Willingness to fight and to absorb damage is the most important thing. The Yemenis lost leaders, civilians and port facilities. They just kept going until the US withdrew. Everyone except the Chinese walks careful around the US because they know it can do a lot of damage to them: more than they can do to it.
But as the Vietnamese, Taliban, and Ansar Allah proved, if you’re willing to accept lopsided exchange numbers you can win just by being a lot tougher than Americans are. They’ll eventually give up and go away.
This was, by the way, Bin Laden’s explicit policy. He wrote as much. Get the Americans to invade Afghanistan and do to them what the Afghans did to Russia. It didn’t work that great (slow bleed, since they didn’t have Superpower support like they did against Russia) but then Bush decided to attack Iraq and whether you consider the occupation a win or a loss, it was a clusterfuck.
Venezuela is trying to avoid armed conflict, in part, I suspect, because they aren’t a unified society. That means the cost for the US is almost zero.
Hezbollah had the same problem with Israel and the US and it cost them a great deal. It may cost them everything. Their problem is and was exacerbated by the sectarian nature of Lebanon. If they had gone all out against the Israelis they could have inflicted massive damage, but Israeli retaliation might well have led to a civil war as other factions blamed them. Additionally, much of the issue, as with Iran, appears to have simply been a constitutionally extremely cautious leadership. (Khameini’s refusal to get nuclear weapons, in particular, is political malpractice of the highest order.)
America can absolutely be beaten. In fact, the US war record since WWII is abysmal. Great at winning battles, but if the opponent is willing to take the hits, the US cannot stay the course.
There are damn good reasons for trying to placate the US. The amount of damage they can do is insane.
But Trump is, even more than any other American President of my lifetime, a classic bully. If you back down to him, he takes that as a sign of weakness and that he can get more. He will keep pushing and taking till he has everything, or until you fight back and hurt him, even if it’s only just a little.
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Ian Welsh
The Israeli military’s weakest arm is its ground forces, which are absolute crap. That’s why I thought that Hezbollah would get Iraqi militias as backup and ground attack while the Israeli army was fighting Hamas and out of position early in the war. I still think it would have been the right move. But Hezbollah was obsessed with gradual missile escalation and extraordinarily cautious.
There was no attempt, at any point, by anyone except Hamas on Oct 7, to take the initiative away from Israel. It’s also the mistake that Iran has made repeatedly, but so far they’ve been strong enough to get away with it.
israel learned from the last war with Hezbollah and took Hezbollah apart with Mossad and air power before moving in on the ground.
ibaien
@ ian
the north vietnamese won because they were staggeringly poor, unified behind a socialist movement, and had nothing the west genuinely wanted. the taliban won because they were staggeringly poor, unified behind an islamist movement, and had nothing the west genuinely wanted. the houthi won because they were staggeringly poor, unified behind an islamist movement, and had nothing the west genuinely wanted.
anyone will fight back if they’ve nothing to lose and feel stronger together. if it’s a fragile society, or a loose agglomeration of different interests, the americans will pick them apart. hence, VZ is doomed. and, one can look at the current metrics to see if any of those countries won anything worth more than chuck e cheese tickets (hint: VN a hypercapitalist factory state, AG a dystopian islamist quasi-narco state, YE an arid half-failed state being picked apart by regional neighbors)
mago
Hezbollah was undermined by divisions, caution and poor strategy as you mention.
The forgotten pager incident will be remembered by some players and become a guerrilla strategy that will be turned against the perpetrators.
Yeah, bullies with their bully ways will eventually find themselves on their knees , but it’s going to take cojones and pluck and perseverance from the underdogs.
Cheering from the sidelines for what it’s worth.
Bukko Boomeranger
I sympathise with Hezbollah because they weren’t willing to keep slugging it out with a psychotic nation (nazIsrael) that would send planes to blow up entire apartment buildings full of innocent people in order to show how savage they are. As you said, the non-Shiite sectors of Lebanon would have blamed continued killings on the Hezbs, not the Hebes. The Sunnis/Maronites/etc couldn’t get the Zios in their gunsights, but they COULD aim at the ‘zbollahs. If you’re not an insane person who’s willing to accept mass death, it’s hard to combat sickos who ARE. The question is, how much atrocity will it take to push the NON-sickos into the “screw it — we’ll kill as many of you as we can because we know you’re going to kill all of us anyway” camp? Warsaw Ghetto 1944 logic is going to have to come to the 21st Century to defeat the Zionazis.
Jan Wiklund
As Ho Chi Minh said to the French: We will kill one of you, and you will kill ten of us. But in the end it will be you who tire first.
Steve Ruis
Re ‘This was, by the way, Bin Laden’s explicit policy. He wrote as much. Get the Americans to invade Afghanistan and do to them what the Afghans did to Russia.”
Bin Laden also expected the US to spend vast amounts of material and capital waging the conflict and to “bankrupt” itself. (You can check that box, too.)
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As Ho Chi Minh said to the French: We will kill one of you, and you will kill ten of us. But in the end it will be you who tire first.
Such a waste. In the end, America may not have won, it didn’t lose either fyi, but Capitalism and Consumerism sure did win.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-07-11/watch-vietnam-transition-from-communism-to-capitalism
This is the result time and time again. It’s better to just say uncle. Think of all the lives it saves. Delcy agrees.
Ian Welsh
https://www.ianwelsh.net/osama-bin-laden-the-first-great-man-of-the-21st-century/
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If bin Laden didn’t exist, the Military Industrial Complex would have invented him and al Qaeda. Maybe they did. He and al Qaeda were great for the MIC. The military budget burgeoned and so too did the profits of the industries servicing the military. It was a feeding frenzy. They’re not bankrupt. They’re flyin’ high. Higher than ever. Call it a loss if it makes you feel better, but it doesn’t make it a fact. It’s a win when you change your perspective.
ibaien
@ ian
bin laden’s triumph led to a shattered syria, a lebanon one push away from being an israeli client state, palestine in open genocide, the gulf states and KSA all crypto-addicted hypercapitalist shitholes (don’t worry, they figured out how to dodge all the muslim admonishments against that stuff and they got to keep all the russian whores)…oh, and his shia foes in iran don’t have the balls to do anything more than fruitlessly lob missiles now and again while they’re not busy beating women for rejecting the hijab. definitely a great man of history.
Chris
The other reason the US can and will be defeated is that, over the long haul, neither American officers nor enlisted men will fight in a war as unjust as this one is, and which would perceive it to be. I base this on very recent conversation with a career reserve office who just decided to retire after 28 years, rather than continue to try to serve honorably with this dishonorable Trump and Miller.
ibaien
@ chris
ha ha ha ha ha ha the idea that .mil america (the common clay of the new west) are suddenly going to grow a backbone and what?…all go to the brig or retire with a pension stripped away by hegseth and so die destitute but pure? c’mon. sometimes i wonder if anyone on these blogs has ever met a member of the security state
different clue
@Like and Subscribe,
“Great” does not have to mean “good”. It just has to mean “enduringly consequential”.
Anyway, Canadian blogger Jeff Wells used to run a blog called Rigorous Intuition, then Rigorous Intuition 2.0. He gave up blogging but he has been kind enough to leave the blog up where all can see.
He wrote a post about who-what was behind supporting, green-lighting, etc. the Bin Laden Al Qaeda group, called ” The Coincidence Theorist’s Guide to 9/11 “.
It in one of a whole series of posts under the 9/11 topic-category of posts.
https://rigorousintuition.blogspot.com/2004/08/coincidence-theorists-guide-to-911.html
Altandmain
This may be worth talking about in a separation post, but one thing that is worth considering is if Trump is serious about making Canada the 51st state.
If that’s the case, Canadians need to think very seriously about this issue. He certainly has been serious about taking over Venezuela and is clearly trying to annex Greenland.