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energy123today at 2:44 PM1 replyview on HN

Without factories? I doubt it. I'm not saying the US is going to win (in the sense of achieving objectives), but it's not going to be an attrition war like in WW2 or Ukraine. Japan had factories. Ukraine has factories. You can't sustain a modern war without factories.

Afghanistan wasn't an attrition war (where the outcome is a collapse of one side). The CENTCOM commander explains best why the US lost, it's because of sanctuary:

> The core of the Taliban’s command and control was in the mountainous town of Quetta in southern Pakistan, and the most violent branch of the movement, the Haqqanis, were safely ensconced farther north, also in Pakistan. All were off limits to our forces. Occasionally, Pakistan would apply some pressure, but it was never enough to reduce their ability to operate. I came to see this as the absolutely critical failure of all our plans, and I grew to believe that there weren’t enough U.S. forces in all the world to establish order in Afghanistan, so long as Pakistan was open to the Taliban. It was a logical error in our approach to counterinsurgency that could not be papered over or compensated for.


Replies

pjc50today at 3:57 PM

> You can't sustain a modern war without factories

No, but somehow Iranian backed Hamas and Hizbollah forces manage it from factoryless regions of Palestine and Lebanon. That's what I meant by "big Gaza": a region that's substantially damaged but still capable of fighting, where US/Israeli forces have to keep bombing militants in civilian areas forever. Every few weeks a new pile of dead kids for social media. Is that the plan for Iran?