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On August 15 2021 01:32 Biff The Understudy wrote:Show nested quote +On August 15 2021 01:16 farvacola wrote:
Speaking from only a resources angle, Afghanistan’s geological characteristics and relative lack of development make it one of the best bets for untapped resources in the entire world, especially in mining and oil. China absolutely has that sort of thing in mind as it looks to capitalize on the influence vacuum. Good luck to them. Projecting any mining in Afghanistan is gonna be playing the long, long game with the Talibans back in power. My point really is that Afghanistan recent history is not that of a place that rival big powers are contesting to each other for its ressources. It’s much, much more complex than that.
Any of the big 3 could have the land if they want it, it’s just a humanitarian thing. 5 days of carpet bombing and it’s just cleaning up the leftovers. Especially true if they go ahead with the large scale detonations they all want to do for mining. The only reason Afghanistan has a population is optics. No one wants to be the bad guy that wiped out Afghanistan for rare minerals
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Norway28747 Posts
Unless you're talking about actual nukes that seems like a really big oversimplification and exaggeration to the point where it's just flat out wrong. Afghanistan is full of mountains and hiding places. The Soviet Union was not particularly concerned about the optics or about conducting humanitarian warfare, the Afghans held out for 9 years and eventually repelled them.
Again - there's a reasonable parallel to the Vietnam war here. The US failed to secure a win there. That really wasn't a case of 'not dropping enough bombs' - there were more bombs dropped during the Vietnam war than during world war 2.
The tactic you describe can be used to flatten a city if there are no humanitarian concerns. (See Russia vs Chechnya and the shelling of Grozny), it doesn't work against mountain people conducting guerilla warfare.
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On August 15 2021 03:25 Mohdoo wrote:Show nested quote +On August 15 2021 01:32 Biff The Understudy wrote:On August 15 2021 01:16 farvacola wrote:
Speaking from only a resources angle, Afghanistan’s geological characteristics and relative lack of development make it one of the best bets for untapped resources in the entire world, especially in mining and oil. China absolutely has that sort of thing in mind as it looks to capitalize on the influence vacuum. Good luck to them. Projecting any mining in Afghanistan is gonna be playing the long, long game with the Talibans back in power. My point really is that Afghanistan recent history is not that of a place that rival big powers are contesting to each other for its ressources. It’s much, much more complex than that. Any of the big 3 could have the land if they want it, it’s just a humanitarian thing. 5 days of carpet bombing and it’s just cleaning up the leftovers. Especially true if they go ahead with the large scale detonations they all want to do for mining. The only reason Afghanistan has a population is optics. No one wants to be the bad guy that wiped out Afghanistan for rare minerals
I really fail to understand what you are saying and how that relate to what has happened in Afghanistan for the last two decades. Who will carpet bomb who, and who intend to invade the country for mining?
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On August 15 2021 03:35 Liquid`Drone wrote:
Unless you're talking about actual nukes that seems like a really big oversimplification and exaggeration to the point where it's just flat out wrong. Afghanistan is full of mountains and hiding places. The Soviet Union was not particularly concerned about the optics or about conducting humanitarian warfare, the Afghans held out for 9 years and eventually repelled them.
Again - there's a reasonable parallel to the Vietnam war here. The US failed to secure a win there. That really wasn't a case of 'not dropping enough bombs' - there were more bombs dropped during the Vietnam war than during world war 2.
The tactic you describe can be used to flatten a city if there are no humanitarian concerns. (See Russia vs Chechnya and the shelling of Grozny), it doesn't work against mountain people conducting guerilla warfare.
You don't need nukes for Afghanistan when the entire point of it is to mine it. They hide in caves and you intend to blow up the mountains anyway for hafnium and other rare earth metals.
I don't feel like typing all of this so i can talk to you in discord if you want but otherwise i'll be brief:
China gots a lot of rare earth minerals and lets them make semiconductors
lots of countries want REMs. Afghanistan has them. You blow up mountains to mine REMs. The Taliban hide in mountains.
...
...
QED.
The issue is humanitarian. Don't need nukes.
One thing to point out: The US could have solved the semiconductor shortage and eliminated China as a necessary supplier of REMs. They didn't while controlling Afghanistan.
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On August 15 2021 03:35 Liquid`Drone wrote:
Unless you're talking about actual nukes that seems like a really big oversimplification and exaggeration to the point where it's just flat out wrong. Afghanistan is full of mountains and hiding places. The Soviet Union was not particularly concerned about the optics or about conducting humanitarian warfare, the Afghans held out for 9 years and eventually repelled them.
Again - there's a reasonable parallel to the Vietnam war here. The US failed to secure a win there. That really wasn't a case of 'not dropping enough bombs' - there were more bombs dropped during the Vietnam war than during world war 2.
The tactic you describe can be used to flatten a city if there are no humanitarian concerns. (See Russia vs Chechnya and the shelling of Grozny), it doesn't work against mountain people conducting guerilla warfare.
When the Soviet Union left Afghanistan, they didn't leave a void behind, they left a fully functioning secular state. That government held out for three years in total isolation against bearded men funded and trained by the US, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, ect. let loose to do as they pleased after they had served their original goal of getting the Soviet Union to leave.
The Afgans back then obviously believed in the state the Soviets left behind, while having all aid cut off and being besieged on all sides... that government outlasted the Soviet Union itself, they fought the Mujahedeen till the very end. Najibullah is seen as a hero in modern day Afganistan.
That said: How the fuck is the puppet state the Americans left behind collapsing faster than the Americans are pulling out? How much money was pumped into Afganistan for anyone to let this happen?
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Norway28747 Posts
I'm not disputing that it's possible to use explosives to explode mountains. But Afghanistan is about the size of Texas, most of it mountains. 5 days of carpet bombing using conventional bombs does not eradicate the country.
+ Show Spoiler +According to this, the MOAB - the most powerful conventional bomb the US has (you have 15 total), would destroy maybe 1-2 city blocks. this claims that while it can damage/flatten most structures in a 1000 feet radius, it does not come close to creating a 300 yard diameter crater. Now, if we assumed the MOAB was way more powerful than it is, and that it would literally destroy 1 square kilometer of terrain (it's not remotely close to this.), you'd need 650000 to 'destroy afghanistan'. You have 15. IF the MOAB actually created a 300 yard diameter crater (which it does not), the entire armament of them could actually destroy about 1 square kilometer of mountain. Obviously, you do have tons of other bombs. I looked at what purchases the US military made in 2020, and seems like you bought about 4000 'Small Diameter bomb I and II', and that you dropped 7432 munitions over Afghanistan in 2019. ( source) Now, one small diameter bomb has a blast radius of 26 feet. Takes quite a lot of those to destroy 650k square kilometers of terrain. During a 10 year period of the Vietnam War, the US dropped about 7.5 million tons of bombs on Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. Those three countries combined are slightly bigger than Afghanistan. Now, the bombing campaigns on these countries obviously inflicted massive, massive damage. But for how devastating the Vietnam War was, I'm reading that 'Higher estimates place the number of civilian deaths caused by American bombing of North Vietnam in Operation Rolling Thunder at 182,000.' That's 3 years of bombing, in a country full of forests and jungle, not mountains, killing 0.5% of the population. (Just to be clear I'm not really doing this investigation as part of a gotcha or whatever. I have the impression you actually know way more about me about most things related to like, physics and engineering and stuff like this, as it's not my field of expertise at all, so I became curious due to your confident assertions. But no. The statement about how easy it would be to 'depopulate Afghanistan' using conventional bombs, not nukes, is completely, completely wrong, by several orders of magnitude. I'm honestly guessing it'd take more than 1000 times as many bombs as the US has and more than 1000 times as long time as you stated.)
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Hollywood vastly overstates the effectiveness of surface explosives against geography. I'm no mining engineer, but my country's entire economy is built on blowing up hills in the middle of nowhere. If we could do it by randomly chucking explosives out of planes, believe me, we would be on that.
Mining detonations are meticulously planned, drilled into the site at precise locations, come with giant machinery and huge infrastructure projects to get the machinery there, plus years of modelling and survey work. It takes a decade of prep to establish a mine in one small hill in an otherwise flat, empty and peaceful area. The idea that we can just drop a bunch of bombs on a mountain range the size of Texas to get the terrorists and the REEs at the same time is... I mean... all of us are here to talk about topics that we are not experts in but holy shit lol.
Mohdoo, I like you, but you are not thinking straight on this topic.
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Well using ugly nukes would work. You don't kill them with the explosion, you irradiate them. It is a much worse idea then losing a war that doesn't matter to the US though.
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On August 15 2021 06:03 Liquid`Drone wrote:I'm not disputing that it's possible to use explosives to explode mountains. But Afghanistan is about the size of Texas, most of it mountains. 5 days of carpet bombing using conventional bombs does not eradicate the country. + Show Spoiler +According to this, the MOAB - the most powerful conventional bomb the US has (you have 15 total), would destroy maybe 1-2 city blocks. this claims that while it can damage/flatten most structures in a 1000 feet radius, it does not come close to creating a 300 yard diameter crater. Now, if we assumed the MOAB was way more powerful than it is, and that it would literally destroy 1 square kilometer of terrain (it's not remotely close to this.), you'd need 650000 to 'destroy afghanistan'. You have 15. IF the MOAB actually created a 300 yard diameter crater (which it does not), the entire armament of them could actually destroy about 1 square kilometer of mountain. Obviously, you do have tons of other bombs. I looked at what purchases the US military made in 2020, and seems like you bought about 4000 'Small Diameter bomb I and II', and that you dropped 7432 munitions over Afghanistan in 2019. ( source) Now, one small diameter bomb has a blast radius of 26 feet. Takes quite a lot of those to destroy 650k square kilometers of terrain. During a 10 year period of the Vietnam War, the US dropped about 7.5 million tons of bombs on Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. Those three countries combined are slightly bigger than Afghanistan. Now, the bombing campaigns on these countries obviously inflicted massive, massive damage. But for how devastating the Vietnam War was, I'm reading that 'Higher estimates place the number of civilian deaths caused by American bombing of North Vietnam in Operation Rolling Thunder at 182,000.' That's 3 years of bombing, in a country full of forests and jungle, not mountains, killing 0.5% of the population. (Just to be clear I'm not really doing this investigation as part of a gotcha or whatever. I have the impression you actually know way more about me about most things related to like, physics and engineering and stuff like this, as it's not my field of expertise at all, so I became curious due to your confident assertions. But no. The statement about how easy it would be to 'depopulate Afghanistan' using conventional bombs, not nukes, is completely, completely wrong, by several orders of magnitude. I'm honestly guessing it'd take more than 1000 times as many bombs as the US has and more than 1000 times as long time as you stated.)
It doesn't eradicate the country but the US could easily just section off large parts of land for mining if they didn't mind ethnic cleansing. My point is that Afghanistan lacks the right to self determination because they lack the ability to defend their borders. Until they have borders they can defend, they'll constantly be an extraction source for one or more of the big 3. So the US pulling out just isn't a net positive for them. The Taliban already banned the covid vaccine, lmao.
People make the mistake of thinking Afghanistan has any good options. It doesn't. It is no different than the African countries that were ransacked my various empires throughout history. Until they can defend their own borders, they will always be perpetually victimized.
Edit: And just to be clear, I don't think this is ethical. I think this is a bad thing. I wish it were not like this. But this idea of needing to defend borders will likely continue to be a thing for the next 50 years.
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Mohdoo you seem to not be mentioning Pakistan...like anywhere in your commentary about Afghanistan, which means you seem to know nothing or close to about the actual situation. Throughout the conflict and before Pakistan has pursued a course of action known as strategic depth and as a result none of America's goals are achievable even if we glassed the country. Pakistan would not allow America to cordon off large parts for mining. Nor would they allow China to do so.
One of the big reasons our "experts" failed so mightily in Afghanistan is they think like you about "big 3" powers and ignored that Pakistan is a local power with its own plans for the area and without open war with them you can't get around that (a classic failure mode of our State department is they think other people will get on board with their ideas for money or some other small thing, or they think hostile powers like Pakistan or Iran are actually just future allies if they press the right button or two).
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On August 15 2021 12:42 cLutZ wrote:
Mohdoo you seem to not be mentioning Pakistan...like anywhere in your commentary about Afghanistan, which means you seem to know nothing or close to about the actual situation. Throughout the conflict and before Pakistan has pursued a course of action known as strategic depth and as a result none of America's goals are achievable even if we glassed the country. Pakistan would not allow America to cordon off large parts for mining. Nor would they allow China to do so.
One of the big reasons our "experts" failed so mightily in Afghanistan is they think like you about "big 3" powers and ignored that Pakistan is a local power with its own plans for the area and without open war with them you can't get around that (a classic failure mode of our State department is they think other people will get on board with their ideas for money or some other small thing, or they think hostile powers like Pakistan or Iran are actually just future allies if they press the right button or two).
I’m definitely very ignorant and appreciate any information! Can you elaborate why we can’t ever hope to win over Pakistan? I think China’s plan is to win over Pakistan and win the region through Pakistan.
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On August 15 2021 13:14 Mohdoo wrote:
I’m definitely very ignorant and appreciate any information! Can you elaborate why we can’t ever hope to win over Pakistan? I think China’s plan is to win over Pakistan and win the region through Pakistan.
We can't win over Pakistan without abandoning India, which is our ally in the global game with China. Pakistan and India used to be one country, and are now mortal enemies over what essentially was an ethnic cleansing (which sort of has continued with Modi). A change in this situation would probably be worse, akin to WW1/WW2 where the classic German-British alliance was abandoned resulting in a situation where the balance was thrown off (the classic alliance was anti-French/Russian).
And that is merely geopolitical pragmatism. When it comes to worldview it is just as bad when you compare the Pakistani leadership to ours. We have leaders in State (capital S) that see a fundamentally different vision from what their people see as a functional state. They see us as a place that is coasting off of previous success and will soon fail due to decadence and tolerance, while our government thinks tolerance is a virtue.
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If China was desperate for rare earth minerals, they'd put pressure on the Kim next door instead of getting into the graveyard of empires. And, ironically, the fastest path to liberalization of any country is also the easiest one -- it's economic investment and cooperation, not bombing and sanctions. Look at the history of 20th century, see what happened to every single brutal despotic regime that for strategic reasons was cooperated with and started to participate in the globalized economy vs the outcomes of the regimes that are pressured or invaded.
If China is going to come into Taliban-controlled Afghanistan without trying to feed them freedom fries and simply starts putting money and technological expertise into the country, it'll take one generation, tops, until the extremist regime fizzles out. It'll be a painful and unpleasant few decades under Taliban rule without a doubt, but it's not like it's going to be any worse than the clusterfuck that the countless Cold War-driven conflicts of the past century were; and they'll actually have a shot at giving their children a brighter future at last.
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On August 15 2021 06:03 Liquid`Drone wrote:I'm not disputing that it's possible to use explosives to explode mountains. But Afghanistan is about the size of Texas, most of it mountains. 5 days of carpet bombing using conventional bombs does not eradicate the country. + Show Spoiler +According to this, the MOAB - the most powerful conventional bomb the US has (you have 15 total), would destroy maybe 1-2 city blocks. this claims that while it can damage/flatten most structures in a 1000 feet radius, it does not come close to creating a 300 yard diameter crater. Now, if we assumed the MOAB was way more powerful than it is, and that it would literally destroy 1 square kilometer of terrain (it's not remotely close to this.), you'd need 650000 to 'destroy afghanistan'. You have 15. IF the MOAB actually created a 300 yard diameter crater (which it does not), the entire armament of them could actually destroy about 1 square kilometer of mountain. Obviously, you do have tons of other bombs. I looked at what purchases the US military made in 2020, and seems like you bought about 4000 'Small Diameter bomb I and II', and that you dropped 7432 munitions over Afghanistan in 2019. ( source) Now, one small diameter bomb has a blast radius of 26 feet. Takes quite a lot of those to destroy 650k square kilometers of terrain. During a 10 year period of the Vietnam War, the US dropped about 7.5 million tons of bombs on Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. Those three countries combined are slightly bigger than Afghanistan. Now, the bombing campaigns on these countries obviously inflicted massive, massive damage. But for how devastating the Vietnam War was, I'm reading that 'Higher estimates place the number of civilian deaths caused by American bombing of North Vietnam in Operation Rolling Thunder at 182,000.' That's 3 years of bombing, in a country full of forests and jungle, not mountains, killing 0.5% of the population. (Just to be clear I'm not really doing this investigation as part of a gotcha or whatever. I have the impression you actually know way more about me about most things related to like, physics and engineering and stuff like this, as it's not my field of expertise at all, so I became curious due to your confident assertions. But no. The statement about how easy it would be to 'depopulate Afghanistan' using conventional bombs, not nukes, is completely, completely wrong, by several orders of magnitude. I'm honestly guessing it'd take more than 1000 times as many bombs as the US has and more than 1000 times as long time as you stated.)
Because of the Geneva convention we've lost a lot of people because we're not allowed to use flamethrowers. Go to a cave set it alight you win (ridiculously short version but that's how it is).
Don't need to blow up mountains per say.
One of the main reasons we'll never have a "fair" fight is because our side is restricted in its procedures and policies, the other side doesn't care nor abide by any of those laws. It's almost like bringing a knife to a gunfight when it comes to the mountains and caves.
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Norway28747 Posts
On August 14 2021 21:14 RvB wrote:Show nested quote +On August 14 2021 04:03 Liquid`Drone wrote:
While I can't really recall my source for this (other than that I considered it trustworthy), I remember reading that the US was very deliberately turning Afghanistan into a quagmire for the Soviets - wanting it to become 'their' Vietnam. Not just through training Mujahedeen to fight against the Soviets - but through - for several years - only giving them enough weapons and training to resist the Soviets, but without giving them enough weapons to repel them. In particular, they avoided supplying the Afghans with anti-air weaponry (stinger missiles), calculating that if they did, they would end up shooting down too costly helicopters too soon, which might make the Soviet Union withdraw before the war had been sufficiently costly for them. So, instead, they encouraged the war to further entrench itself for like 6 years before they finally ended up supplying the Stinger missiles - and after that, the Soviet Union withdrew rather quickly. (By cold war warfare-standards at least.)
Considering how brutal this war was for the Afghan people (not just the fault of the US - the Soviet Union did stuff like manufacture explosive dolls to specifically target children), I can't really blame Afghans, who learned that the US intentionally prolonged the war to make it more costly for the Soviet Union, for absolutely detesting the US.
The way the US won the cold war was through some absolutely abhorrent tactics, on multiple continents. I'm not claiming the Soviet Union was less abhorrent - but either way, those tactics built up a whole lot of very real and very warranted resentment towards the US. Any chance you can still find the source? As far as I know the US couldn't really deliver any more sophisticated weaponry since it had to go through Pakistan and they didn't want to be directly associated to the US at that time.
I can't find my original source, but looking at this page and this page, there's some corroborating talk of it.
+ Show Spoiler +
Notably, 'In March 1979, "CIA sent several covert action options relating to Afghanistan to the SCC [Special Coordination Committee]" of the United States National Security Council. At a 30 March meeting, U.S. Department of Defense representative Walter B. Slocombe "asked if there was value in keeping the Afghan insurgency going, 'sucking the Soviets into a Vietnamese quagmire?'"[4] When asked to clarify this remark, Slocombe explained: "Well, the whole idea was that if the Soviets decided to strike at this tar baby [Afghanistan] we had every interest in making sure that they got stuck." [12] But a 5 April memo from National Intelligence Officer Arnold Horelick warned: "Covert action would raise the costs to the Soviets and inflame Moslem opinion against them in many countries. The risk was that a substantial U.S. covert aid program could raise the stakes and induce the Soviets to intervene more directly and vigorously than otherwise intended."[4]'
Tbh, having read the pages, I now regard my initial post as 'partially incorrect' - I can't really justify the statement that they deliberately withheld Stingers. However, that the US deliberately turned Afghanistan into a Vietnam-style quagmire (which is obviously a complete disaster for the population and something that understandably creates resentment, and which is a more important point than why the Stingers took 4 years to show up), I think is backed up.
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On August 15 2021 16:20 Purressure wrote:Show nested quote +On August 15 2021 06:03 Liquid`Drone wrote:I'm not disputing that it's possible to use explosives to explode mountains. But Afghanistan is about the size of Texas, most of it mountains. 5 days of carpet bombing using conventional bombs does not eradicate the country. + Show Spoiler +According to this, the MOAB - the most powerful conventional bomb the US has (you have 15 total), would destroy maybe 1-2 city blocks. this claims that while it can damage/flatten most structures in a 1000 feet radius, it does not come close to creating a 300 yard diameter crater. Now, if we assumed the MOAB was way more powerful than it is, and that it would literally destroy 1 square kilometer of terrain (it's not remotely close to this.), you'd need 650000 to 'destroy afghanistan'. You have 15. IF the MOAB actually created a 300 yard diameter crater (which it does not), the entire armament of them could actually destroy about 1 square kilometer of mountain. Obviously, you do have tons of other bombs. I looked at what purchases the US military made in 2020, and seems like you bought about 4000 'Small Diameter bomb I and II', and that you dropped 7432 munitions over Afghanistan in 2019. ( source) Now, one small diameter bomb has a blast radius of 26 feet. Takes quite a lot of those to destroy 650k square kilometers of terrain. During a 10 year period of the Vietnam War, the US dropped about 7.5 million tons of bombs on Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. Those three countries combined are slightly bigger than Afghanistan. Now, the bombing campaigns on these countries obviously inflicted massive, massive damage. But for how devastating the Vietnam War was, I'm reading that 'Higher estimates place the number of civilian deaths caused by American bombing of North Vietnam in Operation Rolling Thunder at 182,000.' That's 3 years of bombing, in a country full of forests and jungle, not mountains, killing 0.5% of the population. (Just to be clear I'm not really doing this investigation as part of a gotcha or whatever. I have the impression you actually know way more about me about most things related to like, physics and engineering and stuff like this, as it's not my field of expertise at all, so I became curious due to your confident assertions. But no. The statement about how easy it would be to 'depopulate Afghanistan' using conventional bombs, not nukes, is completely, completely wrong, by several orders of magnitude. I'm honestly guessing it'd take more than 1000 times as many bombs as the US has and more than 1000 times as long time as you stated.) Because of the Geneva convention we've lost a lot of people because we're not allowed to use flamethrowers. Go to a cave set it alight you win (ridiculously short version but that's how it is). Don't need to blow up mountains per say. One of the main reasons we'll never have a "fair" fight is because our side is restricted in its procedures and policies, the other side doesn't care nor abide by any of those laws. It's almost like bringing a knife to a gunfight when it comes to the mountains and caves.
Are you seriously making the argument that America brought the knife to a gun fight in Afghanistan?
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Norway28747 Posts
On August 15 2021 16:20 Purressure wrote:Show nested quote +On August 15 2021 06:03 Liquid`Drone wrote:I'm not disputing that it's possible to use explosives to explode mountains. But Afghanistan is about the size of Texas, most of it mountains. 5 days of carpet bombing using conventional bombs does not eradicate the country. + Show Spoiler +According to this, the MOAB - the most powerful conventional bomb the US has (you have 15 total), would destroy maybe 1-2 city blocks. this claims that while it can damage/flatten most structures in a 1000 feet radius, it does not come close to creating a 300 yard diameter crater. Now, if we assumed the MOAB was way more powerful than it is, and that it would literally destroy 1 square kilometer of terrain (it's not remotely close to this.), you'd need 650000 to 'destroy afghanistan'. You have 15. IF the MOAB actually created a 300 yard diameter crater (which it does not), the entire armament of them could actually destroy about 1 square kilometer of mountain. Obviously, you do have tons of other bombs. I looked at what purchases the US military made in 2020, and seems like you bought about 4000 'Small Diameter bomb I and II', and that you dropped 7432 munitions over Afghanistan in 2019. ( source) Now, one small diameter bomb has a blast radius of 26 feet. Takes quite a lot of those to destroy 650k square kilometers of terrain. During a 10 year period of the Vietnam War, the US dropped about 7.5 million tons of bombs on Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. Those three countries combined are slightly bigger than Afghanistan. Now, the bombing campaigns on these countries obviously inflicted massive, massive damage. But for how devastating the Vietnam War was, I'm reading that 'Higher estimates place the number of civilian deaths caused by American bombing of North Vietnam in Operation Rolling Thunder at 182,000.' That's 3 years of bombing, in a country full of forests and jungle, not mountains, killing 0.5% of the population. (Just to be clear I'm not really doing this investigation as part of a gotcha or whatever. I have the impression you actually know way more about me about most things related to like, physics and engineering and stuff like this, as it's not my field of expertise at all, so I became curious due to your confident assertions. But no. The statement about how easy it would be to 'depopulate Afghanistan' using conventional bombs, not nukes, is completely, completely wrong, by several orders of magnitude. I'm honestly guessing it'd take more than 1000 times as many bombs as the US has and more than 1000 times as long time as you stated.) Because of the Geneva convention we've lost a lot of people because we're not allowed to use flamethrowers. Go to a cave set it alight you win (ridiculously short version but that's how it is). Don't need to blow up mountains per say. One of the main reasons we'll never have a "fair" fight is because our side is restricted in its procedures and policies, the other side doesn't care nor abide by any of those laws. It's almost like bringing a knife to a gunfight when it comes to the mountains and caves.
Can't really agree with this. I mean, sure, the US does to some degree adhere to the Geneva convention, but drone warfare and striking at weddings to kill terrorists, or pretty much any type of bombing raid, is not 'fair' fighting. While I sure as hell don't like the Taliban or any of the other terrorist groups the US has been fighting against, imo they are much more 'brave' than what the American army is, and they're not fighting any dirtier.
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On August 15 2021 17:01 Liquid`Drone wrote:Show nested quote +On August 15 2021 16:20 Purressure wrote:On August 15 2021 06:03 Liquid`Drone wrote:I'm not disputing that it's possible to use explosives to explode mountains. But Afghanistan is about the size of Texas, most of it mountains. 5 days of carpet bombing using conventional bombs does not eradicate the country. + Show Spoiler +According to this, the MOAB - the most powerful conventional bomb the US has (you have 15 total), would destroy maybe 1-2 city blocks. this claims that while it can damage/flatten most structures in a 1000 feet radius, it does not come close to creating a 300 yard diameter crater. Now, if we assumed the MOAB was way more powerful than it is, and that it would literally destroy 1 square kilometer of terrain (it's not remotely close to this.), you'd need 650000 to 'destroy afghanistan'. You have 15. IF the MOAB actually created a 300 yard diameter crater (which it does not), the entire armament of them could actually destroy about 1 square kilometer of mountain. Obviously, you do have tons of other bombs. I looked at what purchases the US military made in 2020, and seems like you bought about 4000 'Small Diameter bomb I and II', and that you dropped 7432 munitions over Afghanistan in 2019. ( source) Now, one small diameter bomb has a blast radius of 26 feet. Takes quite a lot of those to destroy 650k square kilometers of terrain. During a 10 year period of the Vietnam War, the US dropped about 7.5 million tons of bombs on Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. Those three countries combined are slightly bigger than Afghanistan. Now, the bombing campaigns on these countries obviously inflicted massive, massive damage. But for how devastating the Vietnam War was, I'm reading that 'Higher estimates place the number of civilian deaths caused by American bombing of North Vietnam in Operation Rolling Thunder at 182,000.' That's 3 years of bombing, in a country full of forests and jungle, not mountains, killing 0.5% of the population. (Just to be clear I'm not really doing this investigation as part of a gotcha or whatever. I have the impression you actually know way more about me about most things related to like, physics and engineering and stuff like this, as it's not my field of expertise at all, so I became curious due to your confident assertions. But no. The statement about how easy it would be to 'depopulate Afghanistan' using conventional bombs, not nukes, is completely, completely wrong, by several orders of magnitude. I'm honestly guessing it'd take more than 1000 times as many bombs as the US has and more than 1000 times as long time as you stated.) Because of the Geneva convention we've lost a lot of people because we're not allowed to use flamethrowers. Go to a cave set it alight you win (ridiculously short version but that's how it is). Don't need to blow up mountains per say. One of the main reasons we'll never have a "fair" fight is because our side is restricted in its procedures and policies, the other side doesn't care nor abide by any of those laws. It's almost like bringing a knife to a gunfight when it comes to the mountains and caves. Can't really agree with this. I mean, sure, the US does to some degree adhere to the Geneva convention, but drone warfare and striking at weddings to kill terrorists, or pretty much any type of bombing raid, is not 'fair' fighting. While I sure as hell don't like the Taliban or any of the other terrorist groups the US has been fighting against, imo they are much more 'brave' than what the American army is, and they're not fighting any dirtier.
Not fighting dirtier just shows your ignorance on the matter I'm afraid.
Forcing kids to blow themselves up for example is an entirely different story than airstrikes. Not to mention the amount of people they use as human shields or as forced collaborators. "Go kill the Americans or your family dies, say no and we kill one of your children so you'll say yes the 2nd time we ask you to do something". <- completely different level of dirty.
Collateral damage is a part of war, whether you like it or not that is the truth, an inescapable truth.
The amount of soldiers we have lost because of the rules we had to follow is a number nobody wants to know. Not being allowed to do x y or z and the next day being hit by IED's or being ambushed because we weren't allowed to do what we should've done happened wayyy too much. Same story with the caves, not being allowed to do x y or z just caused more casualties. It's the main reason why I find politics despicable. Left a foul taste that won't go away.
This didn't/doesn't just happen in Afghanistan btw, it happens everywhere where there's conflict. Not being allowed to go after an HVT and afterwards that person being the brains behind an attack that causes multiple casualties is almost an expectancy after a while.
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I would argue that the number of civilians your soldiers have killed due to lack of regulation on things like indiscriminate drone and air strikes is an orders of magnitude higher than the amount of casualties your side has taken in this war due to not being allowed to take flamethrowers for cave sweeping or something, but I guess you don't value those lives nearly as much as those of the brave heroes protecting the stripes and the stars so that doesn't bother you?
Invading a country and then talking about how 'collateral damage is part of war' while living in a country that has literally never in its history suffered any real 'collateral damage' is a lot more despicable than any politics. Not to mention that the said collateral damage (in this war, as well as prior ones) is literally the number one reason why your wars will never end. The number of Jihadist 'forced collaborators' is absolutely minuscule compared to the number of people who aren't just willing but eager to die to inflict any damage at all on the war machine that has razed their homes and killed their families.
It's like nobody in America has learned any lessons whatsoever from your 'peacekeeping' and 'war on terror.'
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EPT
