{"id":11181,"date":"2017-08-23T14:44:29","date_gmt":"2017-08-23T19:44:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=11181"},"modified":"2017-08-23T14:44:29","modified_gmt":"2017-08-23T19:44:29","slug":"the-impregnable-fortress-nation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2017\/08\/23\/the-impregnable-fortress-nation\/","title":{"rendered":"The Impregnable Fortress Nation"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>And it ain&#8217;t us. Greg Fallis <a href=\"https:\/\/gregfallis.com\/2017\/08\/22\/no-effect-at-all\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">elaborates<\/a> on the problem of Afghanistan:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Same shit, different invader.\u00a0In almost every invasion, the Afghan tribes have been outgunned, out-technologied, out-resourced, and often out-fought. But they\u2019ve never been out-waited. Never.<\/p>\n<p>Why? Because they\u2019re operating on a radically different understanding of time and place than the invaders. They <em>live<\/em> there. They know the invaders, regardless of who they are or where they\u2019re from, will eventually want to leave.\u00a0The simple fact is the Afghans don\u2019t need to\u00a0<em>win<\/em>; they only need to persist. If it takes a generation or two of low intensity guerrilla warfare until their enemies get fed up and find a reason to go home, they\u2019re okay with that. They\u2019ve done it before.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cAfghans will secure and build their own nation, and define their own future.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>That\u2019s from Trump\u2019s speech, and it\u2019s a classic case of stupidity fed by willful blindness. The Afghans <em>have<\/em> been securing and building their own nation for a couple thousand years. They\u00a0<em>are<\/em> defining their future. Right now that definition includes killing U.S. and NATO troops and booting us out of their country. There\u2019s yet another reality we need to accept.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>That&#8217;s the long view. But how does Greg tally up the Taliban? Were they purely an Afghan phenomenon? Or were they an incursion from Pakistan? I ask because, in my understanding, the Taliban more or less ran Afghanistan 1996-2001. And, yes, they no longer hold power &#8211; but only because of outside interference from the United States. And it fights on, hungering for power. Which is not to say the warlords who preceded them were any better.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>And it ain&#8217;t us. Greg Fallis elaborates on the problem of Afghanistan: Same shit, different invader.\u00a0In almost every invasion, the Afghan tribes have been outgunned, out-technologied, out-resourced, and often out-fought. But they\u2019ve never been out-waited. Never. Why? Because they\u2019re operating on a radically different understanding of time and place than \u2026 <a class=\"continue-reading-link\" href=\"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2017\/08\/23\/the-impregnable-fortress-nation\/\"> Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr; <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11181","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11181","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11181"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11181\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11182,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11181\/revisions\/11182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}