this post was submitted on 22 Oct 2024
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The US "won" the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan rather quickly and handily, but they lost the subsequent peace. Turns out that's the hard part.
Has anyone here read any persuasive articles or books explaining why Japan and Germany accepted and flourished under US occupation but Iraq and Afghanistan did not?
I’m not sure I agree with Afghanistan, they spend 20 years and billions of dollars and the second they left everything was undone and in fact worse than before.
Iraq was an illegal invasion based on lies, but I guess they did overwhelm the Iraqi government and army.
Afghanistan: the graveyard of empires
A great power can usually defeat it in the conventional military sense and take the cities, but no one can rule it long term. And many have tried. In that sense, Afghanistan is possibly the greatest blow to American exceptionalism ever.
The Chinese could probably do it using the totalitarian tactics they're using on the Uighers, including gradual replacement of the population with ethnic Han Chinese. But...yuck, hopefully that'll never happen.