From: Mike Lorrey (mlorrey@datamann.com)
Date: Sun Sep 16 2001 - 09:35:53 MDT
hal@finney.org wrote:
>
> I just hope that Americans are going into this with their eyes open.
> Afghanistan is not southern Iraq. It's not going to be a repeat of
> the Gulf War. The Afghans successfully fought off the Soviet army for
> many years. The mountain terrain makes it hard to use the tank columns
> that were so successful in Iraq. It promotes hit and run, guerilla
> style attacks. In ten minutes the attackers can be gone and you'll
> never find them. It looks to me like a ground battle in Afghanistan
> would have a lot more in common with Vietnam than Iraq.
Depends. The US military technology is far more advanced than that seen
by the Afghans with the Soviets. The soviet capabilities then is
essentially what we saw in Saddam Hussein's army in the Gulf.
While you are right about the terrain, this is no Vietnam: there is no
jungle to hide in, night vision technologies and other thermal systems
have no trouble picking out afghans and mules on a mountainside. I do
think that we will rush some new technologies through, especially
backtrack targeting systems that target a gun or missile launcher based
on munition trajectories it puts out.
I think instead this will be much like the allies taking northern Italy
in WWII: relatively higher than usual casualties, but with technological
superiority, an eventual win.
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