour, working at rubber plantations for a bowl of soup. It only makes sense to stay in countries like that for colonial powers if the locals are willing to work and farm whatever you need. Locals do not even need to grab AKs, if they simply stopped farming whatever the colonial power wants, there is no longer any point in staying there. India won against the Brits by simply refusing to work for them, without a single shot. They sat down and said we would rather starve than work for you. Boom, Brits left. Vietnam war and Afghanistan had no point, it was just murder. Locals refused to cooperate = end of story, pack up and leave. USSR came to Afghanistan with a completely different approach, USSR built Kabul polytechnic university, Naghlu hydro electric station, bridges, roads, apartments, taught locals Russians, etc. USSR launched the first Afghani man into space in the 80s. Needless to say - results are such: Afghanistan recognized Crimea as a part of Russia in 2014, Taliban are shaking hands with Lavrov. So its obvious who won the "big game" at the end. USSR won by investment and demonstrating its willingness to cooperate on equal terms without the arrogance of western exceptionalism.
The fact you had to move the goal post when it comes to Afghansitand and Vietnam shows a complete victory which the losers are struggling to cope with.
Did you watch all the way to the end? Even the Vietnamese government said it was a disaster and the Paris deal was a great relief. Also, martyrdom is something that is eventually accepted by the people washing guerilla war. Young men rarely realize this includes their own families. Many things can be true simultaneously.
@SaltStackActual Except for the things you are saying aren't. It's an opinion that you are trying to generalize. Also, the aftermath and reason aren't the concern during actual war and battle. Objectives are what's important in an armed conflict. End of the day who was in charge in Vietnam and Afghanistan? You say the battles matter, and while in a conventional army, which requires skilled, expensive, and well supplied soldiers, sure, but an insurgent is none of those things and objectives are a lot easier to achieve.
@@MrChowbaby69Us high commands mainly fight behind there wslled bases and occasionally sctually go out to the people thre tryna rule is this not true?
@carter.z1266 US high command have objectives they have to achieve and victory conditions. If they aren't met its considered a failure in different training operations like CAXs. Officer get replaced and senior NCOs posted(that means fired) if those conditions aren't met. In our wars, we constantly move the goal post and try to make up new objectives and victory conditions because we struggled or failed the first ones and then fail at those. It's time our people stop trying to polish a turd and call it what it is.
Quite analytical but using K:D to call one side the winner is very dubious. By that logic (and Wehraboos still use this) the Wehrmacht won against the Soviets due to eliminating more soldiers and tanks, even though the Russians are the ones who reached Berlin and the Nazi Germany ceased to exist as a political entity. To quote Clausewitz, “The political object is the goal, war is the means of reaching it, and means can never be considered in isolation from their purpose.” K:D doesn't matter if you have achieved your political objective that you were fighting for. For the US in Vietnam, it is a loss because they could not achieve their goal of containing communism in the region by destroying Communist North Vietnam's ability to function politically and militarily nor were they were able to save their regional proxy South Vietnam as the North Vietnamese gained control over all of Vietnam. Clear US defeat right there. Well at least from the perspective of the US elites. The K:D argument about Vietnam that Americans commonly bring is total copium for a clear US defeat. Its funny how you redefined the notion of victory and defeat to your own liking to fit such US normie copium takes while accusing the Vietcong of doing it. Afghanistan though is a more fascinating case as its not so straightforward like Vietnam. Yeah the Taliban achieved their objective but aside from Bin Laden, the US also had other objectives you can look at from different perspectives. For example, while the conflict lasted, PMC's were able to profit from it by participation while the US-backed puppet regime was made to buy weapons and equipment from US arms manufacturers. If you look at it from the perspective of these corporations that made money from the war, its a clear victory for them regardless of whether or not the US troops had to leave as they got a lot of cash on their pockets anyways.
The reality is the U.S. had both the economic and military capability to win the Vietnam war, but due to political backlash th U.S. military had to pull out. Same thing happened in Afghanistan, the taliban where practically non existent, even service members there explain that nearing the later years of the war before pulling out, taliban attacks where less frequent and more tame. The issue I find with these wars is that the U.S. military would have won if political, and societal opinion was less easily swayed for peace. The fact Americans barely even felt repercussions from the war on terror is extremely telling, no one had to ration food or even sacrifice much of anything, the U.S. was not even in a full time wartime economy and managed to push the taliban, into the mountains, and pakistan.
@@reynanlamsen2007 honestly if I was president and saw people acting jingoistic I would just tell them to reconsider their decisions, because it’s abundantly clear that the American people lack the capability to see a war til fruition, or accept the hard decisions that must be made for victory.
@@rickfastly2671 Honestly, the Americans expect every single war to end in a dramatic and quick fashion when in reality, victories like that almost never happen because conflicts typically plays out more like a pendulum. American citizen basically suffer from ADHD
@@rickfastly2671 This is ignoring the context of the Vietnam War. It was never supposed to get this big, the promise was that victory was JUST around the corner, we just need a few thousand more soldiers, and repeat this for just under a decade. Eventually, people feel burned. Same with Afghanistan, years of "victory is just around the corner" for about two decades. America didn't go into a full time war economy, but eventually people start feeling burned.
To summon all out, despite your title, even your video adknowledge the often win: Having outside support does not diminish that fact in any sense. They win everytime regular armies do NOT enforce their objectives. Just by not-losing. And NOT, Afganistan, was punitive at first, then the US goverment (whose armed branch is the U.S Armed Forces) decided it was going to be something else, and the moment they decided that, the US lost. It's just so hard for many, many USmuricans ( specially servicemen) to accept, the fact you might win your battlles does not necessarily mean, you are making a difference on the long term and that Strategy ( not Tactics) dictate the outcome of a War.
The word idiot is thrown around so much that it is like smearing shit on things. Even with my 132+ IQ idiots still call me an idiot, they don't like it when I call them back an idiot.
Saying North Vietnam won through politics is crazy. War is politics by other means. . The North was able to heavily mobilize their entire society and fight hard. In 1975 the North smashed their way into the South and there were significant battles even after the Americans left.
Yea but the NVA weren’t very good in all honesty. They only won because America refused to continue sending the South weapons and ammo after 73. On the other hand, China and Russia were supplying the NVA throughout the whole war
@@LaikaTheG exactly that’s the point the point of gorilla warfare continue hurting regular troop until they decide it’s not worth it anymore then they decided to fuck off
I hate the conventional narrative that America lost in vietnam. When we pulled out we had essentially already won. People act like we couldn’t handle the guerrilla tactics and ran off with our tail between our legs.
"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." I believe you confuse militia with guerilla.
Yes, Gen Grivas used massive popular support, received Greek assistance, and took advantage of the strained post WW2 British military. International media coverage of executions and criticism of the British government helped as well.
@@Baconcatboy How many american military deaths via suicide? You won't talk about that will you now. If you check between the ANA and taliban had equal casualities and once you factor in the US servicemen suicides talibs got away with a positive KD if you really want to talk about numbers so badly.
Keep in mind the VC by 1969 had lost roughly 75% of its manpower by 1970 the VC fell under the control of the NVA. Tet offensive saw the. Take massive losses
@@bakerhitch5856 but they didn lose because of Ho Chi Minh trail and vietcong incursions that prevented us and allied forces to defend properly against incoming NVA, see what happened during the Trt offensive
I've always thought that guerillas didn't exactly win per say, instead they were just really good at taking Ls, so much so that the other side just kinda gave up
is'nt that the point of guerrilla warfare? conventional Victory is almost impossible for these smaller groups, thus they rely on extreme or unconventional methods to win, they avoid direct combat because they know once air support arrives there fucked, so instead they stretch out the war untill the opposing conventional armys nation of origin no longer supports the war. it's not that guerilla forces rarly win, rather you have to be using the "wrong" definition of "victory" to frame them as failures of movments, a good example of victory via guerrilla warfare with no outside support is the cuban revolution
@@blipblop888 Arguably ideal goal of warfare is an effective victory. Not every victory is equal just like not every defeat is fatal. This doesn’t mean that guerilla warfare has to result in bad victories but it often does. A lot of the time it also is so reliant on your enemy not being concerned enough / willing to actually give up that it is truly a desperate measure and shoot consequently we considered as a last resort because a lot of the time when push comes to shove an ambush goes wrong and someone gets captured and speaks entire villages burn. In a normal war defeat spares civilians because it usually becomes obvious when the big victory of big armies is impossible and peace is being made. If you however keep fighting you often do not have international support and favourable terrain and doom your country to decades of misery.
@@Arcaryon you missed my point, Guerilla warfare DEPENDS on weather or not a force can exploit their terrain, nations political instability, occupation forces failures (for example the US) and several other factors traditional victory is not possible for these groups, THAT'S MY POINT but when you you look at groups/forces who have been able to then you relize a pattern, these groups DO win, just not in the "traditional" sense. and those who fail, fail BECAUSE they weren't able to take advantge of those factors again look at the Cuban revolution (who had no outside sopport as the USSR came later) or Taliban take over (which had little Pakistani sopport if any and most of the wepones the taliban used by the way weren't Pakistani orgin rather American weapon's sold to them by ANA soldiers or Soviet left overs)
@@blipblop888 The Taliban had a ton of access to the weapons from the Mujahedin era and support from Pakistan to the extent that they could recruit openly in the border regions where their ethnicity s present. Bin Laden literally hiding right next to a military base is my opinion the icing on a piece of cake that makes it obvious that radical actors in Pakistan working against international coalition forces and their local allies had infact considerable outside support. In the case of Afghanistan victory was possible because all the Taliban had to do was wait, perhaps busy Themse infiltrating the local army aso. even further and stage a coup. In other words, instead of fighting constantly for 20 years they could’ve just brokered a peace and betrayed this treaty the moment international attention shifted away from the weak puppet government and fought a much less costly campaign IF the force in charge would have even put up a resistance. Afghanistan is a prime example of people thinking that the local success was a result of armed resistance first instead of rightfully concluding that it was in fact just a logical consequence of the longterm disinterest of the invading force in the region and more importantly not understanding that the Taliban success ruined Afghanistan and by extend tarnished the victory of this fundamentalist militia. The reason why I am pointing this out it’s because so many people fail to understand that most unconventional warfare of this kind isn’t concluded with the luxury of an exclusive ethnic recruiting area in a nuclear armed neighbouring state or the backing of one of the largest states in the entire region in the case of Vietnam while also maintaining control over a vast amount of territory due to the lack of challenge from the opposition. I understand what you’re saying - I simply do not agree with everything and since this is a public conversation I always like to clarify things beyond the context of the specific discussion. Yes occasionally some groups applying these tactics succeed in meeting their goals. If certain conditions are met. My point, as I hopefully made clear, is however that most of these groups do not win which matters both for geopolitical strategy as well as retroactive perspective. The moment there is a border between two states for example resisting occupation often becomes a struggle that can only succeed under such rare circumstances that they are not easily replicated and are therefore worth to consider as exceptions rather than the rule. In Africa and America for example a plethora of armed groups routinely fail to make any notable progress and at best manage to reconcile with the centralised authorities. These groups are notably not the kind of rapidly advancing forces that are capable of holding vast amount of territory while facing serious resistance. In summary the point of guerrilla warfare is to achieve victory when conventional means would make it impossible but it is often unwise and ends in disaster well even the victories it manages to achieve are rarely worth the fight unless they happen to coincide with significant changes in the international or regional landscape that make a victory possible which are usually fairly unrelated to the local armed resistance. PS: Cuba was the ideal example of a revolution there was only possible thanks to Guerilla tactics and as you wrote yourself happened almost entirely independently in spite of significant centralised resistance.
In both cases said guerrilla groups took far more casualties and lost a majority of the battles they took part in when compared to the occupying force. They only won as a result of the occupier’s own country losing interest in the war and no longer wishing to fight, which is something you would know if you actually watched the video instead of seeing the title and complaining
@@mjkoo5365 the occupying countries government lost interest as a result of the casualties inflicted by the guerillas. Internal dissent was fomented by the medias widespread coverage of the aforementioned casualties, resulting in mass riots and draft dodging. The VC beat the French, and the VC played an invaluable role beating the Americans. The US government doesn’t have the balls to go all the way militarily
@@ssww3conventionally we defeated them the afp (Armed forces of the philippine) Would destroyed the isis any moment they want but ideologically speaking we won't be able to fight them
Guerilla Warfare does have the major advantage of being able to regroup even after being defeated ie taliban. Therefore, Id put my chips on Guerilla Warfare. Large professional armies are just too expensive and are at the mercy of its citizens tax money.
Yes, but only in the case that the government is defunct and everything is rendered splintered. Eventually once everything goes back to a state where a government can be formed, a large organized force has to be formed. Sure they are expensive but they are needed for general enforcement of internal and external affairs of the nation and maintain unity of the nation
You mean the same group that was revealed to be taking money from the US after agreeing to secure its borders and deal with 15!$-K on their own? I remember also mentioning a few months ago in comments that it made for a good control zone near Iran. I also said 2020 and covid showed that Iran can't even stop half its cabinet from dying from a super cold, and that to bring a country to its knees you don't even need to occupy land. But sure, focus on the small picture.
How many times can someone dig a hole next to a road, then put the dirt back in an empty hole making it look like something is there, but its empty and stopping a whole convoy before that convoy becomes annoyed and begins ignoring it?
The Cuban Revolution seems to be an exception. I'm at least not aware of any outside support Castro's Guerrillas had. But, of course, in Cuba, the population was very much against their government, and I get the impression that Cuba's army wasn't all that loyal. Also, in Che's book on guerrilla warefare, he mentions the need for guerilla forces to evolve over time into a regular army. Of course, Che learned the hard way about how guerilla warfare can fail.
Exactly, even Che knew the direction things had to go in the absence of high popular support, funding, and supply. Cuba was special. It just needed a little push.
@@SaltStackActual americas half assed bay of pigs fiasco was exactly the push he needed. He even wrote to jfk thanking him. After the bay of pigs was repulsed their fledgling government was stronger than ever.
I have much more planned. The Philippines is a nation steeped in the influence of guerrillas, insurgents, and assassins. But that's what's helped us appreciate life so much more.
The French Resistance was a damn joke!! The Serbs fighting under Tito were serious fighters compared to those losers in France who mainly killed each other.
Also, to reinforce the point, Tito got loads and loads of communist and communist allied support, and the casualty exchange rate between his communists versus the patriot / nationalist forces was horrendous (not as bad as Rhodesia). And, yes, holle wood aside, the french resistance were by and large criminals who went from robbing stores in the name of the mafia to robbing stores in the name of communism, kind of the same in Rhodesia / Zimbabwe and "antifa" etc, tribes settling old scores under different "names"
@@wingatebarraclough3553 The french resistance wasn't just made up of bandits. And ideologically it was a very diverse group. There were communists, Anarchists, Socialists, Roman Catholics who objected to the Natzi's on Moral grounds, and there were even French Nationalist Facists who joined the resistance because they wanted true independence. That's not even mentioning the countless foreigners in the French resistance who resisted the Germans while they were stuck in france. Your comments are, at best, a gross generalization. I would even say that its a gross mischaracterization of an complex movement.
9:00 well that's the point here! Viet Kong and Taliban didn't need to conduct a traditional offensive to push Americans out physically They just need to not lose. Still be around when the bigger force is forced to go away due to whatever reason so they can take over it's chess.
The bit about our objective in Afghanistan proved that this video was just you coping we stayed there for 20 years and pumped billions of dollars into it we very much were trying to do nation building and failed. We lost the taliban won.
Also your point about casualties is stupid if an army secured its objectives and defeats the enemy army that’s a victory. By your logic the Germans won WW2 cause they inflicted millions of casualties on the Soviet’s
Copy pasting my comment since I essentially write the same thing. America is a business as much as a nation. Nixon got off the gold standard in 1971 and shook hands with China in 1972, opening massive trade partnerships. In 1973, the Paris Peace Accords were signed. The Maoists were seen at the time as easier to get along with than Stalinists, especially since it looked like there could have been a Sino-Soviet war. Even China invaded Vietnam in 1979 in response to Cambodia. We technically had a buffer of mutual cooperation in SEA. All this information is easy to find and a timeline established. Afghanistan was found to have ton of lithium in 2010 along with iron, copper, and gold. It was assessed to take up to 16 years to extract after discovery and with 30 to 40% of revenue in all trades lost to corruption it was just too costly after nearly a decade of exploration into the viability of a project. We were bracketing Iran, but after COVID nearly destroyed their cabinet in 2020 and they capitulated to receiving vaccines, it became very clear they lacked the infrastructure to handle mass casualty situations. Mexico in this time period became the number one trading partner of the US and chip manufacturing is set to return in a big way soon. Do you also really think Nordstream was done by the Russians to themselves? Oil pipeline from Syria to Russia via Iran. Look at the current alliances being created. Iran doesn’t care about Palestine, none of their reasons to get involved with Israel pass the sniff check. So what, people end up ruling whatever remains of their homes, that doesn’t matter in the larger picture. This quote is attributed to many people: "As long as I control its money, I care not who makes its laws." It is what it is. Napoleon talked about how he could get men to die for the smallest piece of ribbon. The focus is too small, people in power don’t care about the squabbles and pain of conflict at the individual level. We aren't even in empire mode, far from it, because we still seem to listen to feedback from other countries. It's up to the individual to live as honorably as possible under the given circumstances.
The comparison between guerrillas an armies is just unfair from the start. A guerrilla can range from a wierd underground wing of the army, to just random groups of people that decide to fight. In the case of the origin of the term, when Napoleon decided to invade Spain, the spanish army was pretty much decimated fairly quickly, and the french were only pushed back because of random groups of people that decided to fight, however they were spurred to do so by politicians, surviving military officers, and they were supplied by other civilians and the remnants o the army, so even if the army was all but destroyed even the literal origin of the term ''guerrilla'' includes army support. You cant discount other guerrillas for that same reason. But tbh, army support is practically symbolic at that point, at least as far as i learned, its the classic example of a guerrilla of mostly common people that wins basically because of popular support and nothing else
You can keep reuploading. But the "greatest military on earth" still failed to pacify rice and goat farmers, even with the entirety of Europe at their back, and you can't make that go away. Sorry bud.
The US was able to pacify the Philippines in 1900 with little issue; the failure in Afghanistan and Vietnam is due to American weakness, not the inherent strength of the guerrilla ideal.
@@literallyme26 From wiki United States: 130 killed 270 wounded ~500 dead from disease Philippine Scouts: 111 killed 109 wounded Philippine Constabulary: 1,706 casualties That is not a major war- it is comparable to the Philippine drug war (2016-2022). The US military during the 19th century was capable of waging and winning counter-insurgency campaigns (Natives, Mexicans, Confederates, colonies). The modern American military is not.
Here in India, Marathas were guerillas with their famous hit and run tactic which eventually destroyed richest empire of the world at that time- Mughal. It worked fantastically for them
Guerillas might win, but if you are a guerilla you might not live to see that day. Great video indeed. In India, the Communist Maoist extremism is similarly at it’s last leg like the ones in Philippines. Unless the bigger government is an unbelievable prick (Like Pakistan in 1971) the guerillas really don’t win most of the time, and furthermore they don’t win by themselves.
Yeah West Pakistan was a huge prick in 1971 to the point that EVERYONE in East Pakistan hated them, including those with differing political ideologies who were back to each other's throats following the Independence of Bangladesh. And for the Mukti Bahini, there were a lot of Bengali defectors from Pakistani armed forces involved along with cooperation with India on top of support from the Communist block. The spectacular Operation Jackpot wasn't done by ragtag local militia but rather trained naval commandos of Bangladesh. Mukti Bahini even organized themselves into 11 sectors each lead by sector commanders who were regular officers in the Pakistani military before the war and they formed a combined allied force with Indian armed forces by the end of the war to coordinate properly.
The last thing this government wants is TH-cam to be flooded with ex operators teaching people how to operate and random TH-cam channels teaching people critical thinking and examination of guerrilla and asymmetric warfare
Here are (some) of the sources for those interested. Really read and take it for what it is, lessons learned through the hard way. Over and over again: INSURGENTS RARELY WIN: ADAPTATION IN THE FACE OF FAILURE - mwi.westpoint.edu/insurgents-rarely-win-adaptation-in-the-face-of-failure/ DON’T UNDERESTIMATE THE BEAR-RUSSIA IS ONE OF THE WORLD’S MOST EFFECTIVE MODERN COUNTERINSURGENTS - mwi.westpoint.edu/dont-underestimate-the-bear-russia-is-one-of-the-worlds-most-effective-modern-counterinsurgents/ THE CHANGING FACE OF INSURGENCY - mwi.westpoint.edu/the-changing-face-of-insurgency/ Mao Tse-tung and the Search for 21st Century Counterinsurgency - ctc.westpoint.edu/mao-tse-tung-and-the-search-for-21st-century-counterinsurgency/ Insurgencies Rarely Win - And Iraq Won’t Be Any Different (Maybe) - foreignpolicy.com/2007/01/15/insurgencies-rarely-win-and-iraq-wont-be-any-different-maybe/ A Farewell to Rational Aims: Why U.S. Strategy Failed in Afghanistan - www2.law.temple.edu/lppp/a-farewell-to-rational-aims-why-u-s-strategy-failed-in-afghanistan/ CHAPTER THREE The Challenge of Counterinsurgency: Lessons from the Cold War and After Air Power in the New Counterinsurgency Era: The Strategic Importance of USAF Advisory and Assistance Missions, 2006, pp. 27-52 (26 pages) - www.jstor.org/stable/10.7249/mg509af.11?seq=1 Felter, J. H. (2012). Why Do Insurgencies Fail? Causes and Effects, Governance and Military Force in Counterinsurgency Strategies. Historical Methods: A Journal of Quantitative and Interdisciplinary History, 45(4), 183-186. doi.org/10.1080/01615440.2012.721337 The Lessons of 20 Years of Counterinsurgency Research - irregularwarfare.org/articles/the-lessons-of-20-years-of-counterinsurgency-research/ Reviewed Work: Beating Goliath: Why Insurgencies Win by Record Jeffrey Strategic Studies Quarterly, Vol. 2, No. 4 (WINTER 2008), pp. 142-144 (3 pages) - www.jstor.org/stable/26268360 INSURGENCY, NOT WAR, IS CHINA’S MOST LIKELY COURSE OF ACTION - warontherocks.com/2019/12/insurgency-not-war-is-chinas-most-likely-course-of-action/
I just wanted to let you know I clicked on this, because I love that you say people can't handle reality more than the title itself. So true. I got 2 cents on this so I'll leave that too. I do a lot of things which aren't my real job over seas that get me in all kinds of trouble. My real job is being an Archaeologist. Pretty wholesome stuff I guess but I'm usually on my own or with a couple of other team mates and I'm rarely working anywhere that's "safe" depending on what your definition of safety is of course. If it's not dudes with drones and guns it's infectious pathogens and paranoid rednecks or just complete government dogs if we can get past simple things like clean food and water. In the last decade my best stories involve getting detained by our own NATO allies thinking I'm a Russians spy shortly after being followed around by FSB for an entire summer. I'm not sure why FSB had at least one dedicated agent who couldn't even do a reasonable job of concealing himself and his giant SLR camera with the types of lenses you see sports journalists using. I would assume carrying crates of blasting gel in and out of cave that's closer than comfort from various munitions detonating would be part of it. Thankfully I spent most of my days there inside of the cave just hoping I don't blow my own self up or wind up in a cave collapse. After that when I tried to go home I couldn't even make it to the airport because farmers with guns thought I was working for the Russians...because I just looked foreign. That's literally the entire reason I sat on some hay bails for about 5 hours with two guys not in uniform pointing guns at me wondering if they're just going to waste me. This was all in 2014-2015 Ukraine for some context. Anyways yeah, you nailed dude. Most people who are veterans of US military don't have what it takes to do an asymmetric cause. You're not a soldier when it's asymmetric, you're just ground meat. I even get jealous myself in my own work of anyone in a uniform because uniform guys probably won't just be shot with their hands tied in a ditch and forgotten about legally, or you might get evacuated, even if not, you're going to get food and water and medicine air dropped into you if nothing else. I don't know those luxuries. If someone isn't capable of getting into a full blown police chase and getting away, don't do it. If you can't take care of hygiene and medical care without a doctor, don't do it. If you aren't ready to wind up like roadkill on the side of the road without so much as your name ever getting back to anyone back home much less loved ones and friends, don't do it. Committing to anything less than wearing a uniform is literally digging your own grave before you've even squeezed a trigger. Don't do it unless you're are just hell bent on taking as many bad guys down with you before your time comes. If you don't have that mentality it's probably because someone is living in a make believe fantasy. Any asymmetric cause is one thing and one thing only, death. If you make it out alive it's because you won the lottery and you know how to handle yourself and your mission if not both. Same is true for war but you got an army behind to you to cover your behind. At least that's ideally how things are supposed to work of course nothing goes according to plan ever, especially in war. I was lucky to be personally trained and led when I was green from USMC 1964-68 veteran. Without him I wouldn't be here writing this. Cool video dude. Keep them coming! 👍
that is a little bit biased why are you ignoring the casualties of the afghan army and south vietnamese army, if they are included in the casualties then you would have a close casualty ratio.
Mission set. Do you want the truth? The US government doesn't care about some host nation issues. They are also more targeted due to the fact that they are usually softer targets. An outpost of 20 regular ANA with half high on hash won't have American support embedded in case they're in trouble. They'll have QRF but if they get attacked by the insurgent forces you could say the fight was near equal in terms of capabilities and weapons. The largest attempt on an American base was FOB Salerno, one of the places I was at, and that didn't end well for the attackers. Insurgents hitting ANA/ANP was a near normal occurrence. Some ANA/ANP WERE insurgents. I didn't factor them in due to the fact that to the top, it doesn't really matter to them.
This is video, especially the Afghanistan part, is just pure cope. We lost and that’s that. You are correct in the sense that yes, guerrilla fighters are not invincible, but that has more to do with the occupiers tactics and competence rather than some imagined foreign assistance. Rant over
@@grandmaster6166 TH-camrs being a bunch of idiots, example #34377. The Taliban in fact received copious amounts of foreign aid. Without French, Dutch, Spanish, and Prussian help, the Continental Americans would have stood little chance against the British Empire. George Washington hated much of the American Militia for being a failure. Stop projecting
@@thewisp7447 Would you blame the the failure of the British to suppress the revolution on copious foreign aid? Was it the French that won the American war of independence? Obviously, money and supplies are useful to any undertaking, but receiving help does not make one invincible. The issue in the 13 colonies, and in Afghanistan, was the failure of the occupiers to establish effective command and control over the territory and either persuade or intimidate the local population into compliance. That is where the fault lies. Regarding the tone of my initial post (which perhaps is the cause of your own rudeness) is that channels like this one are (in my mind) merely apologists for the Pentagon and the State Department, people attempting to sidestep and excuse real issues in the doctrine and philosophy that currently guide the US and its foreign policy. I think that such people are absolutely in the wrong and should be called out. But that is just me, I would like to hear (or read I guess) what you have to say in response to this.
It's true. People shouldn't romanticize wars, conflicts, and arms struggles as it sugar coating the harsh and brutal realities for everybody involved that had to go to live through it regardless the outcome.
Very cool analysis! Another really good example of guerilla warfare is in ancient Sicily during the Peloponnesian war. Thucydides writes that when the Sicels were indirectly helping the Doric (i.e. "Spartan") inhabitants of Syracuse by constantly harassing the Athenian army with light cavalry ambushes. The Athenians ended up wasting a lot of manpower building long trenches and walls to keep the Sicels out with no success. That was one of many reasons why the entire army of 40,000 and the entire fleet that brought them all died to the man (except Alcibiades, who was recalled from active service for a criminal trial). This failure of the Athenians to take over Syracuse was seen as the turning point in the war, and the constant threat of Sicel ambushes was a significant part of that failure, being mentioned in many places by Thucydides.
I’m surprised you didn’t mention the (Provisional) Irish Republican Army. They defined what it meant to be and operate as a guerrilla movement. They even wrote a handbook that was disseminated through the organization to set a baseline of how guerrilla operations should be conducted. One of the takeaways from the Green Book was to wage a campaign of “long war” essentially exhausting the British until they wanted to come to the negotiating table on the terms of Ireland. No matter how long it took. Good video mane.
"uhh muh higher k/d ratio means my side is winning even tho the enemy is still existing or something" -you also america invaded afghanistan because of the taliban, that was their main objective, even the DOD admitted that you doofus
Yes they even made up the name alqaedah(the bases where zarqawi trained at afghanistan) Osamas group was islamic front against fighting crusaders and yahoodis(in arabic) The talibans asked for evidence of osamas involvement in 911 EVEN BEFORE 9/11 happened the US were already bombing mosques in afghanistan excuse being searching for osama after he fled from sudan
The Taliban is now completely irrelevant you doofus, they were evaporated. Only a technical victory for them, I’d rather go through an American defeat than go through whatever loony outcome victory that the Taliban got.
Great video! I will say you did leave out Haiti’s ability to fight off their French Slavers to become the only Island in the Caribbean to gain independence by force.
@SGvalentine The Haiti revolt is a bad example. 1 it wasn’t really a partisan war as it was more of a coup. The French sent Polish troops to put down the rebellion, however the poles joined it because they didn’t like the idea of slavery. The Polish were better equipped and more powerful than the weaker colonial garrison and could have conquered the country by themselves if they wanted.
A lot of people here coping "the guerilla don't need to win" then giving examples of Vietnam or whatever don't understand the video. The truth is that the guerilla rarely win, as in, historically, the professional fighting force usually crushes the guerilla and accomplishes most of its objectives.
the boers in the south african war of 1879-1915 can also be noted. these were the first signs of commandos being used in combat. very interesting stuff
Not at all true, in only the last century guerrilla forces have lost dozens of times, the IRA lost the troubles, the KKE lost the Greek civil war, the Polish home army lost the Warsaw uprising, The CHRI lost the second Chechen war etc.
@@SaltStackActual Studies🤣This reminds me of the bell curve meme I really hope your actually getting paid good money for this otherwise thats some real hard cope If you are paid btw here is some advice if you stopped robbing your own people and actually represented there interests your masters and you wouldnt need to worry about the American people rising up at some point and when that happens they will win sooner or later even if you win battles you will loose that war
Look at the casualty rates in Vietnam and Afghanistan. Yes, you can win, but you need the stubbornness and manpower to endure horrifyingly disproportionate casualties for often over decade until the enemy gets bored and goes home.
Copy pasting my comment since I essentially write the same thing. America is a business as much as a nation. Nixon got off the gold standard in 1971 and shook hands with China in 1972, opening massive trade partnerships. In 1973, the Paris Peace Accords were signed. The Maoists were seen at the time as easier to get along with than Stalinists, especially since it looked like there could have been a Sino-Soviet war. Even China invaded Vietnam in 1979 in response to Cambodia. We technically had a buffer of mutual cooperation in SEA. All this information is easy to find and a timeline established. Afghanistan was found to have ton of lithium in 2010 along with iron, copper, and gold. It was assessed to take up to 16 years to extract after discovery and with 30 to 40% of revenue in all trades lost to corruption it was just too costly after nearly a decade of exploration into the viability of a project. We were bracketing Iran, but after COVID nearly destroyed their cabinet in 2020 and they capitulated to receiving vaccines, it became very clear they lacked the infrastructure to handle mass casualty situations. Mexico in this time period became the number one trading partner of the US and chip manufacturing is set to return in a big way soon. Do you also really think Nordstream was done by the Russians to themselves? Oil pipeline from Syria to Russia via Iran. Look at the current alliances being created. Iran doesn’t care about Palestine, none of their reasons to get involved with Israel pass the sniff check. So what, people end up ruling whatever remains of their homes, that doesn’t matter in the larger picture. This quote is attributed to many people: "As long as I control its money, I care not who makes its laws." It is what it is. Napoleon talked about how he could get men to die for the smallest piece of ribbon. The focus is too small, people in power don’t care about the squabbles and pain of conflict at the individual level. We aren't even in empire mode, far from it, because we still seem to listen to feedback from other countries. It's up to the individual to live as honorably as possible under the given circumstances.
America achieved its domino buffer against Stalinism by becoming a business partner with the Maoists in 72 after unlocking unlimited credit. As far as America the business goes, Vietnam became totally and completely irrelevant. Warfare is only a portion of the larger picture.
History teacher and military history enthusiast here. Just wanted to say I discovered your content and love the way you explained it. Other than that, subscribing and keep it up!
A fellow teacher! Thanks for the subscribe! It's kind of hard distilling complex topics into bite-sized pieces without that feeling of missing something, but it's been a great learning experience.
The last bit is the saddest part to me, rather realizing the futility of keeping the blood flowing, some will try to pull a Genghis Khan and just kill everyone
thats how you deal with partisans and the supporting population but the moral high horse the west placed itself upon makes it impossible to win against guerillas
Choosing French insurgents to illustrate ww2 guerrilla fighters is unfair, Yugoslav partizans were a much better example to choose. Also us war on Afghanistan wasn't just a punitive war against AQ it war an imperialistic war mainly driven by ego aim at regaining national pride, witch didn't worked at all, for whole world, this war has proven that Western style democracy doesn't work for everyone and that the us military is not able to defeat few flipflop fighters witch are both huge defeats for America
I only used the French because to the layman they are the most famous and represented in video games. This casts a net. It is what it is, some groups will be talked about on their own in the future
Well i would like at least a mention of soviet partisans. There are a lot of soviet movies about them, like series about kovpak, much more interesting in my op.
Shivaji of Maratha empire in India against Mughal Empire and Portuguese army have 100% success rate and have no recorded defeat in a battle. Using Guerilla tactics and infiltration of course.
But the guerrilla forces didn’t win the war, the outright NVA did. The VC (the Guerillas) were almost completely wiped out in the South during the Tet Offensive in 1968. They were forced to retreat to Laos and Cambodia and didn’t do much. The NVA fought the rest of the war and by the own admission of commanders within the NVA, through books, they fought using modern Russian open warfare tactics. Despite this, and the fact they were supplied directly by the Chinese and indirectly by Russia, they lost a vast majority of conflicts against U.S. South Vietnamese forces (despite always possessing a numbers advantage). It was not until 1975 did the South truly fall. Keep in mind, America pulled out both in direct combat and through lend lease with South Vietnam in 1973. So basically, the guerrillas did nothing and it took the actual open warfare NVA two additional years to win the war only after America stopped supplying them with weapons and ammo
@LaikaTheG exactly, the force became something deadlier. I know that a lot of the younger people have a hard time grasping that concept, so thanks for summing this up. I did have a link to the Vietnamese government results of their studies on the old video in a comment, I should hunt it down again and add.
In both conflicts the United States voluntarily left. In Afghanistan, the withdrawl should have been much more orderly, but in Boe Jiden's infinite wisdom, that did not happen.
@@LaikaTheG >they lost a vast majority of conflicts against U.S. South Vietnamese forces (despite always possessing a numbers advantage) False. North Vietnam + their allies throughout the war always had a number of inferiority throughout the war. This inferiority was supplanted by the fact that ARVN troop quality weren't always the best + US and their allies failed to conduct enough successful encirclement/anti-infiltration missions to destroy the guerrillas and supply lines. More often that not most of NVA troops were working in rear area logistics, as NVA had less mechanization in logistics compared to ARVN or American troops. Do you have a proof about 'hey lost a vast majority of conflicts against U.S. South Vietnamese forces'? It's false to say the guerrillas did nothing. They provided significant intelligence to regular troops about enemy troop movement when they weren't active, and when they were active they could harass nearby enemy outposts, forcing either US or their allies to send in reinforcement. The guerillas also helps to establish administration in the post-war peiod. People keeps forgetting that by 1963 the VC was slowly winning against ARVN until US transported troops and air support to South Vietnam. With Geneva Convention signed in 1973, lend lease was severally decreased, not mentioning the 1973 oil shock hampered South Vietnam fuel supplies. Funnily, even without American aid, the ARVN still has plenty of ammo to fight on. The 5.56mm and 155mm stockpiles the US delivered to Vietnam during the 1960s and 1970s, captured by North Vietnam, HAS NOT YET DEPLETED. Right now Vietnam still shoots 155mm from that era during their training exercises at recent as 2010s, and equip their provincial militias with M16s.
In the larger geopolitical sense, give me a good example of how turning out each country to the point it can't force project outside of its own borders is failure. I will go into more than attrition: We secured our goal in Afghanistan, then saw a sector of profit for US interests. Phones, TV's just about every modern convenience requires lithium. We then decided the deal was stupid, even with losing less than 30 soldiers in one year, the losses based on corruption were just not worth it. We kick it to the Chinese and they're now straight up stealing from Afghanistan because their business losses were mounting. Everyone likes quoting the reduced version of Clausewitz: "war is not merely a political act but a real political instrument, a continuation of political intercourse, a carrying out of the same by other means,” and then wholly ignore the fact that politically a war and all its losses can be reduced to irrelevant in the discussion. Once a participant no longer sees any benefit of attempting continued violence while holding the power to annihilate a battle space, it can metaphorically throw the session in the trash can. I can break down the Afghan timeline from 2010/1 until withdrawal showing the business interest. Combined with new trading partners and sources for raw materials, it just didn't matter. In Avatar part 1 those blue giant cats did win, they made sure those humans couldn't project dominance. But let's say the humans left because they found their resources from half the distance with 2x the volume. Did those cats win or did they get spared until that resource became so rare their planet would be the only one left holding it?
@@SaltStackActual The winner is the side that has a goal and achieves it. On the US side, both the Obama administration and the Trump administration struggled after the death of Bin Laden to come up with a reason to continue the occupation of Afghanistan. They did not in fact accept the death of Bin Laden as the win condition. No matter what interests they got out of Afghanistan, both administrations refused to declare victory and withdraw, because those interests were not the win conditions for them. Going into the Biden administration, it became clear that the objective of the US in Afghanistan post-2011 was to defeat the Taliban, which is why Biden's withdrawal is considered an admission of loss, not an Operation Magic Carpet-like returning march of the victors. We know from the Pentagon Papers that past US presidencies had very a similar pattern of knowing full well the Vietnam War was unwinnable, but nobody before Nixon wanted the reputation of the losers, so they just kept the Vietnam War going, pushing the responsibility to end it to the next guy. Winners achieve their goals, losers don't. There is a term for a situation where both sides of a war fail to achieve their respective goals and end the fighting in that stalemate, with no clear winner or loser: white peace. Obviously that wasn't how the US occupation of Afghanistan ended either.
You know why I don't put stock into saying the US is a declining empire? Actual empires don't ask for permission. The myth that the underdog can prevail like Afghanistan is so that it leaves room for people to save face, continue to feel "good" that they prevailed, and not have their population annihilated while other goals are met. The stated goal, according to every press release for OEF, is the kill/capture of Bin Laden and the elimination of Al Qaeda as it was known. Everything is a bonus goal in the eyes of the machinery that keeps the place going. So, achieved by the time Neptune Spear happened. The Taliban rule a country of nothing, with increasing tension due to young people who remember nothing but US style permissiveness. There will most likely be a brain drain rather than revolt. Both are desirable. China is losing money dealing with them and can't handle it Uyghur style because that would sabotage their Belt & Road plans to look like Neo-America everywhere else in the world. On the grand scale of things the point of my entire video is that romanticizing a guerilla war without taking into account all the factors that make it successful without having your entire family die is next level idiocy and is the expected focus of the majority who would make up the line level troops. Julius Caesar to Napoleon to John Mosby realized this and used it to different ends and goals. Are there true believers of military victory alone? Of course. Ironically, unlike video games, Modern Warfare is the control of trade, money, and resources through cultural capture, finances, and proxy war. Wars that create a resource. The catalyst for the major shift was Covid changing a lot of dynamics that make other sectors more profitable. In 2020 it even looked like Iran's cabinet would get wiped out by the super cold, proving that they can't even field enough medical resources to handle mass casualty events. We didn't need to be close by, they can't really project on two fronts. This doesn't take a intel scholar to look at this and discern, just reading. You don't treat a 20 year old man the same way you treated him as a 5 year old kid. Here, this is all mainstream out in the open news put into chronological order: A Marshall Plan for Afghanistan? (2008) - www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/a-marshall-plan-for-afghanistan/ Pakistan's Baluchi Minority Eyes Autonomy, Wealth, And Rights (2008) - www.rferl.org/a/Pakistans_Baluch_Minority_Eyes_Autonomy_Wealth_And_Rights/1338024.html Large oilfield discovered in northern Afghanistan (2010) - www.france24.com/en/20100815-large-oilfield-discovered-northern-afghanistan-natural-ressources-shiberghan-balkh U.S. Identifies Vast Mineral Riches in Afghanistan (2010) - www.nytimes.com/2010/06/14/world/asia/14minerals.html $1 trillion motherlode of lithium and gold discovered in Afghanistan (2007-2010) - www.mining.com/1-trillion-motherlode-of-lithium-and-gold-discovered-in-afghanistan/ Afghan gold mining project approved (2010) - www.express.co.uk/news/world/217335/Afghan-gold-mining-project-approved Dreams Of A Mining Future On Hold In Afghanistan (2012) - www.npr.org/2012/04/04/149611352/dreams-of-a-mining-future-on-hold-in-afghanistan Natural Resources Were Supposed to Make Afghanistan Rich. Here’s What’s Happening to Them. (2015) - www.thenation.com/article/archive/resources-were-supposed-to-make-afghanistan-rich/ Afghanistan's corruption epidemic is wasting billions in aid ( 2016) - www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2016/nov/03/afghanistans-corruption-epidemic-is-wasting-billions-in-aid Afghanistan Tries to Win Trump Support With Lithium (2017) - www.voanews.com/a/afghanistan-trump-mining-lithium/3798585.html Why is Afghanistan unable to extract its vast mineral wealth? (2019) - www.aljazeera.com/features/2019/5/28/why-is-afghanistan-unable-to-extract-its-vast-mineral-wealth Illegal mining costs Afghanistan millions annually: UN (2020) - www.aa.com.tr/en/asia-pacific/illegal-mining-costs-afghanistan-millions-annually-un/1952838 Chinese investment in Afghanistan’s lithium sector: A long shot in the short term (2023) - www.brookings.edu/articles/chinese-investment-in-afghanistans-lithium-sector-a-long-shot-in-the-short-term/ Attempted theft of Afghan lithium by Chinese shows realities of dealings with Beijing (2023) - afghanistan.asia-news.com/en_GB/articles/cnmi_st/features/2023/02/07/feature-01 It is what it is.
@@SaltStackActual Nobody other than you said anything about the US being a declining empire. Winners achieve their goals, losers don't. There was no Operation Magic Carpet immediately after the conclusion of Neptune Spear, the US instead stayed to train the ANSF and run airstrikes for them, all to keep the Taliban from gaining back grounds from the countryside. That right there tells you everything about what the US continued to stay in Afghanistan for. All the exploitation of resources under an occupation has never defined victory in the past, it doesn't suddenly do so now. Even if your goal is the continuation of exploiting those resources, you don't actually have a win condition there, you only stand to lose the moment you can't do it anymore. Any post-hoc rhetoric after losing is just propaganda to save face for a sore loser. A Pyrrhic Victory is still a victory much the same since... well, Pyrrhus' victory against the Roman Empire.
@aquapendulum and this can be debated back and forth forever. I only included the waning empire bit because it's popular to talk about with former soldiers and the like. What needs to be seen is this, there will always be secondary motives. There will always be investments. There will always be financial motives that help our overall goal. As far as the machine is concerned, veterans will get the rewards and assistance they earned through their help and service to the greater goal. Contracts get paid, and so does the entire chain of people who can benefit. There's an entire industry built on defense spending. A few billion spent doesn't even register in their concerns. Not even a trillion. They can "win" back their land.
He makes a pretty clear poignant point that I agree with, but many want to ignore due to their fantasy larping. You aren't going to be some lone plucky hero like in a Hollywood movie that takes down the comically evil regime. Most guerilla forces with no logistics or equipment are essentially wiped out by larger forces. Think of how basically no-one overthrow the soviet union or China for decades and decades. Or Genghis khan, or other authoritarian leaders in history. Or the nearly 1000+ years of the arab-african slave trade. You don't have magical powers and aren't going to win over night. You need to focus on logistics and coordination and planning, which means stockpiling resources AKA prepping and getting equipment and training, and more than that a group. The delusion of instant success by throwing a ring in to a volcano or shooting one little bolt at a death star is silly. You will need a lot more than just good will to win. It's basic common sense. Even groups like the Taliban were created by pakistan in 1994 and didn't defeat the U.S. in a single battle, and the Viet cong were financed by both Russia and China and operated as a part of the NVA government. If it wasn't for another administration coming to power and pulling out decades later, they would have made no gains at all. You need to train and prepare.
THANK YOU! And at all costs, exhaust every other option. And on seeking a fight: Lots of dudes cry about Russians or Ukranians being hunted or chased by drones, calling it a crime. WELCOME TO WAR. For the last 20 years, we've killed people in their SLEEP. Extinguishing many little camp fires over the years surrounded by men of the other side with CAS just because going down to engage them would be a huge risk and "waste time." And now, all of a sudden, people want to talk about drone operators being criminal? War itself is fucking heinous. People have to consider the possibilities. I wouldn't say lots, because the ratio shows this, but the vocal few with low order capability thinking who can't comprehend anything but the most explicit orders need to consider this when talking about guerrillas and fighting.
The taliban, which lost every battle, now controls Afghanistan and we are gone, they got what they wanted and we lost hegemony in the area. war is not about killing its about conquest, a successful conqueror doesnt call a withdrawl a victory. and sorry but mcdonalds in afghanistan is not equivalent to having a puppet state there
As someone once said, " No soup for you! ". You dared to speak of that which receives derision and dismissal. Some would even label you " deplorable ". TH-cam doesn't have time for insolence, nor that " charter of negative liberties" Mr. Obama so condescendingly lamented.
The Swiss handbook 'The Total Resistance' offers a good insight in the operational goals of insurgency. It's a guideline written in case Switzerland ever gets invaded by a superior, regular army. The goal here was to wait out the enemy's main forces moving on to other goals, then wearing down the weaker holding forces to achieve two goals: Prepare the land for a regular army freeing it and to show the remaining potential allies that their land has not fallen. Being supported by an exile government abroad and / or foreign allies was always an essential part of the doctrine; even if lots of the resupplying is being done through raids or through aid from civilian resistance organizations, further aid and training from allied armies is important and essential. Essentially, the goal is to survive until reverting to regular warfare is possible again. High numbers of casualties and suffering during the phase of irregular warfare is to be expected.
@@chaostheoryfilms Well, they now have much better economy than most of those who defeated them in WW2, so... there are a lot of different criteria for victory and defeat
Only complaint, and feel free to respond, is that the "win=survive" Idea of some gurilla movement is only true depending on the campaigns goals. Like what you stated in Afghanistan, the taliban were basically a side mission that wasn't important with the achiving of the main goals, so in that case, the US didn't really lose fully. However, when looking at other conflicts with the aim of destroying a G movement, the "s=w" condition stated can be true, fore example, the main objective of the IDFs recent conflict in gaza is the destruction of hamas, and in that sense, hamas surviving would ultimately lead to a "minor tactical IDF victory at best."(tho the conflicts nature doesn't guarantee the outcome above). But all in all, pretty solid and logical vid.
@@carter.z1266 Not really, the us won a total victory in achieving the main goals, and the side stuff may lower the victory, but all in all its the same, a victory. And don't try to confuse the term with victories that are low prestige like phyric victories or partial victories.
@@omarmatouq3855 Then if destroying the Talibs G resistance was not the main goal why did Obama continued the INCREASED arrival of american troops to afghanistan? And we never hear about war crimes happening in afghanistan and how the "northern alliances" was litteraly a group that were made up of abunch of staunch RIVALS... hell they were even called the islamic alliances In Iranian newspapers and how iran let THE AMERICANS SURROUNDING THEM AND STILL HAS THE GUTS OF ATTACKING IRAQ at the times where it is known that al-zarqawi's dad was a palestinian Fighting against israel even got arrested in jordan for it qassem soleimani quds force was HELPING the american invasion of afghanistan
Anyone interested in irregular warfare should read "Invisible Armies" by Max Boot. Starts from roughly the start of formal warfare itself to present times.
![กิโลเมตรที่ 0 เดินทางรอบโลกไม่ใช้เครื่องบิน [Around The World Ep. 1]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/toJG9oofLFY/mqdefault.jpg)
They may rarely win, but they can make things really, really difficult and expensive for everyone else in the process. And that's often the point.
including for innocents who get caught in the crossfire..
@@jessicamason2526 , sadly, that's always a reality of armed conflict. I think a lot of people have the idea that armed conflicts won't necessarily have collateral damage or civilian casualties, but that's pure fantasy.
Armed conflict is an ugly, nasty business where almost no side ever has clean hands.
I would personally argue that's why armed conflict is always best avoided whenever and wherever possible.
Glory and horror always come in the wake of war, but seldom do they ever come in equal measure.
@@chthulu27 yes and no, yes armed conflict always involves a risk to civilian Populus but armed conflict involving the civilian populus brings even greater risk as FoF is as murky as it comes resulting in unarmed innocents mistaken for armed fighters, and this is without mentioning any form of government dealing with an armed citizenry fighting against it will inevitably crack down on the non-combatant citizenry in turn, if an insurgent group attacks farms to steal resources, who suffers? if they attack warehouses, who suffers? if they disrupt supply lines, who suffers? in all of these questions the answer is never the government.
@ProtectTransKids., what's pfp?
@jessicamason2526 , "in all of these questions the answer is never the government. "
Yeah. I'm inclined to agree. Bureaucrats at desks ordering the deaths of young men from continents away always seem to sleep soundly. Pity.
Insurgents don't have to win battles against their enemies, they just have to outlast them.
Bingo
Afghanistan would be a perfect example.
@@OTW18Vietnam as well. America's only victory I can think of against guerillas/insurgents were in the Philippines, where the rebels (that's what we called them, at least) lost hope and began fizzing out after a pro-war government won the US elections during that time. Even so, it was a close call since the enemy was suffering from infighting and was unable to properly launch coordinated attacks or even defenses.
@@antoniodelaugger9236when you say enemy are you referring to the Filipinos or the Americans? (I'm a mix of both so I can't tell)
@@OTW18 Same with Ireland if the British had held on for any longer the IRA would have died
First goal in a guerilla war is to punish. Winning is nice but not required.
Take care when you seek to enact justice that you do not find yourself the oppressor. You hate those above you for their injustice, do not become the same. Do not fight evil with evil. God calls us to lead the world by example so teach yourself to be kind, just, and loving first.
Amen brother.@@spazemfathemcazemmeleggymi272
thats some insane cope
@@spazemfathemcazemmeleggymi272 I guess if God wanted to fix things he could so I guess he's ok with it. If thats the case God is definitely ok with punishing. Like the 70,000 innocent individuals that lost their lives because David took a census. Who is evil really? 4.5 children starve to death each year.... Who really is evil then?
To break provision lines - hit and run -- stock pile now.
Its not that they rarely win, its that they usually lose battles but not the war. Guerilla tactics are meant to make the war to costly for the enemy to continue while constantly gaining local support to keep refilling troop reserves.
exactly! its not as cut and dry as win or lose. iits death by 1000 cuts strategy and it usually works. guerilla groups know they will lose in head to head combat against most state actors but its not the point
You can replace equipment. Can't replace experience from dead guerilla fighters
@@christinaotero8913 and the more the war goes on the more guerilla recruits . hard to kill an idea
@christinaotero8913 you can't kill an idea. Most of the time, throughout history the side using guerilla tactics is the force being invaded, which gives them a massive advantage.
Guerilla tactics are effective because they are easy to teach, its literally stay hidden, strike, leave. The longer the engagement goes on the more it swings to the organized force. Also guerilla logistics are a lot harder to hit and disrupt without destroying local infrastructure which leads to more fighters against you.
@@kalash_5.45
You kill ideas by killing everyone who holds them. Guerilla tactics only work if they are proped up by an outside force; if they aren't, the occupying power just depopulates the area until the issue stops.
Here's an excerpt from an article i read years ago: During one of his liaison trips to Hanoi, US Army Colonel Harry Summers had his now famous exchange with his North Vietnamese counterpart Colonel Tu. When Harry told him, "You know, you never beat us on the battlefield," Colonel Tu responded, "That may be so, but it is also irrelevant."
Not a good example as the USA chose not to win from the beginning. The strategy was containment and USA solders were just there to delay the advance of communism in the area. The final endgame ended up ceeding the area to communist China. South Vietnam was thrown under the bus but that was the cost the USA willingly paid.
Chilling!
Mcdonalds restaurants all over Hanoi, what exactly did they preserve? They died to decide who would get to rule them as a puppet state in the Cold War, the Russians or Americans.
@@FelipeJaquez fighting to unite the country which they succeeded. Most in the North fought for Nationalism not Communism
@@FelipeJaquez As opposed to the US, who died failing to decide if they got a puppet state?
The guerrilla wins by not losing, but the State loses by not winning. All the guerrilla has to do is stay alive and remain in the fight long enough for the State to lose the political will to fight. This will happen when the people have gotten tired enough of the State's abuses, so the guerrilla must be seen as a friend to the people in order to now quickly turn them against the State.
It's situational though, guerillas can't just win by having overwhelming by the locals or lasting the war long enough.
It really depends on geography, logistics, enemy awareness, allies through the resistance and more to win against the State.
Be unconquereable
I like the way you think Brother
@@apgaismiba I always felt that only 'foreign allies or proxies' get tired and leave but the 'locals' tend to be able to last==IF they were alone from the start: I mean, look at Colombia, or Burma or even the Philippines--the FARC, the BCP or the NPA or Abu Sayyaff just goes on and on, but neither side can put down the other permanently.
If you can hold out long enough and wear down your opponent the long term is to eventually stand toe to toe with the enemy
You forgot the Yugoslav Partisans, who did manage to liberate their country with limited foreign support. That's why Tito was able to form a Communist Yugoslavia that wasn't completely controlled by the USSR after the war.
Yugoslavia was fighting Germany, a country fighting the USSR, the US, Britain, and half of Italy. And their only main ally was on the other side of the planet. Bringing up Yugoslavia as a successful example is a bit of a stretch.
@@noco7243 They were mostly fighting USSR , The Allies did play part in their defeat but USSR brought out the casualties
@@noco7243 im from former yugoslavia. You obviously have no idea what you are talking about. The OP is right about our situation we won practically on our own.
@@jakaribic8494you won because 90% of the German military was busy in other places.
Yes, because German forces had to concentrate their strength on other (principal) fronts. @@jakaribic8494
Why is Guerilla Warfare such an anomaly for Americans, when much of their success in the Wars of Independence was influenced by the same tactics.
When wisdoms are lost master Sun
said itll take many lifes and dynasties to re-learn
@@carter.z1266 Americans have short memories and they edit out the parts that aren't in line with what the society wants them to remember. Most of my fellow boomers can't remember rightly what was going on when they were 20.
At those point I am convinced that somehow Americans, I’m one so I can say this, are being brainwashed to believe outrageous things. Even in school do we learn Vietnam was a loss. How people think otherwise, especially when they have their own country now is mind boggling.
Americans are raises to only think predominantly about whats in fact of them and repeat things they are told
The cope is off the charts, Fabain tactics have worked to repel greater empires and armies for thousands of years and will continue to work.
Most think ‘winning’ is killing the enemy fighters and and putting your flag on their building, as as afghanistan proved that’s not quite as easy.
Because they now have to fight wars across oceans which is an entirely different beast and because a lot of the time they win but you do not hear about that because that’s boring. Case in point almost nobody talks about South & central America.
Another thing people don’t seem to understand is that ironically enough the United States did fund a very successful career complain via the Mujahedin against the Soviets. It backfired a bit but considering how much the Soviets suffered this was no small deal.
The goal isnt necessarily to always "win" but make your enemy wonder if "victory" is/was worth it in the first place.
Victory is only achieved when the enemy no longer fights. Losing their will to fight or being made unable to are both ways.
The Taliban axiom "They have all the watches but we have all the time" rings rather mendacious. The Coalition killed every major Taliban player and a few middling and minor ones, but that doesn't matter because a new generation of warfighters would be recruited through fundamentalist Islam. Therefore, as long as your idea-not you-survives, the future generation gets to claim victory. It's honestly depressing.
So there's no way to fully destroy it?
@@John_winstonNot in the way a modern world would approve of. Ghengis Khan knew how to do it.
@@dmacarthur5356 that's the thing, the Western society now wouldn't approve such method but the other side tho...well I'm sure you know
@@John_winston Oh yeah, they have no qualms about it. They do and say it all the time.
@@dmacarthur5356The Mongols lost while fighting the Arabs, eventually, and were pushed back, with many of his descendants converting to Islam. Mughal empire in India comes to mind. Maybe the West should convert to Islsm, is what I think you are really saying.
US Army Colonel Harry G. Summers Jr.: "You know, you never once defeated us on the battlefield."
NVA Colonel Tu: "... That is true. But it is also irrelevant."
TL:DR - 1971 US goes off gold standard, 1972 Nixon opens to China in the height of Sino-Soviet tensions, 1973 Paris Peace Accords signed. The man on the ground can't see over the horizon.
@@SaltStackActualVietnam proved once again that no empire can break their spirit, China tried to do it, France tried to do it and the US tried to do it. All of them were forced to leave, and i think no vietnamese gives a fuck about what americans did after that, just that they were gone, like all the others before.
And that's what matters, that was the whole point of their guerrilla. What happens in other places of the world is irrelevant.
@RoyalPain_isaG look at my post above. They wanted to stop influence from the USSR. After we partnered with China, the NVA deaths, the VC deaths, the civilian deaths, the US soldier deaths, the ARVN deaths, none of that mattered to them anymore. Your country didn't matter. They were gone because you weren't needed anymore, for anything. The whole thing, by the time Nixon shook hands with Chiang, lost its relevance.
@@SaltStackActual
Total cope lol it ended because America could not accomplish the mission just like in Afghanistan (which now is opening up to China who America is trying to contain thus destroying your argument. You have zero clue what you’re talking about).
@@SaltStackActualcope harder bro , you sent your own countrymen to die for nothing lmao , now they're homeless, drug addicted , high alcoholic rates , mass suicide , but "erm at least our corrupt politicians made profit" tens of thousands have committed suicide from Afghanistan alone . You should join them
Guerrillas don't lose should be the title. The winning is in not losing. If the guerrillas are still around after years, then they have won
Except they do lose. They lose all the time. Which is the entire point of the video. Would you say that just because some Japanese soldiers on some Pacific islands held out for decades after surrender that Japan didn't lose? Of course not, because those soldiers had no meaningful impact whatsoever.
@@tomasbillian4907 they lose all the time, explain, Boko Haram, Taliban, ISIS, AQ, Al Shabab, MS 13. Explain. Irgun, the PLO, Hamas and Hezbollah. African National Congress and ZANU PF You have no idea of what you are talking about
@@tomasbillian4907 Considering the Japanese got to keep their Emperor, didn't lose their core territories besides Sakhalin, and got merciful peace terms compared to Germany, it seems like the threat of fifty million civilians fighting to the death with sharp sticks and homemade bombs did its job.
@@aregulargamer1 That had little to do with potential guerilla fighting though. Even with the two nukes expended America was perfectly capable of just leveling Japan from the air with conventional explosives (reminder that the firembombing of Tokyo killed more people than either Hiroshima or Nagasaki).
Your post also ignores that Japan had a lot less contested territorial claims, that the loss of East Prussia and Silesia was more to compensate Poland for the annexation of its Eastern lands by the Soviets, and Japan still lost all of its overseas possessions like Korea, Machukuo, and Formosa just to name a few.
Finally, its punishment had been intended to be a lot more severe, but then the Cold War happened which changed priorities drastically.
Fundamentally America accepted because it was convenient for it. The only condition for the Japanese surrender was that the emperor keep his position, and that was that. Everything else was for the Allies to decide.
@@aregulargamer1 You have no idea the damage dealt to Japan, and it shows. Japanese culture was nearly entirely rebuilt in the occupation. Yes, the Japanese got to keep their Emperor. But they lost their core territories. They were occupied. The only reason they retained control was because America was interested in building an allied anti-Soviet nation. Otherwise they would have went the way of the Philippines.
Also, it wasn't the threat of civilians that stopped America from invading on the ground. It was the prospect of genociding the Japanese people. Because America was more than happy to continue firebombing Japan into the ground. The Tokyo fire-bombs killed far more people than either nuke. We stopped because we really *really* didn't want to genocide the Japanese after what happened in Germany.
the american mind instead of trying to comprehend guerrilla warfare, they change the definition, and say: "uh uh, we didn't lose that war, we killed more people 😄". You did lose the war. The ultimate goal of a war is to drive the enemy out of the battlefield. If your enemy won't fight, he doesn't have negociating power, so if the enemy leaves the battlefield, you won. When the USA pulls out of afghanistan, it loses the war.
Keep coping 😂, next time the gloves will come off and it will be no quarters
@@ZweiKyozumi "We may have ran away now, but next time we'll show ya! Just you wait!"
Who's the one coping, lol.
As much as you want the Taliban to be some fierce army full of scary soldiers, they actually were cowards who sat in caves who occasionally went outside to lay pitiful traps. They didn’t do any “driving” us out either because we used their nation as a training ground for many years, until we eventually got bored and left on our own accord. Keep coping Taliboo.
@@LetsGoCatchUsSomeFISH gEt bOrEd😂
Britain just get bored to send people in some shithole with no tea, really. No offence
I felt like the US only left because of the civilians complaining too much in the mainland.
It kind of sounds like you're asserting that the Taliban simply "redefined" victory in Afghanistan.
How can anyone say that Afghanistan was not victory for the Taliban? They absolutely got everything they wanted since 2001. They are back in control of Afghanistan, they have established their Islamic state and every presence of US or Western Armies is gone.
Arguing with meaningless statistics of casualties is really weird and misleading. In the end it does not matter.
Bro is a coping patriot
american soldiers cannot mentally accept defeat for the life of them so they end up doing these insane mental gymnastics lol
Let's say during the Cold War, the Soviets had driven the US government out of Washington, killed all its officials and military leaders, with a small contingent of the military escaping to relative safety in some caves in Mexico. For 20 years, the Soviets empty Ft. Knox and the Manhattan Fed of its gold, drain a bunch of oil out of American oil fields, and mine as much mineral wealth as they can. Eventually, the Soviets get sick of the expense of administering the region and withdraw, leaving a token puppet regime to defend itself, though it inevitably falls to a reconstituted "American military" which has almost no connection to the one that used to be in power, other than the name and ostensible ideology. Would you consider that series of events a victory for Americans, vs. not falling to the Soviets in the first place?
Another way of looking at it: the time between the US driving the Taliban out of power in Afghanistan, and the Taliban returning to power with the US withdrawal, is roughly equal to the time between the end of WW1 and the beginning of WW2. If the standard is, allowing the defeated government to take back power after 20 years counts as a "loss", then the Allies actually lost WW1 as Germany came back more powerful than ever less than 20 years later.
And the insurgency in Iraq? Mujahideen in Afghanistan against the USSR? North Vietnam?
In Afghanistan the Taliban achieved victory. For 20 years foreign forces occupied their land and hunted them like wild animals. It’s the very definition of a Pyrrhic victory. Had the west actually tried to take control of the state by any means necessary the Taliban would rule over the ruins and graveyards. The problem with notions of victory and defeat is that not every victory and not every defeat are equal.
To make it simple think....can you conduct guerrilla warfare or insurgencies with no weapons, no bullets, food, water or morale? Vietnam was supplied weapons by China and Russia. Afghanistan was supplied by the USA and decades later by Pakistan. Ammunition and weapons are not infinite and indestructible. Especially when fighting for decades. Think of it like fighting to defend an island in ww2.....without outside forces to provide you goods you will eventually run out. I can't think of many guerrilla forces that won or could have by themselves
Big yes. A reading between the lines enjoyer.
whaat? Pakistan supplied the Taliban??? weren't Pakistan & US bff?
indianexpress.com/article/explained/afghanistan-crisis-taliban-islamabad-kabul-equation-7457025/
@joemammon6149 not just the 2021 link, it goes back further:
www.hrw.org/reports/2001/afghan2/Afghan0701-02.htm
And then look to the Soviet invasion and the role of the Black Storks. Pakistan always had a double deal going on because of complex cultural ties.
This video is so very American. Both in factions studied but oh so importantly in mindset and worldview
That matches my intended audience.
@@SaltStackActual Insurgencies are marathons not sprints. They span generations. If you plan and fight under the assumption that you will live to harvest the results you got the wrong mindset. A determined people's desire for freedom will be achieved except when they get brutally oppressed, genocided and displaced. And even after genocides they may succeed (Armenia) especially when on an empire's periphery. The Circassians in the Caucaus weren't subdued until the Russian Empire genocided them and forcibly displaced many. Two generations after the Chechens were spread all throughout the USSR they fought two brutal wars and enjoyed a few years of independence. If your enemy's rules won't allow for drastic measures your insurgency will win. If it's clear a short term win isn't likely then plan your actions to set up your offspring for success. As a 16th German farmer rebellion song puts it "Geschlagen ziehen wir nach Haus', uns're Enkeln fechten's besser aus" (Defeated we march home, our grandkids will fight better/force better terms).
@@SaltStackActual hes implying youre coping and unable to accept when guerrillas win, it shouldnt be a point of pride
@@aguspuig6615 Kinda that but also majorly that it's made in a materialistic and individualistic mindset. Guerilla wars most often span generations. If you plan for the short term - that you yourself will see the end of the conflict - then you will see the end very soon, alright, just not the one you were hoping for. Majority of times your role in an insurgency is not the gunfighter. Maybe it's financial, logistically, maybe you hide part of your harvest for the resistance to eat. Maybe you live through foreign occupation and collaborate while carefully aggitating your political and social surroundings so your children may be successful in the conflict. Revolutions against occupation start slow. Years, sometimes decades, of preperation leading up to armed revolt. And most never commit too fully in a way that prevents them from returning home if it fails. You could study the resistance to occupation by napoleonist France in Germany by Freikorps or Tyrole by the legend Andreas Hofer. Many failed attempts, many men declared heroes because they died, but they forced some concessions, the boot to be lifted a bit. The end of Napoleon was not just decided in Russia and Waterloo. At Leipzig the biggest battle in history up unto that point took place when the vassal states of Austria, Prussia and Mecklenburg alongside Sweden forced Napoleon out of Germany, gaining independence and chased Napoleon through all of Germany and into Belgian Waterloo where the Prussians (in revolt against Napoleon) fought the majority until the brits showed up. It's a marathon and one ought to tread carefully if they want their bloodline to continue AND to see a succesful end. As a old German song about the farmer revolts in the 16th century puts it in its final verse: "Geschlagen ziehen wir nach Haus', uns're Enkel fechten's besser aus" - "Defeated we go on the march home, our grandkids will fight it out better/force better terms". Stay safe
@@aguspuig6615this video shows he doesn’t get it, and that comment shows he doesn’t get it. Weird how someone who doesn’t know how insurgencies work would make a vid about them
I understand not counting non-US death since one may argue that the creation of a native allied army is a direct byproduct of the invasion, but I feel like this is misrepresenting the effectiveness of guerilla. For instancce, there were 313,000 south vietnamese military death.
Wanted to comment this. ARVN was there too, and was mainly involved in taking the L in the whole war. Not mentioning them is an unobjective opinion which paints North Vietnamese victory in the war (by annexing South Vietnam) as completely insignificant. US goal in the region was to keep prolonged existence of South Vietnam, and to stop spread of communism. That goal failed, and the definition of victory was, naturally, redefined.
Never believe official death counts. They say that there were 58,000+ American deaths in Vietnam but there are still people dying every day directly from their service in Vietnam. Any official toll is the absolute minimum that can be contrived. The real toll of Americans is over one million.
Ehm... the highest stimate for RVNMF (ARVN was only the Army) is actualy 254k, the overall dead count of all the FWMF (Vietnam War equivalent of the ISAF) during the War doesn't go over 320k, in comparission, PAVN and NLF deaths usually go from 1.1 Million Dead to over 2 Million.
@@martinusaokishiro Well most of their Ls were during the early stages of the War, during the US Intervention period (1965 to 1971, as from that point on there were bearly any US ground-combat units) they did pretty well, like defeating most PAVN and NLF forces during the Tet Offensive.
After that they also did it pretty well taking into account the circunstances, the problem was that the US effectively cut most of their military and economical aid to South Vietnam, while the Norths friends like the USSR and the PCR didn't. Combined with the 1973 Oil Crisis effectively ruining the Souths economy (hyperinflation go brrrrr), the war was turned into a proxy war between 2 third world countries each supported by their own super power, to a war between 2 third world countries with only being actually supported by foreign powers. This also doesn't take into account the massive advantaje the North Vietnamese had with the Laotian and Cambodian Border, which gave them a MASSIVE frontline in a very thin territory, while also not having to worry about to defend it as after Lam Son 719 the RVNMF wasn't interested in attacking there any more.
@@pablosoleramaeso4561 and yet despite all those casualties, you still lost
"Insurgents don't win"
Taliban: Hold my goat milk.
something tells me you didn't get the point.
@@CantoniaCustoms imagine going to war for women's rights. Who made USA world police man people can't even vote for what matters
The Taliban got destroyed militarily, the US just failed at national building
@@CantoniaCustoms Or maybe the video missed the reality that the Taliban did in fact win. Outlasting your enemy is still victory.
@@CantoniaCustoms something tells me u and the uploader dont get what winning is
Isn't this effectively handwaving every time an irregular force won politically (ie, actual victory) by coping with the "they didn't win on the battlefield" remark? Like, did National Party-led South Africa win in Angola then? Did SWAPO, ANC/MK etc lose?
Those movements had a lot of Eastern Bloc help, including actual commando units from places like East Germany and Cuba doing a lot of special ops stuff. Ironically, these operations participated in accelerating the fall of those countries by bleeding them financially, but they also helped bring about the end of Rhodesia, Portuguese Angola, and so on. The Soviets did a lot of diplomatic work in addition to providing material aid in those theaters.
thats literally all this video is, yes
@@aguspuig6615
Good to know lol
@@matthewburrow3089 there where no east German commandos in Africa, all they did was train officers and send camouflage fabric.
BRO
So you criticized the use of “winning” and the supposed “redefining” of the term, then never actually set the definition you believe is correct.
“Winning” is exactly what happened to Al Qaeda, the NRA in China, the Vietnam Cong, etc if we consider their stated goals. How would a political victory not constitute a “win” especially if that political victory was the goal in the first place?
It's just another coping dipshit from reddit
This dude is operating on Clash Of Clans logic 💀
The vietcong was really a supporter of the might and profesional North Vietnamese army, the North Vietnamese was the real winners
Economics, logistics and community support is how the guerrillas win.
And being ok with having your country destroyed and the large majority of the rebels dying and always seeking new people to keep it going.
Community support is overrated
@@strongestgamer2501 wrong community support is your intelligence gathering apparatus. If you don't have it, you will never know what your enemy is doing. Furthermore, if you don't have community support, the guerrillas will cease to exist.
Says Vietnamese "lost" and afghans "lost" but Americans "won" against British.
They all won. Because foreign occupiers left. Clearly some major bias here lol
Before I pull specific examples, think of America as a business and its interests.
@@SaltStackActual if we're gonna measure victory in K:D ratios and not the accomplishment of the actual objectives of the groups involved then Russia won Afghanistan too
@bingbong2257 Then just take a look at these. The faster someone can become a business partner like Germany and Japan, the better. Occupation is costly and may not end, like Korea. After the main objectives were accomplished, pretty much what was in press releases until 2011, it was just a matter of can they work with us. That proved to be a no, due to corruption. As early as 2016 there were 10 soldiers killed. 10. I'm not minimizing that suffering, but the American machine doesn't pay attention to personal sacrifices. Wars have always been about resources. In 2020 we gained Mexico as the number one trading partner, Iran showed it corkscrew handle a mass casualty event, and there were new issues arising for to China and their New initiatives in trying to emulate the US. Here:
A Marshall Plan for Afghanistan? (2008) - www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/a-marshall-plan-for-afghanistan/
Pakistan's Baluchi Minority Eyes Autonomy, Wealth, And Rights (2008) - www.rferl.org/a/Pakistans_Baluch_Minority_Eyes_Autonomy_Wealth_And_Rights/1338024.html
Large oilfield discovered in northern Afghanistan (2010) - www.france24.com/en/20100815-large-oilfield-discovered-northern-afghanistan-natural-ressources-shiberghan-balkh
U.S. Identifies Vast Mineral Riches in Afghanistan (2010) - www.nytimes.com/2010/06/14/world/asia/14minerals.html
$1 trillion motherlode of lithium and gold discovered in Afghanistan (2007-2010) - www.mining.com/1-trillion-motherlode-of-lithium-and-gold-discovered-in-afghanistan/
Afghan gold mining project approved (2010) - www.express.co.uk/news/world/217335/Afghan-gold-mining-project-approved
Dreams Of A Mining Future On Hold In Afghanistan (2012) - www.npr.org/2012/04/04/149611352/dreams-of-a-mining-future-on-hold-in-afghanistan
Natural Resources Were Supposed to Make Afghanistan Rich. Here’s What’s Happening to Them. (2015) - www.thenation.com/article/archive/resources-were-supposed-to-make-afghanistan-rich/
Afghanistan's corruption epidemic is wasting billions in aid ( 2016) - www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2016/nov/03/afghanistans-corruption-epidemic-is-wasting-billions-in-aid
Afghanistan Tries to Win Trump Support With Lithium (2017) - www.voanews.com/a/afghanistan-trump-mining-lithium/3798585.html
Why is Afghanistan unable to extract its vast mineral wealth? (2019) - www.aljazeera.com/features/2019/5/28/why-is-afghanistan-unable-to-extract-its-vast-mineral-wealth
Illegal mining costs Afghanistan millions annually: UN (2020) - www.aa.com.tr/en/asia-pacific/illegal-mining-costs-afghanistan-millions-annually-un/1952838
Chinese investment in Afghanistan’s lithium sector: A long shot in the short term (2023) - www.brookings.edu/articles/chinese-investment-in-afghanistans-lithium-sector-a-long-shot-in-the-short-term/
Attempted theft of Afghan lithium by Chinese shows realities of dealings with Beijing (2023) - afghanistan.asia-news.com/en_GB/articles/cnmi_st/features/2023/02/07/feature-01
@@SaltStackActual Chinese corporations are primary economic facilitators, not the US.
The US has basically zero active business interests in Afghanistan since withdrawal. Taliban wants nothing to do with us.
If you approach it with this logic, then China won the war in Afghanistan.
@@bingbong2257 A pyrrhic victory is not a good one, and yet the Talibn didn’t even get that. They sat in caves until the U.S eventually decided to leave. The Talibn is now irrelevant, and “their” country is in ruins and disorder.
That take on Afghanistan is some pretty hardcore copium. Bin Laden was gone from Afghanistan within months and we knew it, then the US spent 20 years and about two and a half *trillion* dollars trying to prop up the Afghan National government, even for *10 years* after Bin Laden's death. At a certain point you have to admit that the objective changed and that the USA took a massive and undeniable L.
this!
You're completely ignoring the arguments made, and it honest makes you seem just like someone mad enough to leave a comment.
Also, what did you expect the US to do, sit in Afganistan forever firing artillery into the mountains and playing border watch for a government that can't get its shit together? If we were supposed to be there "forever", which is ridiculous, why did Britain leave long before the US? Was Britain also "defeated" then?
I'm very interested to here what mental gymnastics you will come up with in your reply.
Never underestimate the mental gymnastics Americans are capable of.
It's their only national sport.
@@hastur-thekinginyellow8115 The goal of the US was to defeat the Taliban and make the Afghan national government a stable and democratic US ally. Since they withdrew without accomplishing this under military pressure from the Taliban, they were defeated. The fact that the Afghan government was dysfunctional doesn't change this; the US simply picked a fight it couldn't win.
The argument in the video, which I directly addressed, was that the "real" objective was "only" to get Bin Laden (and Al-Qaeda), not to stabilize Afghanistan. This is copium as I explained above.
As for the British, this is the funny part. Now, in short, yes the British *were* defeated in the same way, whether you're talking about this century or the last. What's funny is that you seemingly can't imagine that I would be willing to say so. I guess you saw my profile picture, assumed I was British and projected onto me your own unwillingness to admit that your country failed. It's ok man, you don't need to get heated, it's not an attack on you personally.
That is completely incorrect though.
The stated mission objectives for Afghanistan were primarily to kill Bin Landen and remove the group Al-Qaeda from the nation - in the process also "de-throning" the Taliban's iron fisted rule over that area. You're saying that our "mission" was to "prop up" the Afghanistan government, which... it really wasn't. If you go back and look through any DoD press released during Operation: Enduring Freedom they state cleanly what their objectives are, as well as Presidential interviews from when Bush (jr.) was in power. The Taliban were overthrown in less than a year, and while it took a while to get Bin Laden, that was because he was hiding out in Pakistan and it's not exactly easy to have government operatives go into another nation you ware on peace-terms with and kill somebody in that nation. US intelligence knew he was in Pakistan for years, but it took exactly that long to get everything for the "all clear" through diplomatic channels in order to launch Operation: Neptune Spear so that it didn't immediately become a massive international incident.
How do I know what our objectives were? Because I was literally there, as a U.S. Ranger and after my three tours chose to stay in the industry working in securities as an analyst.
Again, the U.S. did it's best to prop up Afghanistan government and spent trillions of dollars - much of that money was mismanaged or outright stolen by government officials in the country.
You still didn't answer the primary question addressed to you. What did you expect the United States to do. Be an occupying force in Afghanistan FOREVER, giving stern looks every time the Taliban looked like it was going to try and cross the Pakistani border in force again? Did you honestly expect the United States to be an occupying force for eternity? We are not the world's border guard, and while I know people like you love to use any opportunity you can whatsoever to shit on America, it is objectively not their problem.
We left and the Taliban easily pushed aside the regime, again, because it spent two decades dwelling in corruption and mismanagement and wasn't ready for the departure of American assets.
The people of the United States wanted our troops gone. We had been there for long enough, protecting a nation that was either throwing our money away or literally stealing it via corrupt officials.
if you educate people instead of adding to the overall brain rot style content, the algorithm hates you.
yuuuuuuuuuuup
Bullshit, the algorithm seems to like this video. Never heard of this channel yet this was in my recommended
@cpiippidpipipip7030 yeah, and watch the vid get taken down
False. I've seen a good number of educational contents that used the brainrot editing style. Humorous education works like a charm. This is not to diminish the regular style, by the way.
@@SimplyDuker Humour is one thing. but there is a big difference between Geography now's gags and a jump cut every 3 second with semi coherent text and sound effects
Guerilla is extremely effective in civil wars, yet near usless against outside invaders.
You cannot diminish a invader's ability to wage war though blowing up stuff in your country.
Posted something similar on the old vid, but I'll repeat it here. Guerilla movements rely on a few consistent factors to succeed. The first, and most important is broad public support. The general populace has to overwhelmingly directly support the guerilla fighters with shelter, food, water, money, ammunition, weapons, and new recruits. Next, they need adequate terrain. They require vast tracts of poorly developed wilderness with poor infrastructure to operate within. On top of providing concealment, this enables them to run circles around conventional forces, striking them when weak, and retreating when they are strong. This results in these conventional forces eventually becoming bottled up in concentrated areas. This allows the guerilla forces, with their broad local (and, ideally, also international) support to fully exploit their freedom to move around and operate and re-organize into larger, more well equipped and commanded conventional forces. Finally, they besiege the now concentrated and isolated enemy force and eventually drive them out.
This eventual victory is, very likely, going to be incredibly phyrric. You are talking 10, 20, even 50 to 1 kill ratios to win, in a conflict which will devastate the region and probably utterly unravel the culture's social and economic fabric. Likley facing international sanction that stunts or even actively prevents recovery. You will "win" and all it will cost you is everything.
The bulk majority of guerilla revolutions fail. The ones that win very, VERY rarely do so without first repeatedly having to redefine what winning even is.
Entire families, gone.
@@SaltStackActual My friend, we spoke prior on my experiences with fighting unconventional forces in Afghanistan and Iraq. We're talking about seeing entire **bloodlines** erased just to gain a bit more ground, or win **just a bit more** international support.
Don't forget also about post war trauma on the population, a whole generation of young men who didn't play in the sandbox, go to school, held an average 9/5, only thing they know is their rifle and how to shoot from it, how do you convince this man to put it down, go into job training, work on the job for decades, start a family. I wanted to mention other things but I don't speak the language well, so that's that
All true, but our socio-economic fabric is already unraveled, and there won't be just one revolution or one unified resistance group in America, but hundreds. Every neighborhood has the potential to field a different group. The State will encourage and support some groups against others, just as they're supporting the BLM and ANTIFA terrorists against patriotic Americans right now. It will be horrible, and nobody will be able to go anywhere without passing through multiple checkpoints.
@@gastari429that’s one thing I hope can take place in Afghanistan, cause it’s those things that stabilize a region, and can lead to tyrants/ warlords to loss their power ( if they allow the people to live their lives freely) I’ve seen a super car company start up in Afghanistan, pretty much a glorified kit car cause they gotta borrow a lot, but the more private business, and just living life people do, the less war mindset they have or tolerate.
When we speak of the guerrilla fighter, we are speaking of the political partisan, an armed civilian whose principal weapon is not his rifle or his machete, but his relationship to the community, the nation, in and for which he fights.
Robert Taber. War of the Flea: The Classic Study of Guerrilla Warfare
bro thinks war is like team deathmatch in call of duty, more kill = win
Weren’t we just in Afghanistan for like 20 years???
Notice how in iraq there were many journalistic reports on war there(abu ghraib)
Compare to afghanistan where literally NO speech of mullah omar ever got out and reporter being tortured and killed(journalist offices were outright bombed) the
yet we here no stories from afghanistan back then it was worse than iraq
Coping americans
Yeah just to kill one guy, take the L and move on.
They justify their losses to themselves by saying "we killed x amount of them" "we killed their leaders" "we achieved everything we needed to" or my favorite, "we destroyed so much of their nation that it couldn't possibly be a win for them"
I don't know why they obsess over such things when they could be working towards preventing failures like afghanistan, iraq and vietnam. But that would mean you didn't win. It'd mean that every house you bombed, child shot, and man waterboarded, left you with less than you entered with; and those years, even decades were for nothing. Which is too much for the ego to handle
@@ab-ol3pn you know who really won the war ? I'll tell you, Black Rock, Haliburton, Lockheep Martin and other legacy corporations who swindled 2.3 Trillion bollars from the American taxpayer pocket.
This kind of thought process is exactly why the US lost in Vietnam and Afghanistan. It’s not about the death toll, it’s about people’s loyalty to a cause. Very weird how with all we know about insurgency strategy today, videos like this are still being made. It’s almost willful ignorance at this point to believe guerillas rarely win.
Vietnam permanently scarred the people we have in office right now. They think that's what winning looks like lol. People who say that the Taliban didn't win are experiencing the exact same cope as we had about Nam.
It doesn't matter they needed help. It doesn't matter we won every fight. It doesn't matter we had some small successes. We didn't follow through and everything we bought with the war was undone in a few months.
The Art of War is very clear who wins in these situations and it's the side that is able to keep fighting until they get what they want. Not the side that gets what they want after a few quick victories and then leaves after a few years because war is expensive, so everything goes back to how it was before as if they were never even there.
Was it the Vietcong (NLF) that took over South Vietnam or was it the North Vietnamese Army that took over South Vietnam?
@@aidanmattson681these organizations are effectively the same. NLF leaders received training in the north, they received supplies from the north, when their numbers ran low, they were topped off by northern troops, when their AOs overlapped they fell under northern command. They were a guerilla arm of the north.
Asking who came into Saigon first in 1975 is like asking who got to Baghdad first in 2003, the army or marines? There is an answer but it’s irrelevant because both forces operated under the control of the same state. At no point was the NLF an independent organization.
@@aidanmattson681 The Vietcong were an arm of the North Vietnamese State to begin with, so the distinction is moot. The fact is that the Tet Offensive simultaneously killed almost half of NLF and utterly crushed US morale.
The point of an insurgency isn't to win battles. It is a political tool used to drain the energy of your opponent and win legitimacy for your state or protentional state. Insurgencies do not take place in a vacuum. Insurgency purely for the sake of killing your enemy on the battlefield accomplishes nothing if you can't either beat them outright by eroding their political support or gathering support to put pressure on them from afar. The original point of the NLF was to get support from the people of the south for a general uprising, a thing that almost never happens. What turned out happening is that the NLF succeeded in exhausting the American people at relatively little cost to the North. So while it did not win, it also did not lose.
In the same way that Korea was an American Victory despite a stalemate and a perpetual ceasefire, Vietnam was an American loss not because the NLF and PVA won the war but because the RVN didn't survive the peace and subsequent renewal of conflict.
@@lordsheogorath3377 Afghanistan is the main source of opioids in the region, this is why everyone tried to capture it. British Empire didn`t go to Afghanistan to steal their sand and goats, it was because opioids were and remain one of the main major products used in pharma. The US tried to control its production and even managed to increase it, but obviously dudes with calculators sat down and figured out its not profitable enough.
And Vietnam was about rubber, it was one big French rubber plantation that supplied all major French auto brands, from bicycle tires to car tires, Tour De France and famous cute little French mopeds from romantic movies were all made with rubber from Vietnam, where France took away land from farmers in the North, forced millions into poverty and then used those people as slave labour, working at rubber plantations for a bowl of soup.
It only makes sense to stay in countries like that for colonial powers if the locals are willing to work and farm whatever you need. Locals do not even need to grab AKs, if they simply stopped farming whatever the colonial power wants, there is no longer any point in staying there. India won against the Brits by simply refusing to work for them, without a single shot. They sat down and said we would rather starve than work for you. Boom, Brits left.
Vietnam war and Afghanistan had no point, it was just murder. Locals refused to cooperate = end of story, pack up and leave. USSR came to Afghanistan with a completely different approach, USSR built Kabul polytechnic university, Naghlu hydro electric station, bridges, roads, apartments, taught locals Russians, etc. USSR launched the first Afghani man into space in the 80s. Needless to say - results are such: Afghanistan recognized Crimea as a part of Russia in 2014, Taliban are shaking hands with Lavrov. So its obvious who won the "big game" at the end. USSR won by investment and demonstrating its willingness to cooperate on equal terms without the arrogance of western exceptionalism.
Glad it’s back up. Video was great
Thank you!
Very good video, I think war is pointless but a last resort. People are idiots which leaves only force aka war.
The fact you had to move the goal post when it comes to Afghansitand and Vietnam shows a complete victory which the losers are struggling to cope with.
Did you watch all the way to the end? Even the Vietnamese government said it was a disaster and the Paris deal was a great relief. Also, martyrdom is something that is eventually accepted by the people washing guerilla war. Young men rarely realize this includes their own families. Many things can be true simultaneously.
@SaltStackActual Except for the things you are saying aren't. It's an opinion that you are trying to generalize. Also, the aftermath and reason aren't the concern during actual war and battle. Objectives are what's important in an armed conflict. End of the day who was in charge in Vietnam and Afghanistan? You say the battles matter, and while in a conventional army, which requires skilled, expensive, and well supplied soldiers, sure, but an insurgent is none of those things and objectives are a lot easier to achieve.
@@MrChowbaby69Us high commands mainly fight behind there wslled bases and occasionally sctually go out to the people thre tryna rule is this not true?
@carter.z1266 US high command have objectives they have to achieve and victory conditions. If they aren't met its considered a failure in different training operations like CAXs. Officer get replaced and senior NCOs posted(that means fired) if those conditions aren't met. In our wars, we constantly move the goal post and try to make up new objectives and victory conditions because we struggled or failed the first ones and then fail at those. It's time our people stop trying to polish a turd and call it what it is.
@@MrChowbaby69 well said
Quite analytical but using K:D to call one side the winner is very dubious. By that logic (and Wehraboos still use this) the Wehrmacht won against the Soviets due to eliminating more soldiers and tanks, even though the Russians are the ones who reached Berlin and the Nazi Germany ceased to exist as a political entity. To quote Clausewitz, “The political object is the goal, war is the means of reaching it, and means can never be considered in isolation from their purpose.” K:D doesn't matter if you have achieved your political objective that you were fighting for. For the US in Vietnam, it is a loss because they could not achieve their goal of containing communism in the region by destroying Communist North Vietnam's ability to function politically and militarily nor were they were able to save their regional proxy South Vietnam as the North Vietnamese gained control over all of Vietnam. Clear US defeat right there. Well at least from the perspective of the US elites. The K:D argument about Vietnam that Americans commonly bring is total copium for a clear US defeat. Its funny how you redefined the notion of victory and defeat to your own liking to fit such US normie copium takes while accusing the Vietcong of doing it.
Afghanistan though is a more fascinating case as its not so straightforward like Vietnam. Yeah the Taliban achieved their objective but aside from Bin Laden, the US also had other objectives you can look at from different perspectives. For example, while the conflict lasted, PMC's were able to profit from it by participation while the US-backed puppet regime was made to buy weapons and equipment from US arms manufacturers. If you look at it from the perspective of these corporations that made money from the war, its a clear victory for them regardless of whether or not the US troops had to leave as they got a lot of cash on their pockets anyways.
The reality is the U.S. had both the economic and military capability to win the Vietnam war, but due to political backlash th U.S. military had to pull out. Same thing happened in Afghanistan, the taliban where practically non existent, even service members there explain that nearing the later years of the war before pulling out, taliban attacks where less frequent and more tame. The issue I find with these wars is that the U.S. military would have won if political, and societal opinion was less easily swayed for peace. The fact Americans barely even felt repercussions from the war on terror is extremely telling, no one had to ration food or even sacrifice much of anything, the U.S. was not even in a full time wartime economy and managed to push the taliban, into the mountains, and pakistan.
@@rickfastly2671tl:dr The Americans "lost" because they lacked the will to actually win it.
@@reynanlamsen2007 honestly if I was president and saw people acting jingoistic I would just tell them to reconsider their decisions, because it’s abundantly clear that the American people lack the capability to see a war til fruition, or accept the hard decisions that must be made for victory.
@@rickfastly2671 Honestly, the Americans expect every single war to end in a dramatic and quick fashion when in reality, victories like that almost never happen because conflicts typically plays out more like a pendulum. American citizen basically suffer from ADHD
@@rickfastly2671 This is ignoring the context of the Vietnam War. It was never supposed to get this big, the promise was that victory was JUST around the corner, we just need a few thousand more soldiers, and repeat this for just under a decade. Eventually, people feel burned. Same with Afghanistan, years of "victory is just around the corner" for about two decades. America didn't go into a full time war economy, but eventually people start feeling burned.
To summon all out, despite your title, even your video adknowledge the often win: Having outside support does not diminish that fact in any sense. They win everytime regular armies do NOT enforce their objectives. Just by not-losing. And NOT, Afganistan, was punitive at first, then the US goverment (whose armed branch is the U.S Armed Forces) decided it was going to be something else, and the moment they decided that, the US lost. It's just so hard for many, many USmuricans ( specially servicemen) to accept, the fact you might win your battlles does not necessarily mean, you are making a difference on the long term and that Strategy ( not Tactics) dictate the outcome of a War.
Title didn't get me this time, because I already know it's not about Planet of the Apes! I'm still an idiot though 😅
Is not? Fk!
That already puts you above most of guntube tbqh
He was probably talking about my troll ass xD
LMFAO! Good to see you here again
The word idiot is thrown around so much that it is like smearing shit on things. Even with my 132+ IQ idiots still call me an idiot, they don't like it when I call them back an idiot.
Saying North Vietnam won through politics is crazy. War is politics by other means. . The North was able to heavily mobilize their entire society and fight hard. In 1975 the North smashed their way into the South and there were significant battles even after the Americans left.
Yea but the NVA weren’t very good in all honesty. They only won because America refused to continue sending the South weapons and ammo after 73. On the other hand, China and Russia were supplying the NVA throughout the whole war
Also the NVA were not a guérilla force. They were a state military force that won a conventional war in 1975.
@rorymosley9356 Exactly, the NVA/PAVN absorbed the VC after they were decimated during Tet.
@@LaikaTheG exactly that’s the point the point of gorilla warfare continue hurting regular troop until they decide it’s not worth it anymore then they decided to fuck off
I hate the conventional narrative that America lost in vietnam. When we pulled out we had essentially already won. People act like we couldn’t handle the guerrilla tactics and ran off with our tail between our legs.
"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
I believe you confuse militia with guerilla.
Militia tend to use guerilla tactics in warfare to the point that they're basically the same thing.
And no, National Guard isn't a real militia...
Those billions of taxpayer money should have been spent on healthcare, education and fixing the roads.
EOKA guerilla war in Cyprus 1955-1959 was victorious against the british empire.
Yes, Gen Grivas used massive popular support, received Greek assistance, and took advantage of the strained post WW2 British military. International media coverage of executions and criticism of the British government helped as well.
US/NATO lost in Afghanistan, it's ok to admit it
You often lose the game if you keep moving the goalpost
Is it really a loss when the Taliban got smoked in every engagement? I didn't think so bud check yourself.
@@Baconcatboy How many american military deaths via suicide? You won't talk about that will you now. If you check between the ANA and taliban had equal casualities and once you factor in the US servicemen suicides talibs got away with a positive KD if you really want to talk about numbers so badly.
@@Baconcatboynah Taliban cooked us and we had a shit ton of unnecessary deaths i dont think we should be involving our selves in unnecessary conflicts
US/NATO didn’t lose the goal was to never occupied Afghanistan forever. The Afghan armed forces lost to the Taliban.
How strong is this guys copium?
stronger than the bugdget of the American Military
not enough for the ignorants here.
ultra copium
@@12stem.b-obenita 3% exactly
When people like you start calling it “copium”, that’s when we know that you’re absolutely fuming.
Keep in mind the VC by 1969 had lost roughly 75% of its manpower by 1970 the VC fell under the control of the NVA. Tet offensive saw the. Take massive losses
Yet they still forced a political decision that resulted in the US withdrawing
still won thou
still won, you can lose 12 million people as long as you win
@@TheJarric and? I wouldn't be ever a Vietnamese Soldier if my % of survival rate was low.
@@mariano98ify thats why you lost
vietnam war, iraq, afghanistan, the three wars USA lost to insurgency. thats why you made this video
revive the Tartarians glory frfr on god
Most of Vietnam's military power was a conventional force, the PAVN.
@@bakerhitch5856 but they didn lose because of Ho Chi Minh trail and vietcong incursions that prevented us and allied forces to defend properly against incoming NVA, see what happened during the Trt offensive
@@carter.z1266 yes please
vc was absorbed to nva as such state power , iraq is democratic goverment , afgan was fail
I've always thought that guerillas didn't exactly win per say, instead they were just really good at taking Ls, so much so that the other side just kinda gave up
is'nt that the point of guerrilla warfare? conventional Victory is almost impossible for these smaller groups, thus they rely on extreme or unconventional methods to win, they avoid direct combat because they know once air support arrives there fucked, so instead they stretch out the war untill the opposing conventional armys nation of origin no longer supports the war.
it's not that guerilla forces rarly win, rather you have to be using the "wrong" definition of "victory" to frame them as failures of movments, a good example of victory via guerrilla warfare with no outside support is the cuban revolution
@@blipblop888 Arguably ideal goal of warfare is an effective victory. Not every victory is equal just like not every defeat is fatal. This doesn’t mean that guerilla warfare has to result in bad victories but it often does. A lot of the time it also is so reliant on your enemy not being concerned enough / willing to actually give up that it is truly a desperate measure and shoot consequently we considered as a last resort because a lot of the time when push comes to shove an ambush goes wrong and someone gets captured and speaks entire villages burn.
In a normal war defeat spares civilians because it usually becomes obvious when the big victory of big armies is impossible and peace is being made. If you however keep fighting you often do not have international support and favourable terrain and doom your country to decades of misery.
@@Arcaryon you missed my point, Guerilla warfare DEPENDS on weather or not a force can exploit their terrain, nations political instability, occupation forces failures (for example the US) and several other factors
traditional victory is not possible for these groups, THAT'S MY POINT
but when you you look at groups/forces who have been able to then you relize a pattern, these groups DO win, just not in the "traditional" sense.
and those who fail, fail BECAUSE they weren't able to take advantge of those factors
again look at the Cuban revolution (who had no outside sopport as the USSR came later) or Taliban take over (which had little Pakistani sopport if any and most of the wepones the taliban used by the way weren't Pakistani orgin rather American weapon's sold to them by ANA soldiers or Soviet left overs)
@@blipblop888 The Taliban had a ton of access to the weapons from the Mujahedin era and support from Pakistan to the extent that they could recruit openly in the border regions where their ethnicity s present. Bin Laden literally hiding right next to a military base is my opinion the icing on a piece of cake that makes it obvious that radical actors in Pakistan working against international coalition forces and their local allies had infact considerable outside support.
In the case of Afghanistan victory was possible because all the Taliban had to do was wait, perhaps busy Themse infiltrating the local army aso. even further and stage a coup. In other words, instead of fighting constantly for 20 years they could’ve just brokered a peace and betrayed this treaty the moment international attention shifted away from the weak puppet government and fought a much less costly campaign IF the force in charge would have even put up a resistance.
Afghanistan is a prime example of people thinking that the local success was a result of armed resistance first instead of rightfully concluding that it was in fact just a logical consequence of the longterm disinterest of the invading force in the region and more importantly not understanding that the Taliban success ruined Afghanistan and by extend tarnished the victory of this fundamentalist militia.
The reason why I am pointing this out it’s because so many people fail to understand that most unconventional warfare of this kind isn’t concluded with the luxury of an exclusive ethnic recruiting area in a nuclear armed neighbouring state or the backing of one of the largest states in the entire region in the case of Vietnam while also maintaining control over a vast amount of territory due to the lack of challenge from the opposition.
I understand what you’re saying - I simply do not agree with everything and since this is a public conversation I always like to clarify things beyond the context of the specific discussion.
Yes occasionally some groups applying these tactics succeed in meeting their goals. If certain conditions are met. My point, as I hopefully made clear, is however that most of these groups do not win which matters both for geopolitical strategy as well as retroactive perspective. The moment there is a border between two states for example resisting occupation often becomes a struggle that can only succeed under such rare circumstances that they are not easily replicated and are therefore worth to consider as exceptions rather than the rule.
In Africa and America for example a plethora of armed groups routinely fail to make any notable progress and at best manage to reconcile with the centralised authorities.
These groups are notably not the kind of rapidly advancing forces that are capable of holding vast amount of territory while facing serious resistance.
In summary the point of guerrilla warfare is to achieve victory when conventional means would make it impossible but it is often unwise and ends in disaster well even the victories it manages to achieve are rarely worth the fight unless they happen to coincide with significant changes in the international or regional landscape that make a victory possible which are usually fairly unrelated to the local armed resistance.
PS: Cuba was the ideal example of a revolution there was only possible thanks to Guerilla tactics and as you wrote yourself happened almost entirely independently in spite of significant centralised resistance.
Tell that to the Afghans
and the Viet Kong
Some people just can’t call things as they are
In both cases said guerrilla groups took far more casualties and lost a majority of the battles they took part in when compared to the occupying force. They only won as a result of the occupier’s own country losing interest in the war and no longer wishing to fight, which is something you would know if you actually watched the video instead of seeing the title and complaining
@@mjkoo5365 not watching this dribble. US Brass knew they couldn't win Vietnam and i bet ya they knew they couldn't win Afghanistan. nuff said
@@mjkoo5365 the occupying countries government lost interest as a result of the casualties inflicted by the guerillas. Internal dissent was fomented by the medias widespread coverage of the aforementioned casualties, resulting in mass riots and draft dodging. The VC beat the French, and the VC played an invaluable role beating the Americans. The US government doesn’t have the balls to go all the way militarily
The first one uploaded was excellent. Thanks for your dedication in uploading it again.
Never let the bastards grind you down as they say
Here in the Philippines we have a saying that
"You can eradicate insurgents but the ideology will not, You can only render it useless"
Funny that quote says thst since Isis did suffer a defeat in the phillopin front in the gwot
@@ssww3conventionally we defeated them the afp (Armed forces of the philippine) Would destroyed the isis any moment they want but ideologically speaking we won't be able to fight them
Guerilla Warfare does have the major advantage of being able to regroup even after being defeated ie taliban. Therefore, Id put my chips on Guerilla Warfare. Large professional armies are just too expensive and are at the mercy of its citizens tax money.
Yes, but only in the case that the government is defunct and everything is rendered splintered. Eventually once everything goes back to a state where a government can be formed, a large organized force has to be formed. Sure they are expensive but they are needed for general enforcement of internal and external affairs of the nation and maintain unity of the nation
Wait didn’t recently the insurgents in Afghanistan beat 2 super powers within a 40 year span?
You mean the same group that was revealed to be taking money from the US after agreeing to secure its borders and deal with 15!$-K on their own?
I remember also mentioning a few months ago in comments that it made for a good control zone near Iran. I also said 2020 and covid showed that Iran can't even stop half its cabinet from dying from a super cold, and that to bring a country to its knees you don't even need to occupy land.
But sure, focus on the small picture.
How many times can someone dig a hole next to a road, then put the dirt back in an empty hole making it look like something is there, but its empty and stopping a whole convoy before that convoy becomes annoyed and begins ignoring it?
IT's why people should guard against conditioning, while being cognizant of the fact that no one is immune
If I take the question seriously, I think it would be about 3 times.
@@neilreynolds3858 i think id manage 10 times but wouldnt dig deep after the 5th
The Cuban Revolution seems to be an exception. I'm at least not aware of any outside support Castro's Guerrillas had. But, of course, in Cuba, the population was very much against their government, and I get the impression that Cuba's army wasn't all that loyal. Also, in Che's book on guerrilla warefare, he mentions the need for guerilla forces to evolve over time into a regular army. Of course, Che learned the hard way about how guerilla warfare can fail.
Exactly, even Che knew the direction things had to go in the absence of high popular support, funding, and supply. Cuba was special. It just needed a little push.
@@SaltStackActual americas half assed bay of pigs fiasco was exactly the push he needed. He even wrote to jfk thanking him. After the bay of pigs was repulsed their fledgling government was stronger than ever.
I think Che also learned a litte from Mao, r guerilla forces to evolve over time into a regular army is just what CCP did.
Never thought I would see a video explaining the various insurgent forces here in my country, the Philippines. Good video my man.
I have much more planned. The Philippines is a nation steeped in the influence of guerrillas, insurgents, and assassins. But that's what's helped us appreciate life so much more.
The French Resistance was a damn joke!! The Serbs fighting under Tito were serious fighters compared to those losers in France who mainly killed each other.
Also, to reinforce the point, Tito got loads and loads of communist and communist allied support, and the casualty exchange rate between his communists versus the patriot / nationalist forces was horrendous (not as bad as Rhodesia).
And, yes, holle wood aside, the french resistance were by and large criminals who went from robbing stores in the name of the mafia to robbing stores in the name of communism, kind of the same in Rhodesia / Zimbabwe and "antifa" etc, tribes settling old scores under different "names"
@@wingatebarraclough3553 you nailed it
@@taterbug70 Thank you
Oof, i can see here that someone got beef with the french (really original i should say).
@@wingatebarraclough3553 The french resistance wasn't just made up of bandits.
And ideologically it was a very diverse group. There were communists, Anarchists, Socialists, Roman Catholics who objected to the Natzi's on Moral grounds, and there were even French Nationalist Facists who joined the resistance because they wanted true independence.
That's not even mentioning the countless foreigners in the French resistance who resisted the Germans while they were stuck in france.
Your comments are, at best, a gross generalization. I would even say that its a gross mischaracterization of an complex movement.
"how would you feel if you didn't eat breakfast today?"
how i always feel, how else?
Partizans liberated former Yugoslavia alone that's the one example how bunch of different folks when working together can make even Panzer scared
9:00 well that's the point here! Viet Kong and Taliban didn't need to conduct a traditional offensive to push Americans out physically They just need to not lose. Still be around when the bigger force is forced to go away due to whatever reason so they can take over
it's chess.
The bit about our objective in Afghanistan proved that this video was just you coping we stayed there for 20 years and pumped billions of dollars into it we very much were trying to do nation building and failed. We lost the taliban won.
Also your point about casualties is stupid if an army secured its objectives and defeats the enemy army that’s a victory. By your logic the Germans won WW2 cause they inflicted millions of casualties on the Soviet’s
Copy pasting my comment since I essentially write the same thing. America is a business as much as a nation. Nixon got off the gold standard in 1971 and shook hands with China in 1972, opening massive trade partnerships. In 1973, the Paris Peace Accords were signed. The Maoists were seen at the time as easier to get along with than Stalinists, especially since it looked like there could have been a Sino-Soviet war. Even China invaded Vietnam in 1979 in response to Cambodia. We technically had a buffer of mutual cooperation in SEA. All this information is easy to find and a timeline established.
Afghanistan was found to have ton of lithium in 2010 along with iron, copper, and gold. It was assessed to take up to 16 years to extract after discovery and with 30 to 40% of revenue in all trades lost to corruption it was just too costly after nearly a decade of exploration into the viability of a project. We were bracketing Iran, but after COVID nearly destroyed their cabinet in 2020 and they capitulated to receiving vaccines, it became very clear they lacked the infrastructure to handle mass casualty situations. Mexico in this time period became the number one trading partner of the US and chip manufacturing is set to return in a big way soon. Do you also really think Nordstream was done by the Russians to themselves? Oil pipeline from Syria to Russia via Iran. Look at the current alliances being created. Iran doesn’t care about Palestine, none of their reasons to get involved with Israel pass the sniff check.
So what, people end up ruling whatever remains of their homes, that doesn’t matter in the larger picture. This quote is attributed to many people: "As long as I control its money, I care not who makes its laws." It is what it is. Napoleon talked about how he could get men to die for the smallest piece of ribbon. The focus is too small, people in power don’t care about the squabbles and pain of conflict at the individual level. We aren't even in empire mode, far from it, because we still seem to listen to feedback from other countries. It's up to the individual to live as honorably as possible under the given circumstances.
@@SaltStackActual I have no clue how your paragraph of disjointed schizo babble disproves my point but sure lmao
That's your problem, not mine. You can easily look everything up. Ignorance is a choice.
@@SaltStackActual yea and you’ve clearly chosen it lol
The comparison between guerrillas an armies is just unfair from the start. A guerrilla can range from a wierd underground wing of the army, to just random groups of people that decide to fight.
In the case of the origin of the term, when Napoleon decided to invade Spain, the spanish army was pretty much decimated fairly quickly, and the french were only pushed back because of random groups of people that decided to fight, however they were spurred to do so by politicians, surviving military officers, and they were supplied by other civilians and the remnants o the army, so even if the army was all but destroyed even the literal origin of the term ''guerrilla'' includes army support. You cant discount other guerrillas for that same reason.
But tbh, army support is practically symbolic at that point, at least as far as i learned, its the classic example of a guerrilla of mostly common people that wins basically because of popular support and nothing else
Great video man, I can tell you really looked into this topic deeply
You can keep reuploading. But the "greatest military on earth" still failed to pacify rice and goat farmers, even with the entirety of Europe at their back, and you can't make that go away.
Sorry bud.
The US was able to pacify the Philippines in 1900 with little issue; the failure in Afghanistan and Vietnam is due to American weakness, not the inherent strength of the guerrilla ideal.
@@handsomeheathen4739
Wiki gives less then 200 American deaths. It was a successful counter-insurgency.
@samuelskinner7704 , "little issue" it's like you people are manufactured by a US Army-contracted coping factory, or something.
@@literallyme26
From wiki
United States:
130 killed
270 wounded
~500 dead from disease
Philippine Scouts:
111 killed
109 wounded
Philippine Constabulary:
1,706 casualties
That is not a major war- it is comparable to the Philippine drug war (2016-2022).
The US military during the 19th century was capable of waging and winning counter-insurgency campaigns (Natives, Mexicans, Confederates, colonies). The modern American military is not.
@@literallyme26It's like they have a TV at home permanently stuck on Fox News, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year 😂😂😂
Apparently no one understands Subsistence Operations anymore.
Here in India, Marathas were guerillas with their famous hit and run tactic which eventually destroyed richest empire of the world at that time- Mughal. It worked fantastically for them
Mughal destroyed by Nadir sha not your paratha empire
@@A_Shantobut it did still weaken the mughal empire
Guerillas might win, but if you are a guerilla you might not live to see that day. Great video indeed. In India, the Communist Maoist extremism is similarly at it’s last leg like the ones in Philippines. Unless the bigger government is an unbelievable prick (Like Pakistan in 1971) the guerillas really don’t win most of the time, and furthermore they don’t win by themselves.
If you fight you may die but at least as a free man
Yeah West Pakistan was a huge prick in 1971 to the point that EVERYONE in East Pakistan hated them, including those with differing political ideologies who were back to each other's throats following the Independence of Bangladesh. And for the Mukti Bahini, there were a lot of Bengali defectors from Pakistani armed forces involved along with cooperation with India on top of support from the Communist block. The spectacular Operation Jackpot wasn't done by ragtag local militia but rather trained naval commandos of Bangladesh. Mukti Bahini even organized themselves into 11 sectors each lead by sector commanders who were regular officers in the Pakistani military before the war and they formed a combined allied force with Indian armed forces by the end of the war to coordinate properly.
Che Guevara complain that the peasant masses didn't help him. I wonder why.
@@rebelblade7159 Agreed. Although I think Bangladeshi and Indian naval commandoes didn’t do Op Searchlight 😅😅😅. They did Op Jackpot.
@@dragonstormdipro1013 haha my bad! Corrected.
The copium is hard with this one 😆
The fact people got so mad they removed this is… ridiculous. Insanity even, it’s a video essay. What a level of censorship holy crap.
The last thing this government wants is TH-cam to be flooded with ex operators teaching people how to operate and random TH-cam channels teaching people critical thinking and examination of guerrilla and asymmetric warfare
@@AstraL1zard but this video is not rly that... This is just some small talk about warfare
Here are (some) of the sources for those interested. Really read and take it for what it is, lessons learned through the hard way. Over and over again:
INSURGENTS RARELY WIN: ADAPTATION IN THE FACE OF FAILURE - mwi.westpoint.edu/insurgents-rarely-win-adaptation-in-the-face-of-failure/
DON’T UNDERESTIMATE THE BEAR-RUSSIA IS ONE OF THE WORLD’S MOST EFFECTIVE MODERN COUNTERINSURGENTS - mwi.westpoint.edu/dont-underestimate-the-bear-russia-is-one-of-the-worlds-most-effective-modern-counterinsurgents/
THE CHANGING FACE OF INSURGENCY - mwi.westpoint.edu/the-changing-face-of-insurgency/
Mao Tse-tung and the Search for 21st Century Counterinsurgency - ctc.westpoint.edu/mao-tse-tung-and-the-search-for-21st-century-counterinsurgency/
Insurgencies Rarely Win - And Iraq Won’t Be Any Different (Maybe) - foreignpolicy.com/2007/01/15/insurgencies-rarely-win-and-iraq-wont-be-any-different-maybe/
A Farewell to Rational Aims: Why U.S. Strategy Failed in Afghanistan - www2.law.temple.edu/lppp/a-farewell-to-rational-aims-why-u-s-strategy-failed-in-afghanistan/
CHAPTER THREE The Challenge of Counterinsurgency: Lessons from the Cold War and After
Air Power in the New Counterinsurgency Era: The Strategic Importance of USAF Advisory and Assistance Missions, 2006, pp. 27-52 (26 pages) - www.jstor.org/stable/10.7249/mg509af.11?seq=1
Felter, J. H. (2012). Why Do Insurgencies Fail? Causes and Effects, Governance and Military Force in Counterinsurgency Strategies. Historical Methods: A Journal of Quantitative and Interdisciplinary History, 45(4), 183-186. doi.org/10.1080/01615440.2012.721337
The Lessons of 20 Years of Counterinsurgency Research - irregularwarfare.org/articles/the-lessons-of-20-years-of-counterinsurgency-research/
Reviewed Work: Beating Goliath: Why Insurgencies Win by Record Jeffrey Strategic Studies Quarterly, Vol. 2, No. 4 (WINTER 2008), pp. 142-144 (3 pages) - www.jstor.org/stable/26268360
INSURGENCY, NOT WAR, IS CHINA’S MOST LIKELY COURSE OF ACTION - warontherocks.com/2019/12/insurgency-not-war-is-chinas-most-likely-course-of-action/
I just wanted to let you know I clicked on this, because I love that you say people can't handle reality more than the title itself. So true. I got 2 cents on this so I'll leave that too. I do a lot of things which aren't my real job over seas that get me in all kinds of trouble. My real job is being an Archaeologist. Pretty wholesome stuff I guess but I'm usually on my own or with a couple of other team mates and I'm rarely working anywhere that's "safe" depending on what your definition of safety is of course. If it's not dudes with drones and guns it's infectious pathogens and paranoid rednecks or just complete government dogs if we can get past simple things like clean food and water. In the last decade my best stories involve getting detained by our own NATO allies thinking I'm a Russians spy shortly after being followed around by FSB for an entire summer. I'm not sure why FSB had at least one dedicated agent who couldn't even do a reasonable job of concealing himself and his giant SLR camera with the types of lenses you see sports journalists using. I would assume carrying crates of blasting gel in and out of cave that's closer than comfort from various munitions detonating would be part of it. Thankfully I spent most of my days there inside of the cave just hoping I don't blow my own self up or wind up in a cave collapse. After that when I tried to go home I couldn't even make it to the airport because farmers with guns thought I was working for the Russians...because I just looked foreign. That's literally the entire reason I sat on some hay bails for about 5 hours with two guys not in uniform pointing guns at me wondering if they're just going to waste me. This was all in 2014-2015 Ukraine for some context. Anyways yeah, you nailed dude. Most people who are veterans of US military don't have what it takes to do an asymmetric cause. You're not a soldier when it's asymmetric, you're just ground meat. I even get jealous myself in my own work of anyone in a uniform because uniform guys probably won't just be shot with their hands tied in a ditch and forgotten about legally, or you might get evacuated, even if not, you're going to get food and water and medicine air dropped into you if nothing else. I don't know those luxuries. If someone isn't capable of getting into a full blown police chase and getting away, don't do it. If you can't take care of hygiene and medical care without a doctor, don't do it. If you aren't ready to wind up like roadkill on the side of the road without so much as your name ever getting back to anyone back home much less loved ones and friends, don't do it. Committing to anything less than wearing a uniform is literally digging your own grave before you've even squeezed a trigger. Don't do it unless you're are just hell bent on taking as many bad guys down with you before your time comes. If you don't have that mentality it's probably because someone is living in a make believe fantasy. Any asymmetric cause is one thing and one thing only, death. If you make it out alive it's because you won the lottery and you know how to handle yourself and your mission if not both. Same is true for war but you got an army behind to you to cover your behind. At least that's ideally how things are supposed to work of course nothing goes according to plan ever, especially in war. I was lucky to be personally trained and led when I was green from USMC 1964-68 veteran. Without him I wouldn't be here writing this. Cool video dude. Keep them coming! 👍
that is a little bit biased why are you ignoring the casualties of the afghan army and south vietnamese army, if they are included in the casualties then you would have a close casualty ratio.
Mission set. Do you want the truth? The US government doesn't care about some host nation issues. They are also more targeted due to the fact that they are usually softer targets. An outpost of 20 regular ANA with half high on hash won't have American support embedded in case they're in trouble. They'll have QRF but if they get attacked by the insurgent forces you could say the fight was near equal in terms of capabilities and weapons. The largest attempt on an American base was FOB Salerno, one of the places I was at, and that didn't end well for the attackers. Insurgents hitting ANA/ANP was a near normal occurrence. Some ANA/ANP WERE insurgents.
I didn't factor them in due to the fact that to the top, it doesn't really matter to them.
@@SaltStackActual
Can you make a video on Fatah, hammas, hizbullah and current myanmar civil war
@Yourfriendo614 I have lots of things planned
This is video, especially the Afghanistan part, is just pure cope. We lost and that’s that. You are correct in the sense that yes, guerrilla fighters are not invincible, but that has more to do with the occupiers tactics and competence rather than some imagined foreign assistance. Rant over
@@grandmaster6166 TH-camrs being a bunch of idiots, example #34377.
The Taliban in fact received copious amounts of foreign aid.
Without French, Dutch, Spanish, and Prussian help, the Continental Americans would have stood little chance against the British Empire.
George Washington hated much of the American Militia for being a failure. Stop projecting
@@thewisp7447 Would you blame the the failure of the British to suppress the revolution on copious foreign aid? Was it the French that won the American war of independence?
Obviously, money and supplies are useful to any undertaking, but receiving help does not make one invincible. The issue in the 13 colonies, and in Afghanistan, was the failure of the occupiers to establish effective command and control over the territory and either persuade or intimidate the local population into compliance. That is where the fault lies.
Regarding the tone of my initial post (which perhaps is the cause of your own rudeness) is that channels like this one are (in my mind) merely apologists for the Pentagon and the State Department, people attempting to sidestep and excuse real issues in the doctrine and philosophy that currently guide the US and its foreign policy. I think that such people are absolutely in the wrong and should be called out. But that is just me, I would like to hear (or read I guess) what you have to say in response to this.
It's true. People shouldn't romanticize wars, conflicts, and arms struggles as it sugar coating the harsh and brutal realities for everybody involved that had to go to live through it regardless the outcome.
Absolutely
Very cool analysis! Another really good example of guerilla warfare is in ancient Sicily during the Peloponnesian war. Thucydides writes that when the Sicels were indirectly helping the Doric (i.e. "Spartan") inhabitants of Syracuse by constantly harassing the Athenian army with light cavalry ambushes. The Athenians ended up wasting a lot of manpower building long trenches and walls to keep the Sicels out with no success. That was one of many reasons why the entire army of 40,000 and the entire fleet that brought them all died to the man (except Alcibiades, who was recalled from active service for a criminal trial). This failure of the Athenians to take over Syracuse was seen as the turning point in the war, and the constant threat of Sicel ambushes was a significant part of that failure, being mentioned in many places by Thucydides.
Many thanks! Thucydides is a great resource in understanding the larger picture of conflict. Same with Xenophon. I hope you stick around!
@@SaltStackActual Thanks, I'll have to look out for Xenophon!
I’m surprised you didn’t mention the (Provisional) Irish Republican Army. They defined what it meant to be and operate as a guerrilla movement. They even wrote a handbook that was disseminated through the organization to set a baseline of how guerrilla operations should be conducted. One of the takeaways from the Green Book was to wage a campaign of “long war” essentially exhausting the British until they wanted to come to the negotiating table on the terms of Ireland. No matter how long it took. Good video mane.
Some are so complicated that they deserve their own video in the future, as any quick mention leaves too many holes
"uhh muh higher k/d ratio means my side is winning even tho the enemy is still existing or something" -you
also america invaded afghanistan because of the taliban, that was their main objective, even the DOD admitted that you doofus
Yes they even made up the name alqaedah(the bases where zarqawi trained at afghanistan)
Osamas group was islamic front against fighting crusaders and yahoodis(in arabic)
The talibans asked for evidence of osamas involvement in 911
EVEN BEFORE 9/11 happened the US were already bombing mosques in afghanistan
excuse being searching for osama after he fled from sudan
The Taliban is now completely irrelevant you doofus, they were evaporated. Only a technical victory for them, I’d rather go through an American defeat than go through whatever loony outcome victory that the Taliban got.
Great video!
I will say you did leave out Haiti’s ability to fight off their French Slavers to become the only Island in the Caribbean to gain independence by force.
@SGvalentine
The Haiti revolt is a bad example. 1 it wasn’t really a partisan war as it was more of a coup. The French sent Polish troops to put down the rebellion, however the poles joined it because they didn’t like the idea of slavery. The Polish were better equipped and more powerful than the weaker colonial garrison and could have conquered the country by themselves if they wanted.
A lot of people here coping "the guerilla don't need to win" then giving examples of Vietnam or whatever don't understand the video. The truth is that the guerilla rarely win, as in, historically, the professional fighting force usually crushes the guerilla and accomplishes most of its objectives.
Not to mention that the Vietcong wasn’t the only combatants in the Vietnam war. A significant amount of combat was down by the NVA.
the boers in the south african war of 1879-1915 can also be noted. these were the first signs of commandos being used in combat. very interesting stuff
When they do win, the prize is taking over the country and finding out how much it sucks to run a country
Administration is the most difficult part, most major players would rather the indigenous population do it while hanging access to their resources
I dont understand why people would be upset by this video- it's pretty common sense, and supported by reality.
Guerillas loose the battle but win the war, there is no exception
There are studies I posted in the community post that you should probably read and listen to.
Not at all true, in only the last century guerrilla forces have lost dozens of times, the IRA lost the troubles, the KKE lost the Greek civil war, the Polish home army lost the Warsaw uprising,
The CHRI lost the second Chechen war etc.
@@SaltStackActual Studies🤣This reminds me of the bell curve meme
I really hope your actually getting paid good money for this otherwise thats some real hard cope
If you are paid btw here is some advice if you stopped robbing your own people and actually represented there interests your masters and you wouldnt need to worry about the American people rising up at some point and when that happens they will win sooner or later even if you win battles you will loose that war
Look at the casualty rates in Vietnam and Afghanistan. Yes, you can win, but you need the stubbornness and manpower to endure horrifyingly disproportionate casualties for often over decade until the enemy gets bored and goes home.
And they didn't win, we ended up making a business deal with their supporter and in 73 we said bye.
@@SaltStackActual cope
Copy pasting my comment since I essentially write the same thing. America is a business as much as a nation. Nixon got off the gold standard in 1971 and shook hands with China in 1972, opening massive trade partnerships. In 1973, the Paris Peace Accords were signed. The Maoists were seen at the time as easier to get along with than Stalinists, especially since it looked like there could have been a Sino-Soviet war. Even China invaded Vietnam in 1979 in response to Cambodia. We technically had a buffer of mutual cooperation in SEA. All this information is easy to find and a timeline established.
Afghanistan was found to have ton of lithium in 2010 along with iron, copper, and gold. It was assessed to take up to 16 years to extract after discovery and with 30 to 40% of revenue in all trades lost to corruption it was just too costly after nearly a decade of exploration into the viability of a project. We were bracketing Iran, but after COVID nearly destroyed their cabinet in 2020 and they capitulated to receiving vaccines, it became very clear they lacked the infrastructure to handle mass casualty situations. Mexico in this time period became the number one trading partner of the US and chip manufacturing is set to return in a big way soon. Do you also really think Nordstream was done by the Russians to themselves? Oil pipeline from Syria to Russia via Iran. Look at the current alliances being created. Iran doesn’t care about Palestine, none of their reasons to get involved with Israel pass the sniff check.
So what, people end up ruling whatever remains of their homes, that doesn’t matter in the larger picture. This quote is attributed to many people: "As long as I control its money, I care not who makes its laws." It is what it is. Napoleon talked about how he could get men to die for the smallest piece of ribbon. The focus is too small, people in power don’t care about the squabbles and pain of conflict at the individual level. We aren't even in empire mode, far from it, because we still seem to listen to feedback from other countries. It's up to the individual to live as honorably as possible under the given circumstances.
"until the enemy gets bored" yeah, "bored" of throwing away billions of dollars into a lost cause... definitely not the same as losing lmao.
@@sb17899 billions don't matter to some people is the quick answer
This guy seems to think that North Vietnam lost the war. That's the level of credibility I give him.
America achieved its domino buffer against Stalinism by becoming a business partner with the Maoists in 72 after unlocking unlimited credit. As far as America the business goes, Vietnam became totally and completely irrelevant. Warfare is only a portion of the larger picture.
History teacher and military history enthusiast here. Just wanted to say I discovered your content and love the way you explained it. Other than that, subscribing and keep it up!
A fellow teacher! Thanks for the subscribe! It's kind of hard distilling complex topics into bite-sized pieces without that feeling of missing something, but it's been a great learning experience.
The last bit is the saddest part to me, rather realizing the futility of keeping the blood flowing, some will try to pull a Genghis Khan and just kill everyone
thats how you deal with partisans and the supporting population but the moral high horse the west placed itself upon makes it impossible to win against guerillas
This is a nice overwiew on guerrillas but it doesnt explain how they tend to lose at all
Choosing French insurgents to illustrate ww2 guerrilla fighters is unfair, Yugoslav partizans were a much better example to choose. Also us war on Afghanistan wasn't just a punitive war against AQ it war an imperialistic war mainly driven by ego aim at regaining national pride, witch didn't worked at all, for whole world, this war has proven that Western style democracy doesn't work for everyone and that the us military is not able to defeat few flipflop fighters witch are both huge defeats for America
I only used the French because to the layman they are the most famous and represented in video games. This casts a net. It is what it is, some groups will be talked about on their own in the future
The war on Afghanistan was not a military defeat. It was a bureaucratic defeat and political defeat.
This tbh. I dont know anyone who thinks of them as anything more than "Highly romanticized" and... yeah thats it. What did they do again?
Well i would like at least a mention of soviet partisans. There are a lot of soviet movies about them, like series about kovpak, much more interesting in my op.
@@GAMER123GAMING what is wrong with you.
We hear about it when they win, but forget about it when they lose
The posting will continue until morale improves. As good as it was the first time.
Thanks!
Shivaji of Maratha empire in India against Mughal Empire and Portuguese army have 100% success rate and have no recorded defeat in a battle. Using Guerilla tactics and infiltration of course.
They won in Vietnam and Afghanistan. In both conflicts guerilla forces forced the USG to order a panicked withdrawal
But the guerrilla forces didn’t win the war, the outright NVA did. The VC (the Guerillas) were almost completely wiped out in the South during the Tet Offensive in 1968. They were forced to retreat to Laos and Cambodia and didn’t do much. The NVA fought the rest of the war and by the own admission of commanders within the NVA, through books, they fought using modern Russian open warfare tactics. Despite this, and the fact they were supplied directly by the Chinese and indirectly by Russia, they lost a vast majority of conflicts against U.S. South Vietnamese forces (despite always possessing a numbers advantage). It was not until 1975 did the South truly fall. Keep in mind, America pulled out both in direct combat and through lend lease with South Vietnam in 1973. So basically, the guerrillas did nothing and it took the actual open warfare NVA two additional years to win the war only after America stopped supplying them with weapons and ammo
@LaikaTheG exactly, the force became something deadlier. I know that a lot of the younger people have a hard time grasping that concept, so thanks for summing this up. I did have a link to the Vietnamese government results of their studies on the old video in a comment, I should hunt it down again and add.
In both conflicts the United States voluntarily left. In Afghanistan, the withdrawl should have been much more orderly, but in Boe Jiden's infinite wisdom, that did not happen.
@@LaikaTheG >they lost a vast majority of conflicts against U.S. South Vietnamese forces (despite always possessing a numbers advantage)
False. North Vietnam + their allies throughout the war always had a number of inferiority throughout the war. This inferiority was supplanted by the fact that ARVN troop quality weren't always the best + US and their allies failed to conduct enough successful encirclement/anti-infiltration missions to destroy the guerrillas and supply lines. More often that not most of NVA troops were working in rear area logistics, as NVA had less mechanization in logistics compared to ARVN or American troops.
Do you have a proof about 'hey lost a vast majority of conflicts against U.S. South Vietnamese forces'?
It's false to say the guerrillas did nothing. They provided significant intelligence to regular troops about enemy troop movement when they weren't active, and when they were active they could harass nearby enemy outposts, forcing either US or their allies to send in reinforcement. The guerillas also helps to establish administration in the post-war peiod.
People keeps forgetting that by 1963 the VC was slowly winning against ARVN until US transported troops and air support to South Vietnam.
With Geneva Convention signed in 1973, lend lease was severally decreased, not mentioning the 1973 oil shock hampered South Vietnam fuel supplies.
Funnily, even without American aid, the ARVN still has plenty of ammo to fight on. The 5.56mm and 155mm stockpiles the US delivered to Vietnam during the 1960s and 1970s, captured by North Vietnam, HAS NOT YET DEPLETED. Right now Vietnam still shoots 155mm from that era during their training exercises at recent as 2010s, and equip their provincial militias with M16s.
@@wakandaforever2401because we lost the war of attrition, which is the goal of the guerilla
Video game brain: Defining "win condition" the same way a video game would - by a kill/death ratio system.
That's not how real wars work.
In the larger geopolitical sense, give me a good example of how turning out each country to the point it can't force project outside of its own borders is failure. I will go into more than attrition: We secured our goal in Afghanistan, then saw a sector of profit for US interests. Phones, TV's just about every modern convenience requires lithium. We then decided the deal was stupid, even with losing less than 30 soldiers in one year, the losses based on corruption were just not worth it. We kick it to the Chinese and they're now straight up stealing from Afghanistan because their business losses were mounting. Everyone likes quoting the reduced version of Clausewitz: "war is not merely a political act but a real political instrument, a continuation of political intercourse, a carrying out of the same by other means,” and then wholly ignore the fact that politically a war and all its losses can be reduced to irrelevant in the discussion. Once a participant no longer sees any benefit of attempting continued violence while holding the power to annihilate a battle space, it can metaphorically throw the session in the trash can. I can break down the Afghan timeline from 2010/1 until withdrawal showing the business interest. Combined with new trading partners and sources for raw materials, it just didn't matter.
In Avatar part 1 those blue giant cats did win, they made sure those humans couldn't project dominance. But let's say the humans left because they found their resources from half the distance with 2x the volume. Did those cats win or did they get spared until that resource became so rare their planet would be the only one left holding it?
@@SaltStackActual The winner is the side that has a goal and achieves it. On the US side, both the Obama administration and the Trump administration struggled after the death of Bin Laden to come up with a reason to continue the occupation of Afghanistan. They did not in fact accept the death of Bin Laden as the win condition. No matter what interests they got out of Afghanistan, both administrations refused to declare victory and withdraw, because those interests were not the win conditions for them. Going into the Biden administration, it became clear that the objective of the US in Afghanistan post-2011 was to defeat the Taliban, which is why Biden's withdrawal is considered an admission of loss, not an Operation Magic Carpet-like returning march of the victors. We know from the Pentagon Papers that past US presidencies had very a similar pattern of knowing full well the Vietnam War was unwinnable, but nobody before Nixon wanted the reputation of the losers, so they just kept the Vietnam War going, pushing the responsibility to end it to the next guy. Winners achieve their goals, losers don't.
There is a term for a situation where both sides of a war fail to achieve their respective goals and end the fighting in that stalemate, with no clear winner or loser: white peace. Obviously that wasn't how the US occupation of Afghanistan ended either.
You know why I don't put stock into saying the US is a declining empire? Actual empires don't ask for permission. The myth that the underdog can prevail like Afghanistan is so that it leaves room for people to save face, continue to feel "good" that they prevailed, and not have their population annihilated while other goals are met. The stated goal, according to every press release for OEF, is the kill/capture of Bin Laden and the elimination of Al Qaeda as it was known. Everything is a bonus goal in the eyes of the machinery that keeps the place going. So, achieved by the time Neptune Spear happened. The Taliban rule a country of nothing, with increasing tension due to young people who remember nothing but US style permissiveness. There will most likely be a brain drain rather than revolt. Both are desirable. China is losing money dealing with them and can't handle it Uyghur style because that would sabotage their Belt & Road plans to look like Neo-America everywhere else in the world. On the grand scale of things the point of my entire video is that romanticizing a guerilla war without taking into account all the factors that make it successful without having your entire family die is next level idiocy and is the expected focus of the majority who would make up the line level troops. Julius Caesar to Napoleon to John Mosby realized this and used it to different ends and goals. Are there true believers of military victory alone? Of course. Ironically, unlike video games, Modern Warfare is the control of trade, money, and resources through cultural capture, finances, and proxy war. Wars that create a resource. The catalyst for the major shift was Covid changing a lot of dynamics that make other sectors more profitable. In 2020 it even looked like Iran's cabinet would get wiped out by the super cold, proving that they can't even field enough medical resources to handle mass casualty events. We didn't need to be close by, they can't really project on two fronts. This doesn't take a intel scholar to look at this and discern, just reading. You don't treat a 20 year old man the same way you treated him as a 5 year old kid. Here, this is all mainstream out in the open news put into chronological order:
A Marshall Plan for Afghanistan? (2008) - www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/a-marshall-plan-for-afghanistan/
Pakistan's Baluchi Minority Eyes Autonomy, Wealth, And Rights (2008) - www.rferl.org/a/Pakistans_Baluch_Minority_Eyes_Autonomy_Wealth_And_Rights/1338024.html
Large oilfield discovered in northern Afghanistan (2010) - www.france24.com/en/20100815-large-oilfield-discovered-northern-afghanistan-natural-ressources-shiberghan-balkh
U.S. Identifies Vast Mineral Riches in Afghanistan (2010) - www.nytimes.com/2010/06/14/world/asia/14minerals.html
$1 trillion motherlode of lithium and gold discovered in Afghanistan (2007-2010) - www.mining.com/1-trillion-motherlode-of-lithium-and-gold-discovered-in-afghanistan/
Afghan gold mining project approved (2010) - www.express.co.uk/news/world/217335/Afghan-gold-mining-project-approved
Dreams Of A Mining Future On Hold In Afghanistan (2012) - www.npr.org/2012/04/04/149611352/dreams-of-a-mining-future-on-hold-in-afghanistan
Natural Resources Were Supposed to Make Afghanistan Rich. Here’s What’s Happening to Them. (2015) - www.thenation.com/article/archive/resources-were-supposed-to-make-afghanistan-rich/
Afghanistan's corruption epidemic is wasting billions in aid ( 2016) - www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2016/nov/03/afghanistans-corruption-epidemic-is-wasting-billions-in-aid
Afghanistan Tries to Win Trump Support With Lithium (2017) - www.voanews.com/a/afghanistan-trump-mining-lithium/3798585.html
Why is Afghanistan unable to extract its vast mineral wealth? (2019) - www.aljazeera.com/features/2019/5/28/why-is-afghanistan-unable-to-extract-its-vast-mineral-wealth
Illegal mining costs Afghanistan millions annually: UN (2020) - www.aa.com.tr/en/asia-pacific/illegal-mining-costs-afghanistan-millions-annually-un/1952838
Chinese investment in Afghanistan’s lithium sector: A long shot in the short term (2023) - www.brookings.edu/articles/chinese-investment-in-afghanistans-lithium-sector-a-long-shot-in-the-short-term/
Attempted theft of Afghan lithium by Chinese shows realities of dealings with Beijing (2023) - afghanistan.asia-news.com/en_GB/articles/cnmi_st/features/2023/02/07/feature-01
It is what it is.
@@SaltStackActual Nobody other than you said anything about the US being a declining empire. Winners achieve their goals, losers don't. There was no Operation Magic Carpet immediately after the conclusion of Neptune Spear, the US instead stayed to train the ANSF and run airstrikes for them, all to keep the Taliban from gaining back grounds from the countryside. That right there tells you everything about what the US continued to stay in Afghanistan for. All the exploitation of resources under an occupation has never defined victory in the past, it doesn't suddenly do so now. Even if your goal is the continuation of exploiting those resources, you don't actually have a win condition there, you only stand to lose the moment you can't do it anymore. Any post-hoc rhetoric after losing is just propaganda to save face for a sore loser. A Pyrrhic Victory is still a victory much the same since... well, Pyrrhus' victory against the Roman Empire.
@aquapendulum and this can be debated back and forth forever. I only included the waning empire bit because it's popular to talk about with former soldiers and the like. What needs to be seen is this, there will always be secondary motives. There will always be investments. There will always be financial motives that help our overall goal. As far as the machine is concerned, veterans will get the rewards and assistance they earned through their help and service to the greater goal. Contracts get paid, and so does the entire chain of people who can benefit. There's an entire industry built on defense spending. A few billion spent doesn't even register in their concerns. Not even a trillion. They can "win" back their land.
To make it simpler, Total War or possible insurgency.
No problem man. We all know you aren't endorsing things just because they are covered in an analysis.
Imagine teaching in depth history under these conditions
@@SaltStackActual makes me wonder what they’re going to teach and what their not in my history next year
lol, you’re the exact type of person who would fall for propaganda.
He makes a pretty clear poignant point that I agree with, but many want to ignore due to their fantasy larping. You aren't going to be some lone plucky hero like in a Hollywood movie that takes down the comically evil regime. Most guerilla forces with no logistics or equipment are essentially wiped out by larger forces. Think of how basically no-one overthrow the soviet union or China for decades and decades. Or Genghis khan, or other authoritarian leaders in history. Or the nearly 1000+ years of the arab-african slave trade. You don't have magical powers and aren't going to win over night.
You need to focus on logistics and coordination and planning, which means stockpiling resources AKA prepping and getting equipment and training, and more than that a group. The delusion of instant success by throwing a ring in to a volcano or shooting one little bolt at a death star is silly. You will need a lot more than just good will to win. It's basic common sense. Even groups like the Taliban were created by pakistan in 1994 and didn't defeat the U.S. in a single battle, and the Viet cong were financed by both Russia and China and operated as a part of the NVA government. If it wasn't for another administration coming to power and pulling out decades later, they would have made no gains at all. You need to train and prepare.
THANK YOU! And at all costs, exhaust every other option. And on seeking a fight: Lots of dudes cry about Russians or Ukranians being hunted or chased by drones, calling it a crime. WELCOME TO WAR. For the last 20 years, we've killed people in their SLEEP. Extinguishing many little camp fires over the years surrounded by men of the other side with CAS just because going down to engage them would be a huge risk and "waste time." And now, all of a sudden, people want to talk about drone operators being criminal? War itself is fucking heinous. People have to consider the possibilities. I wouldn't say lots, because the ratio shows this, but the vocal few with low order capability thinking who can't comprehend anything but the most explicit orders need to consider this when talking about guerrillas and fighting.
The taliban, which lost every battle, now controls Afghanistan and we are gone, they got what they wanted and we lost hegemony in the area. war is not about killing its about conquest, a successful conqueror doesnt call a withdrawl a victory. and sorry but mcdonalds in afghanistan is not equivalent to having a puppet state there
You missed me talking to others about lithium, force projection, and covid changing things
As someone once said, " No soup for you! ". You dared to speak of that which receives derision and dismissal. Some would even label you " deplorable ". TH-cam doesn't have time for insolence, nor that " charter of negative liberties" Mr. Obama so condescendingly lamented.
The Swiss handbook 'The Total Resistance' offers a good insight in the operational goals of insurgency. It's a guideline written in case Switzerland ever gets invaded by a superior, regular army. The goal here was to wait out the enemy's main forces moving on to other goals, then wearing down the weaker holding forces to achieve two goals: Prepare the land for a regular army freeing it and to show the remaining potential allies that their land has not fallen. Being supported by an exile government abroad and / or foreign allies was always an essential part of the doctrine; even if lots of the resupplying is being done through raids or through aid from civilian resistance organizations, further aid and training from allied armies is important and essential. Essentially, the goal is to survive until reverting to regular warfare is possible again.
High numbers of casualties and suffering during the phase of irregular warfare is to be expected.
Keep making actual informative content, king.
12 minutes of pure american copium.
Breaking news The Germans won WW2 because they high a better K/D ratio
@@chaostheoryfilms people prefer to question reality than their own thoughts and ideology
>12 minutes of pu-- ACK!!! *Gets drone striked.*
@@chaostheoryfilms Well, they now have much better economy than most of those who defeated them in WW2, so... there are a lot of different criteria for victory and defeat
@@233lynx See also: Marshal Plan
ETA: a better example is Hanoi where you can go to the Levi's store in your Ford after getting McDonald's.
Only complaint, and feel free to respond, is that the "win=survive" Idea of some gurilla movement is only true depending on the campaigns goals. Like what you stated in Afghanistan, the taliban were basically a side mission that wasn't important with the achiving of the main goals, so in that case, the US didn't really lose fully. However, when looking at other conflicts with the aim of destroying a G movement, the "s=w" condition stated can be true, fore example, the main objective of the IDFs recent conflict in gaza is the destruction of hamas, and in that sense, hamas surviving would ultimately lead to a "minor tactical IDF victory at best."(tho the conflicts nature doesn't guarantee the outcome above). But all in all, pretty solid and logical vid.
Total victory was not achieved by the us hence they lost prestige(which is worse?)
@@carter.z1266 Not really, the us won a total victory in achieving the main goals, and the side stuff may lower the victory, but all in all its the same, a victory. And don't try to confuse the term with victories that are low prestige like phyric victories or partial victories.
@@omarmatouq3855 Then if destroying the Talibs G resistance was not the main goal why did Obama continued the INCREASED arrival of american troops to afghanistan?
And we never hear about war crimes happening in afghanistan
and how the "northern alliances" was litteraly a group that were made up of abunch of staunch RIVALS...
hell they were even called the islamic alliances In Iranian newspapers
and how iran let THE AMERICANS SURROUNDING THEM AND STILL HAS THE GUTS OF ATTACKING IRAQ at the times where it is known that al-zarqawi's dad was a palestinian Fighting against israel even got arrested in jordan for it
qassem soleimani quds force was HELPING the american invasion of afghanistan
you really just sat there and recorded yourself nothing for 11 minutes and 49 seconds
Anyone interested in irregular warfare should read "Invisible Armies" by Max Boot. Starts from roughly the start of formal warfare itself to present times.
I expected you to highlight the Guerilla revolutionary movement of the Greeks. 1821 and onward to the second world war and the Ottoman occupation.