Comment by somenameforme

In the Iran War, Iran's strategy is much more akin to to a resistance force than a normal military. Israel clearly didn't believe their decentralization would be viable, or they wouldn't have had the US assassinate their leaders - because now they have younger, much more hardline leaders, with a blood debt.

As for Afghanistan I think people don't realize how much fighting was still going on over there. The Taliban forces weren't just camping out in the mountains and defending, they were actively striking all US forces and US proxy forces. In total hundreds of thousands were killed. The Taliban killed thousands of US soldiers, wounded tens of thousands, had a significant minority of land under their undisputed control, were actively contesting control of much more of the country, and rapidly took control of the country once the US left. And yeah nation building was 100% on the menu. There was a friggin George Floyd mural in Kabul lol. But the US was never able to get the country under control, and things were trending worse more than better.

Iraq was much easier for one simple reason - it's a heavily divided country which Saddam (who was himself part of a minority Sunni population) was able to stabilize only with an iron fist. This made much of the country hate him. He was also extremely paranoid, probably in part because of this, and didn't trust his own armed forces which led to direct efforts to limit their power/capabilities, installing commanders based on loyalty over competence, and so on. So it was pretty much an ideal target for a decapitation strike. But even in that ideal scenario we were left waving a victory from flag within tiny little heavily fortified green zones, because stepping outside of them was highly dangerous.

And I don't think Israel is showing anything productive at all. Hamas has comparable numbers today as when the war started, Israel's leader has a warrant for his arrest for genocide, and the future of Israel is probably more uncertain than it's ever been in its entire existence because they've isolated themselves from basically everybody except Trump who will be gone in a couple of years.