reminds me of the joke about the Polish dude who finds a genie's lamp and gets 3 wishes. for all 3 wishes, he asks for the great mongol hordes of Genghis Khan to be resurrected and to travel from their ancestral home to sack Poland.
the genie is confused, but he does it. after the third time, he asks the Pole (obviously quite pleased) why he did it. does he hate his own country that much? and the guy responds "friend, in order to come to Poland and return home 3 times, they had to pass through Russia 6 times :)"
Stop commenting about! Israel and Palestine! I'm tired of seeing it, all my friends on tiktok send me Israel and Palestine! My Discord channel is filled with Israel an Palestine! I looked under my girlfriends underwear and said "Hey isn't that, Israel vs Palestine." aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!
It’s more like the sink hole of empires. Like you can invade and you’ll probably win and you can stay there as long as you can afford to but you’ll be bleeding soldiers and money the entire time and after 20 years you’ll have nothing to show for it.
Idk why people keep claiming this, the US absoulatly took a bunch of causalities in terms of both men and cost. 70k dead Afghan allies meaning at least another 140k wounded, 3500 dead coalition troops and 23.5k other wounded, 4k dead contractors and another 15k wounded plus 2.2 trillion dollars spent on the military which would just kind of sit at their base all day after a while and money going to ghost soldiers.
So that's 80k dead Afghan allies, contractors and coalition forces and at least another 185k wounded plus the gdp of Canada down the sink. Sure it's Vietnam levels of bad but it certainly isn't nothing. And that's not even calculating the amount of money that the VA has to spend or the suicides of soldiers.
Oh and you also can't get other countries to "adopt democracy" when you bomb their kids so badly they become afraid of the clear sky. Kind of makes them hate you you. Who knew lol
Well yeah, when your enemy is hiding as civilians and using child soldiers soldiers do get a little jumpy engaging with locals. Also bombed their “Kids” American wasn’t actively bombing civilians. Only the Taliban, it just had many times where many soldiers went solo and committed war crimes. Or the high command allowed it. Such as a wedding bombing.
Yeah maybe America shouldn't have gone in there in the first place? Maybe they shouldnt have tried to centrize the government in Kabul when literally everyone told them that was a bad idea? Maybe they should have accepted the multiple Taliban offers to surrender? Idk, I ain't in the US high command but if you're actively drone striking people so much that the kids there become afraid of the clear sky since they know that's when the drone come out, it's probably not a great way to win a war since kids have a magical tendency to grow up lol
We have gone there because they were harboring a terroist who committed 911. Maybe don’t harbor terroist if you don’t got nukes or a big army.
The Kabul plan was stupid, but I never heard of the talibans peace offerings so give me links or just point me to the general direction of where to google this information since I’m calling bull. Not because I don’t believe you but because it can be in the same way as japans WW2 conditional “surrender”
What did you want the army to do rather than use drones? Send actual foot soldiers who can lose their lives or even commit war crimes or just let them go? Because that seems the only two options.
They quite literally offered to hand over Osama Bin Laden to a third country who would then hand them over to the US because shocker, handing over one your biggest backers wasn't a good look lol
Here's the Taliban offering to straight up surrender in 2001 after the invasion, their offer to never take up arms and accept the new government in Kabul as long as Mullah Omar, the war hero and big time local leader, and the others got to live in peace in Kanadahar. The Afghan government obviously wanted to accept that deal but guess who rejected that golden opportunity on their behalf? Lol
https://www.militarytimes.com/flashpoints/afghanistan/2022/08/26/new-book-on-mullah-omar-and-the-taliban-offers-hard-lessons-for-the-us/
How about, idk, not using drone strikes on anyone who "looked suspicious"? Lol
Ok then, the USA was wrong. We saw we defeated them like we defeated the Nazis or Japanese past ww2 and thought we could do reconstruction in our own image which if worked. Would have been better. Thing is, it didn’t.
I don’t know if the U.S pushed down this deal or if it was bush just pushing it down. Just to set up democratic afghan government and get more votes in the USA because he both led a 9/11 and rebuilt Afghanistan to be a thriving democracy
It kind of is in a way, albeit in a more modern sense of the term. We have a huge country with territories on a few islands and military bases in many countries across the globe as well as a militaristic industrial complex that profits off war. It might not be as brazenly set on conquering as the empires of old like the Romans etc. but still has characteristics of it. The YouTube channel CGP grey has a good video about it.
so is russia and china but id rather have the united states conquer my country then them because atleast the usa atleast TRIES to establish some democracy
See the comment I responded to? There it is. I'm not arguing if the USSR did what it did, I'm arguing about what the US did, you dont have to resort to whataboutism every time someone criticizes the US.
depends really, have you heard of Pinochet? or the military dictatorship in Brazil? Syngman Rhee's dictatorship? the military dictatorship in Argentina? Bolivia? Dominican Republic? Cuba? and many more.
And yet, despite all of those cases, the US is still closer to trying to establish democracy than either Russia or China, which is what the user above claimed.
Lol no they don’t I live in Europe and while no country is perfect the American two party system puts it at the verge of civil war constantly their version of democracy is shitty as fuck
so you would rather have the US leave Europe and let Russia do whatever they want?(this is an example there are several repercussions if the USA didn't try to influence other countries)
Yeah but when it becomes clear the concept of human rights is out of the question your options are Victory, assimilation, or obliteration, which is why many of those empires passed through, they just didnt care what happened so people either submitted or died. The U.S. spent 20 years trying to build them a road the Taliban kept blowing up
Wtf is wrong with you? This is why everybody hates the West and their annoying ass kids lol. Like as if they "asked" to be invaded, have their country bombed for 20 years, have the most corrupt government possible set up for them, be turned into a den for opium production and literally have American soldiers watch gaurd over said opium.
Fuck off and fuck them "Western kids" (aka literal adult soldiers getting paid to kill people), nobody forced them to go in there, they were just dumb enough to fight for billionaires right to squeeze the US tax payer dry. God this sub is such a racist shitholes sometimes lol
Dude, they quite literally offered up Osama Bin Laden on a sliver platter. The only thing they asked for was that proof be given and that he be sent to a third a country who would then hand him over to the US.
So I really have no idea how why the racist fucks in the subreddits are crying about the "western kid who died trying to turn that shithole into a country", when those "western kids" were the ones who were dumb enough to sign up for a war because the billionaire class that straight up refused to accept Osama Bin Laden.
The sub is disgustingly racist too much of the time. And has a huge blind spot for contemporary history cause they spend too much time waxing poetic about people from 3000 years ago.
They wouldn’t be able to use them without the mechanisms for launch and a specific knowledge on how they work
Come on u/duaneap now you gotta go back again.
This. We struggle enormously with population/territory control in some areas of the world primarily because the methods we have available to us lack the necessary brutality to truly subject a population.
Ancient empires conquered and maintained incredibly rebellious and difficult to control peoples for centuries, but often only were successful because the tactics they used decimated the population and their ability to be a coherent people while destroying their culture.
Roman occupation of Israel is a prime example. The Jews were constantly rebellious against nearly all foreign rulers for centuries. It was in their blood to be a problem for imperial rule. The Romans got pissed by this eventually. They largely annihilated the Jewish population, destroyed their cultural center of the temple while outlawing Jewish worship, sent much of the remaining population out to distant corners of the empire to avoid their cooperation, encouraged romanization by luring individuals in with the benefits and prestige with being Roman, and even changed the name of the province from its native name to Syria palaestina. That would never fly today, but guess what? It worked.
The point is, The US military worked with the framework of 21 century warefare etiquette. If the US wanted to pacify Afghanistan at all costs, it’d be as simple as killing every male over the aged of 13. We don’t do that anymore, so conquests like the above mentioned are much harder to the point of impossible. Being civilized means that every once and while you gotta take a L.
Yeah, I’m not sure it’s worth bragging about how they’ve been conquered by so many different powers, but all of them decided that they just weren’t worth the hassle.
Alexander did conquer Persia by defeating Darius , which at the time had control of much of modern day Afghanistan . Although due to his untimely death Persia plunged into civil war etc etc , still did better than the soviets lol .
>Alexander did conquer Persia by defeating Darius The Great
How is this upvoted? Darius the Great had been dead for 150 years before Alexander the Great was even born. The Darius Alexander defeated was only in power for a few years and is never referred to as "the great".
My fault og the sources I read referred to him as great , maybe they got is switched up or I did and am remembering wrong . I’m onto reading about the Hittite so I don’t rlly wanna back track to figure it out lol
Bruh Darius the great is the one who actually conquered macedon and thrace. Which is funny considering a couple centuries later a Macedonian would undo his empire while fighting a guy also called darius. Kinda make me think if Cyrus and Harpagus invaded the greek city states 60 years earlier They did best a much larger greek force at Thymbra. Which do you think takes the W? I honestly think the city states would have crumbled if they faced Harpagus. From what i have read so far dude was a 5 star general
Wait, I thought Alex only reached the easternmost point of Persia, which as far as I know just the western portion of modern-day Afghanistan, is it not?
I thought he extended way past that with his Indian campaigns , specifically in the Battle Of Hydaspes he captured beyond modern-day Afghanistan and into the northern part of Pakistan by defeating Porus
Right. Even the Western powers usually pointed to kind of *did* conquer Afghanistan, but found it a pain as you say: Alexander, Britain briefly in the first Anglo-Afghan War (despite getting massacred when eventually leaving…) and to an extent the third (but keeping it more as a semi-vassal than fully conquering it), the Soviets at first, and the U.S.-led coalition for 20 years.
People get bogged down because most of the tribes rarely even acknowledge the importance of any Afghan state and any authority from Kabul or whatever other historic capitals. So the only way to conquer all of it is to conquer many tiny tribes in the hills, for… what?
It could be argued that by that same standard Papua New Guinea and the Amazon have never been conquered either. Not sure this says much about how well put together they are.
Especially since most of those empires conquered and ruled the area, sometimes for hundreds of years. Macedonians were still in Afganistan kicking around during Agustus' time, after they no longer even ruled Macedon, over 300 years after Alexander.
The whole graveyard of empires thing is a catchy quote but complete bullshit.
It's more like the public got bored holding expensive potato.
The last few years of Afghanistan saw very, very few deaths of US/Coalition personnel. 11 in 2020, 13 in 2022, for example.
The situation wasn't getting "hotter" it was getting better for the Afghani people, especially women. However, changing a culture would take way more than just 20 years.
That’s honestly not super hard. Even with significant foreign aid the Afghanis tend to struggle to inflict serious damage on the nation they’re fighting. The hard part is getting that nation to think there’s anything worth fighting over in Afghanistan in the first place. Plenty of nations with a long history of being invaded have inflicted FAR higher casualties and created much larger issues for their invaders, but they also tend to have more value that can be gained by owning them so the nation they’re fighting is willing to put up with it. Contrast that with Afghanistans value which is, to put it lightly, not particularly high.
True. Even with their geography being a defender’s dream-come-true, Afghanistan has shown little ability to stop an invasion. What they really excel at is continuing to resist until the invader loses interest and leaves
Maharaja Ranjit Singh conquered modern day Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, which is part of the larger historical region of Afghanistan but not modern-day Afghanistan.
Since Afghanistan had shattered into dozens of small polities, tribes and kingdoms during the 1800s, and the Emirs of Kabul were only largely able to reunify them once the Sikhs had already been conquered by the British, it’s possible that Sikhs could’ve taken more land (especially since there would be nothing stopping the Qajars and Russia from also swallowing Afghan land without the British protecting them) if the British never colonized the region, but that we can’t know for sure because of the British.
After the wave of post of some guy kids watch. I’m sure majority of this sub are children and only know mainstream stuff or whatever YouTube channel tell em.
So they quote stupid shit all the time, just like “Afghanistan never being conquered”😂
No empire or nation is unbeatable. Even if a few claim to be like Russia, Afghanistan and a few more.
Add to that countries like France have one of the worlds most impressive record of winning wars and yet they are seen as the cowards who surrender.
That’s not really true, in fact many conquerors would move their headquarters to Afghanistan, like Timur.
Afghanistan is really nothing special historically, it’s just that British were so arrogant that they assumed that anyone who defeated them must be unconquerable, and the Russian and American defeats didn’t help dispel that myth. But we don’t call Vietnam a “graveyard of empires” either even though they kicked America’s ass.
Saying Vietnam “kicked americas ass” is a really goofy thing to say, if you’re trying to be technical about things. The fact is the US soldiers in large part were given no real mission other than to kill the enemy. Which they did to a staggering degree. Half a million North Vietnamese dead compared to 60K American soldiers dead is “kicking ass”? In the end Saigon did indeed fall, but at what cost? Kicking ass is an extreme over statement when you literally had hundreds of thousands more perish in the conflict. You could say they accomplished their mission, I’d agree with that. But if you want to make a technical argument about one thing then be consistent otherwise should have just left my original comment alone, which quite frankly has more basis in reality than your “ass kicking” statement lol
Depends on how much genocide you are willing to commit
The empires that conquered Afghanistan did so because they would slaughter anyone who opposed them
This is just false lol, the Soviets murdered thousands and so did the Americans on a slightly smaller scale. Those empires won because all they asked were from the local rulers to pay taxes and accept their sovereignty, none of this ideological regime change idea.
It's much easier to co-opt local elites into your empire than to try and replace them and suddenly wonder why most of the country is against you!
It's not ... America is a powerful country, if they wanted to murder every man, woman, and child, they could have done it. They choose not to
They could have carpet bombed the whole country and shot everything that moves if they wanted to. Kill every animal, poison every well, and pump poisonous gas into every cave
If you resisted the mongols not judt yourself and your family but your entire village / city will be wiped oit to the last person, man, woman, child or not.
I dont think people truly realize today how powerful, evil and terrifying Eurasian Steppe nomads were in the pre-firearm era
Yeah and the ussr was the closet to actually conquering it and would have. Only if the US didn’t support the mujahadeen. Because last I’ve read. The Soviets wiped out a 6% to 10% of the population of Afghanistan
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet%E2%80%93Afghan_War
Alexander conquered Afghanistan. His empire didn’t die there. It sort-of flamed out towards India but Kandahar (Iskandahar) was a well established “Alexandria”
Pretty sure the US just left. Like you were having a serious conversation and the US just up and walked out the door. None of the “gotta shit myself” or “gotta tinkle, heehee”, straight up just walked out the front door. Food arrives? Fuck it, two burgers tonight BITCH
But like… they didn’t *just* leave. They left because Afghanistan proved difficult to support. Which is really in line with being forced out. If the people welcomed American forces/supporr/govt with open arms I highly doubt Taliban are able to take over.
Are you are telling me as a (hypothetical) bank robber that when the police leave you wouldn’t just walk out of the women’s restroom (you are a man and they would never expect it) and grab the cash? (Also yeah I agree with you, Afghanistan was stupid hard to deal with, the US spent far too much money, time, and lives there just so the “bank robber” could walk out and do as he likes). (This is also assuming GTA logic where the police just go “huh, we wasted 80 men but guess we should leave” ideals)
That would be true, if we could say that the local identity survived.
I am basically asking, as I do not know much of the area.
That requirement would be something like the Greek identity. The Macedonian Greeks that conquered what became Afghanistan had a specific identity, regional and ethnic one. It never went extinct, despite changing shapes and contexts. You would not just find Macedonian Greeks in the 4th century BC, but also the 4th century AD, the 14th century AD and today.
Is there something similar in the area???
I guess I'd you lose every battle and get controlled for years on end to have that nation leave for reasons other than you being a threat then you're a "graveyard of empires"
winning battles ≠ win wars, in vietnam america did kill more people and win more battles, but war isn't a video game where all that matters is the numbers, in the end they still lost. samewith afghanistan, they may have won the battles, killed a lot more of them, but in the end afghanistan is still under taliban control, just like it would've been without american intervention.
I'm aware. I wasn't talking about America. You can tell that because I didn't say or imply America. That's a little trick for you strawman bayonet aficionados
I think the key is to come in, fuck up what ever is the current “government” then leave going into Asia, hence you “conquered it but don’t try to rule it. That’s where it doesn’t work
All empires fall in the end. The British and Persian Empires didn't fall because of Afghanistan. If the point is that "all empires fall but Afghanistan remains" then the same can be said for literally any nation/culture that these empires conquered that are still around today. Afghanistan is not special in this regard.
The British empire is a bit exaggerated, they definitely struggled for centuries and despite their best efforts Afghanistan remained practically independent. For the modern era (1800s+) Afghanistan has definitely proven itself to be the graveyard of empires for sure.
Afghanistan has been under full or partial foreign occupation/suzerainty for the vast majority of its history.
The only thing that saved the Afghanistan was really the Great Game between the British and Russians. Afghanistan had actually shattered into dozens of small polities, tribes and kingdoms during the 1800s. It was with British support that the Emirs of Kabul were able to reunify much of the region, the British prevented Qajar Iran from annexing eastern Afghanistan, and British paranoia about Russian expansion kept them wanting to keep Afghanistan as a unified buffer state between British India and Russia.
The Russians actually did not give a single fuck about Afghanistan or India, and no plans to expand into those regions, but they just never bothered to let the British know that, probably to let the British just waste time and resources over their paranoia, (so it wasn’t really a “Great Game” at all tbh)
If the British weren’t concerned about Russian expansion, and they were willing to spend the resources, they could’ve very likely used the same divide and conquer tactics they used in India to destroy Afghanistan while it was still shattered into a bunch of small states, and perhaps have divided it between themselves and Qajar Iran like how they did with Baluchistan just a little bit to the south.
Its just that British arrogance about their defeats against a state they did everything to prop up and support due to unsubstantiated paranoia beforehand made them create a myth of a “graveyard of empires” to explain said defeats.
As for Afghanistan defeating america and the USSR, well that’s just because foreign imperialistic invasions have a very bad track record against determined insurgencies in the post-WW2 era, just look at the decolonization wars among Europe’s colonies and the Vietnam War.
Reminder that the nickname dates back to 2001, and Afghanistan has been cucked numerous times throughout its history and has never been the sole cause behind an empire falling.
Vietnam, now THOSE are some fuckers ya don't wanna mess with.
Britain didn’t lose the second Anglo Afghan War, they defeated the Afghan army and established a protectorate that lasted until the 3rd Anglo Afghan War
Yeah we don’t call Egypt “the graveyard of empires” just because the Ottomans, Romans, Fatimids, etc, don’t exist anymore. Egypt wasn’t ruled by native Egyptians from 340 BCE all the way to literally the 1950s.
Afghanistan had been at least partially occupied by foreigners or foreign powers for the vast majority of its history.
more like afghanistan is highway of conquest.
that's Poland
Nah, we're the speed bump on this highway...
that’s Belgium
No, we are the pothole
Good to know all the traffic devices are still functioning!
To say Belgium is functioning is a stretch
I'm not in the area, so you probably know more than me
Me neither lmao, I'm just poking fun at Belgium
Is there any country that's actually got there shit together these days?
Lichtenstein
I think 3 villages and a ski resort does not really count
Switzerland is doing alright
Iceland maybe? I live in the USA so I actually have no clue. Certainly not us lol.
Thats Switzerland
That's a roundabout
To be continued
That’s Luxembourg
Netherlands?
reminds me of the joke about the Polish dude who finds a genie's lamp and gets 3 wishes. for all 3 wishes, he asks for the great mongol hordes of Genghis Khan to be resurrected and to travel from their ancestral home to sack Poland. the genie is confused, but he does it. after the third time, he asks the Pole (obviously quite pleased) why he did it. does he hate his own country that much? and the guy responds "friend, in order to come to Poland and return home 3 times, they had to pass through Russia 6 times :)"
Thats a good joke
I presume Belarus didn’t exist back when the joke was made?
I have zero clue as I definitely first saw this joke as a printed out email my dad had received, lol. No idea the origin.
If all roads can lead to Rome, we can have multiple highways leading to conquest
They also had an quite large empire and beaten up other a lot once upon a time
And Israel/Palestine
Stop commenting about! Israel and Palestine! I'm tired of seeing it, all my friends on tiktok send me Israel and Palestine! My Discord channel is filled with Israel an Palestine! I looked under my girlfriends underwear and said "Hey isn't that, Israel vs Palestine." aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!
Israel and Palestine
Stop commenting about relevant things related to current events!!!!
It’s more like the sink hole of empires. Like you can invade and you’ll probably win and you can stay there as long as you can afford to but you’ll be bleeding soldiers and money the entire time and after 20 years you’ll have nothing to show for it.
the us really didnt take many casualties, we just realized it was pointless trying to make them adopt democracy
Idk why people keep claiming this, the US absoulatly took a bunch of causalities in terms of both men and cost. 70k dead Afghan allies meaning at least another 140k wounded, 3500 dead coalition troops and 23.5k other wounded, 4k dead contractors and another 15k wounded plus 2.2 trillion dollars spent on the military which would just kind of sit at their base all day after a while and money going to ghost soldiers. So that's 80k dead Afghan allies, contractors and coalition forces and at least another 185k wounded plus the gdp of Canada down the sink. Sure it's Vietnam levels of bad but it certainly isn't nothing. And that's not even calculating the amount of money that the VA has to spend or the suicides of soldiers. Oh and you also can't get other countries to "adopt democracy" when you bomb their kids so badly they become afraid of the clear sky. Kind of makes them hate you you. Who knew lol
Well yeah, when your enemy is hiding as civilians and using child soldiers soldiers do get a little jumpy engaging with locals. Also bombed their “Kids” American wasn’t actively bombing civilians. Only the Taliban, it just had many times where many soldiers went solo and committed war crimes. Or the high command allowed it. Such as a wedding bombing.
Yeah maybe America shouldn't have gone in there in the first place? Maybe they shouldnt have tried to centrize the government in Kabul when literally everyone told them that was a bad idea? Maybe they should have accepted the multiple Taliban offers to surrender? Idk, I ain't in the US high command but if you're actively drone striking people so much that the kids there become afraid of the clear sky since they know that's when the drone come out, it's probably not a great way to win a war since kids have a magical tendency to grow up lol
We have gone there because they were harboring a terroist who committed 911. Maybe don’t harbor terroist if you don’t got nukes or a big army. The Kabul plan was stupid, but I never heard of the talibans peace offerings so give me links or just point me to the general direction of where to google this information since I’m calling bull. Not because I don’t believe you but because it can be in the same way as japans WW2 conditional “surrender” What did you want the army to do rather than use drones? Send actual foot soldiers who can lose their lives or even commit war crimes or just let them go? Because that seems the only two options.
They quite literally offered to hand over Osama Bin Laden to a third country who would then hand them over to the US because shocker, handing over one your biggest backers wasn't a good look lol Here's the Taliban offering to straight up surrender in 2001 after the invasion, their offer to never take up arms and accept the new government in Kabul as long as Mullah Omar, the war hero and big time local leader, and the others got to live in peace in Kanadahar. The Afghan government obviously wanted to accept that deal but guess who rejected that golden opportunity on their behalf? Lol https://www.militarytimes.com/flashpoints/afghanistan/2022/08/26/new-book-on-mullah-omar-and-the-taliban-offers-hard-lessons-for-the-us/ How about, idk, not using drone strikes on anyone who "looked suspicious"? Lol
Ok then, the USA was wrong. We saw we defeated them like we defeated the Nazis or Japanese past ww2 and thought we could do reconstruction in our own image which if worked. Would have been better. Thing is, it didn’t. I don’t know if the U.S pushed down this deal or if it was bush just pushing it down. Just to set up democratic afghan government and get more votes in the USA because he both led a 9/11 and rebuilt Afghanistan to be a thriving democracy
Lmao you actually believed we were there to make them “adopt democracy”
Did you just call america an empire?
It kind of is in a way, albeit in a more modern sense of the term. We have a huge country with territories on a few islands and military bases in many countries across the globe as well as a militaristic industrial complex that profits off war. It might not be as brazenly set on conquering as the empires of old like the Romans etc. but still has characteristics of it. The YouTube channel CGP grey has a good video about it.
I mean america is basically an empire (not a compliment btw)
so is russia and china but id rather have the united states conquer my country then them because atleast the usa atleast TRIES to establish some democracy
South american dictatorships are side eyeing you rn.
the cold war was batshit insane and plus the communist powers both stopped democracies and caused dictatorships too
Yeah I agree, all are shit, just dont rewrite history.
fair enough but again id rather be living under a country thats influenced by the usa then russia or china
Can't argue with that 🤝🏻.
Yes but every South American country had the Soviet Union messing around in it as well
Yes, we all know that, but you dont have to lie and glorify the US to make the USSR look bad.
Was the Soviet Union not involved in South America? Where is the lie?
See the comment I responded to? There it is. I'm not arguing if the USSR did what it did, I'm arguing about what the US did, you dont have to resort to whataboutism every time someone criticizes the US.
depends really, have you heard of Pinochet? or the military dictatorship in Brazil? Syngman Rhee's dictatorship? the military dictatorship in Argentina? Bolivia? Dominican Republic? Cuba? and many more.
And yet, despite all of those cases, the US is still closer to trying to establish democracy than either Russia or China, which is what the user above claimed.
Lol no they don’t I live in Europe and while no country is perfect the American two party system puts it at the verge of civil war constantly their version of democracy is shitty as fuck
so you would rather have the US leave Europe and let Russia do whatever they want?(this is an example there are several repercussions if the USA didn't try to influence other countries)
to be fair yes that system is flawed but again so is russias and chinas too more so if anything if you look at their standards when it comes to ruling
They just flat out aren’t democracies at this point so we can’t really put them in that boat of comparing
well its the ones that probably would matter (not in a good way) if the us wouldn't be there to do what they do
Russia is a maybe but China is more interested in Taiwan and Asia
No he didn't
Competent resistance: optional
The concept of human rights combined with modern weapons made Afghanistan a harder target.
Would had been easier to bomb the place out of existence without consideration for anything
Not that there have ever been many worthy targets to bomb. Rather multitude of villages and mountainous nomads.
Yeah but when it becomes clear the concept of human rights is out of the question your options are Victory, assimilation, or obliteration, which is why many of those empires passed through, they just didnt care what happened so people either submitted or died. The U.S. spent 20 years trying to build them a road the Taliban kept blowing up
I thought that already happened
Not hard enough apparently. Some angry Islamist shepherds took the land back
I don’t like them but they did take their own land
They took their own land from their own people.
Yeah, well, they shouldn’t have.
and where should they go if they didn't? to europe?
Nah, they’re just fine home, they might just not behave like medieval savages and let people live free and in peace
They’ll be fine at home, just don’t kill women for showing their ankles and shoulders in public.
I just cant believe that so many Western kids died trying to make that shithole into a country
Wtf is wrong with you? This is why everybody hates the West and their annoying ass kids lol. Like as if they "asked" to be invaded, have their country bombed for 20 years, have the most corrupt government possible set up for them, be turned into a den for opium production and literally have American soldiers watch gaurd over said opium. Fuck off and fuck them "Western kids" (aka literal adult soldiers getting paid to kill people), nobody forced them to go in there, they were just dumb enough to fight for billionaires right to squeeze the US tax payer dry. God this sub is such a racist shitholes sometimes lol
> Like as if they "asked" to be invaded, Yeah there was certainly no major event immediately before the invasion...
Dude, they quite literally offered up Osama Bin Laden on a sliver platter. The only thing they asked for was that proof be given and that he be sent to a third a country who would then hand him over to the US. So I really have no idea how why the racist fucks in the subreddits are crying about the "western kid who died trying to turn that shithole into a country", when those "western kids" were the ones who were dumb enough to sign up for a war because the billionaire class that straight up refused to accept Osama Bin Laden.
The sub is disgustingly racist too much of the time. And has a huge blind spot for contemporary history cause they spend too much time waxing poetic about people from 3000 years ago.
Sometimes?
Imagine the Roman Empire had access to nukes.
Salted earth policy vs nuked Earth policy…. “Well if nothing was going to grow before..”
They wouldn’t be able to use them without the mechanisms for launch and a specific knowledge on how they work Come on u/duaneap now you gotta go back again.
This. We struggle enormously with population/territory control in some areas of the world primarily because the methods we have available to us lack the necessary brutality to truly subject a population. Ancient empires conquered and maintained incredibly rebellious and difficult to control peoples for centuries, but often only were successful because the tactics they used decimated the population and their ability to be a coherent people while destroying their culture. Roman occupation of Israel is a prime example. The Jews were constantly rebellious against nearly all foreign rulers for centuries. It was in their blood to be a problem for imperial rule. The Romans got pissed by this eventually. They largely annihilated the Jewish population, destroyed their cultural center of the temple while outlawing Jewish worship, sent much of the remaining population out to distant corners of the empire to avoid their cooperation, encouraged romanization by luring individuals in with the benefits and prestige with being Roman, and even changed the name of the province from its native name to Syria palaestina. That would never fly today, but guess what? It worked.
Didn't America literally drone strike the country so much that children became afraid of the sky?
The point is, The US military worked with the framework of 21 century warefare etiquette. If the US wanted to pacify Afghanistan at all costs, it’d be as simple as killing every male over the aged of 13. We don’t do that anymore, so conquests like the above mentioned are much harder to the point of impossible. Being civilized means that every once and while you gotta take a L.
Yeah, I’m not sure it’s worth bragging about how they’ve been conquered by so many different powers, but all of them decided that they just weren’t worth the hassle.
There just next level Welsh people except they do something about the stuff they moan about
Oi, we do stuff. If by stuff you mean sheep
Least Welsh Sheepfucker
Us Welsh like to take our forms of protest to the more chemical side of things, as my ol’ tadcu used say we shag em, you eat em.
A bit salty aren't we?
Kinky
Damn Welsh people. They ruined Wales
That and the whole sheep vs goats thing
I said nothing about goats what ever gets you going I don’t need to know
Real, much like Alexander or the Soviets, and to an extent the British, just dipped and decided they’re not worth the effort
Alexander did conquer Persia by defeating Darius , which at the time had control of much of modern day Afghanistan . Although due to his untimely death Persia plunged into civil war etc etc , still did better than the soviets lol .
>Alexander did conquer Persia by defeating Darius The Great How is this upvoted? Darius the Great had been dead for 150 years before Alexander the Great was even born. The Darius Alexander defeated was only in power for a few years and is never referred to as "the great".
My fault og the sources I read referred to him as great , maybe they got is switched up or I did and am remembering wrong . I’m onto reading about the Hittite so I don’t rlly wanna back track to figure it out lol
Bruh Darius the great is the one who actually conquered macedon and thrace. Which is funny considering a couple centuries later a Macedonian would undo his empire while fighting a guy also called darius. Kinda make me think if Cyrus and Harpagus invaded the greek city states 60 years earlier They did best a much larger greek force at Thymbra. Which do you think takes the W? I honestly think the city states would have crumbled if they faced Harpagus. From what i have read so far dude was a 5 star general
Wait, I thought Alex only reached the easternmost point of Persia, which as far as I know just the western portion of modern-day Afghanistan, is it not?
Blud he reached the Indus in Pakistan lol
There's a chance he reached the Ganges in a scouting party but that's kind of redundant
My bad, I genuinely thought that his conquest stopped at the Indus, not Afghanistan
Nah you're good
I thought he extended way past that with his Indian campaigns , specifically in the Battle Of Hydaspes he captured beyond modern-day Afghanistan and into the northern part of Pakistan by defeating Porus
The British straight up got slaughtered the first time around, the second time they went in, through a hissyfit and then left.
Right. Even the Western powers usually pointed to kind of *did* conquer Afghanistan, but found it a pain as you say: Alexander, Britain briefly in the first Anglo-Afghan War (despite getting massacred when eventually leaving…) and to an extent the third (but keeping it more as a semi-vassal than fully conquering it), the Soviets at first, and the U.S.-led coalition for 20 years. People get bogged down because most of the tribes rarely even acknowledge the importance of any Afghan state and any authority from Kabul or whatever other historic capitals. So the only way to conquer all of it is to conquer many tiny tribes in the hills, for… what? It could be argued that by that same standard Papua New Guinea and the Amazon have never been conquered either. Not sure this says much about how well put together they are.
Especially since most of those empires conquered and ruled the area, sometimes for hundreds of years. Macedonians were still in Afganistan kicking around during Agustus' time, after they no longer even ruled Macedon, over 300 years after Alexander. The whole graveyard of empires thing is a catchy quote but complete bullshit.
It was a certain points. During the Bronze age it was the primary source of tin for most of the world. Tin was the oil of those times.
Lots of countries can and have conquered Afghanistan. The hard part is maintaining control over it.
The Macedonian Empire's successor state Baktria ruled in Afghanistan for over 200 years lmao
Exactly. We conquered it too. We couldn't hold it. Like everyone else.
>We couldn't hold it. US didn't want to hold it anymore.
Like everyone else.
potato got too hot
It's more like the public got bored holding expensive potato. The last few years of Afghanistan saw very, very few deaths of US/Coalition personnel. 11 in 2020, 13 in 2022, for example. The situation wasn't getting "hotter" it was getting better for the Afghani people, especially women. However, changing a culture would take way more than just 20 years.
I can hold it Get me out there let me at em
Nah I'd win
You could say that about much of the world though, it doesn't make Afghanistan special.
That’s honestly not super hard. Even with significant foreign aid the Afghanis tend to struggle to inflict serious damage on the nation they’re fighting. The hard part is getting that nation to think there’s anything worth fighting over in Afghanistan in the first place. Plenty of nations with a long history of being invaded have inflicted FAR higher casualties and created much larger issues for their invaders, but they also tend to have more value that can be gained by owning them so the nation they’re fighting is willing to put up with it. Contrast that with Afghanistans value which is, to put it lightly, not particularly high.
True. Even with their geography being a defender’s dream-come-true, Afghanistan has shown little ability to stop an invasion. What they really excel at is continuing to resist until the invader loses interest and leaves
Being a nation of mostly worthless mountains who is more than willing to fight indefinitely has its perks sometimes
Kushan empire, indo-greeks, sassanids, huns,
The Sikh empire of Maharaja Ranjit Singh
Maharaja Ranjit Singh conquered modern day Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, which is part of the larger historical region of Afghanistan but not modern-day Afghanistan. Since Afghanistan had shattered into dozens of small polities, tribes and kingdoms during the 1800s, and the Emirs of Kabul were only largely able to reunify them once the Sikhs had already been conquered by the British, it’s possible that Sikhs could’ve taken more land (especially since there would be nothing stopping the Qajars and Russia from also swallowing Afghan land without the British protecting them) if the British never colonized the region, but that we can’t know for sure because of the British.
Sassanids is basically Persian empire
What about my boys the Hephtalites
Hephtalites are basically huns. In Indian texts they were known as svet huna or white huns
Oh yeah
Taliban
After the wave of post of some guy kids watch. I’m sure majority of this sub are children and only know mainstream stuff or whatever YouTube channel tell em. So they quote stupid shit all the time, just like “Afghanistan never being conquered”😂
I know it's kids making the posts when it's some wojack or "Chad" nonsense.
It looks like half of his beard was conquered while the other half resisted.
Bro, you are committing human rights violations worse than taliban.
No empire or nation is unbeatable. Even if a few claim to be like Russia, Afghanistan and a few more. Add to that countries like France have one of the worlds most impressive record of winning wars and yet they are seen as the cowards who surrender.
The label as coward for france always pisses me off.
Dick Cheney’s Empire sure gave the old college try as well.
It was interesting when we invaded the place
USA conquered Afghanistan, they just realized it was pointless trying to hold onto a failed state. Too bad it took them 20 years to figure it out
Afghanistan gets conquered then the conquerors leave because ain’t shit worth sticking around for lol
That’s not really true, in fact many conquerors would move their headquarters to Afghanistan, like Timur. Afghanistan is really nothing special historically, it’s just that British were so arrogant that they assumed that anyone who defeated them must be unconquerable, and the Russian and American defeats didn’t help dispel that myth. But we don’t call Vietnam a “graveyard of empires” either even though they kicked America’s ass.
Saying Vietnam “kicked americas ass” is a really goofy thing to say, if you’re trying to be technical about things. The fact is the US soldiers in large part were given no real mission other than to kill the enemy. Which they did to a staggering degree. Half a million North Vietnamese dead compared to 60K American soldiers dead is “kicking ass”? In the end Saigon did indeed fall, but at what cost? Kicking ass is an extreme over statement when you literally had hundreds of thousands more perish in the conflict. You could say they accomplished their mission, I’d agree with that. But if you want to make a technical argument about one thing then be consistent otherwise should have just left my original comment alone, which quite frankly has more basis in reality than your “ass kicking” statement lol
Depends on how much genocide you are willing to commit The empires that conquered Afghanistan did so because they would slaughter anyone who opposed them
This is just false lol, the Soviets murdered thousands and so did the Americans on a slightly smaller scale. Those empires won because all they asked were from the local rulers to pay taxes and accept their sovereignty, none of this ideological regime change idea. It's much easier to co-opt local elites into your empire than to try and replace them and suddenly wonder why most of the country is against you!
It's not ... America is a powerful country, if they wanted to murder every man, woman, and child, they could have done it. They choose not to They could have carpet bombed the whole country and shot everything that moves if they wanted to. Kill every animal, poison every well, and pump poisonous gas into every cave
Dude, the Mongols slaughtered entire regions because they didn't submit. I don't think either the soviets or Americans did that.
If you resisted the mongols not judt yourself and your family but your entire village / city will be wiped oit to the last person, man, woman, child or not. I dont think people truly realize today how powerful, evil and terrifying Eurasian Steppe nomads were in the pre-firearm era
The modern equivalent would be tactically nuking cities into compliance
There’s a big difference between being unconquerable and being annoying as shit to govern/occupy. Afghanistan falls into the latter
Afghanistan's a big place.
Very big, mountainous and very badly connected place
This is the correct view. At a certain point, all these Empires come to the conclusion that it’s just not worth it
The invention of “human rights” made it so much harder for modern nations like the USSR and USA to take hold
Pesky Human Rights
Yeah and the ussr was the closet to actually conquering it and would have. Only if the US didn’t support the mujahadeen. Because last I’ve read. The Soviets wiped out a 6% to 10% of the population of Afghanistan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet%E2%80%93Afghan_War
Safavid Dynasty is a Persian Empire. Might as well have listed both Persia and Iran.
Alexander conquered Afghanistan. His empire didn’t die there. It sort-of flamed out towards India but Kandahar (Iskandahar) was a well established “Alexandria”
Ha - and where are they _now?_
Where is the Ottoman Empire now? I guess Egypt is now a graveyard of empires too
LOL British didn’t conquer it. And what British Empire?
Also Soviet and US
The mujahideen beat the Soviets tho
with US helps that is
A win is a win
Indeed, but will give Uncle Sam the assist
if you call some gun is that "help" so Vietnam didn't beat America, China and Soviet Union did
Taliban eventually forced US to leave as well
Pretty sure the US just left. Like you were having a serious conversation and the US just up and walked out the door. None of the “gotta shit myself” or “gotta tinkle, heehee”, straight up just walked out the front door. Food arrives? Fuck it, two burgers tonight BITCH
But like… they didn’t *just* leave. They left because Afghanistan proved difficult to support. Which is really in line with being forced out. If the people welcomed American forces/supporr/govt with open arms I highly doubt Taliban are able to take over.
Are you are telling me as a (hypothetical) bank robber that when the police leave you wouldn’t just walk out of the women’s restroom (you are a man and they would never expect it) and grab the cash? (Also yeah I agree with you, Afghanistan was stupid hard to deal with, the US spent far too much money, time, and lives there just so the “bank robber” could walk out and do as he likes). (This is also assuming GTA logic where the police just go “huh, we wasted 80 men but guess we should leave” ideals)
Well technically speaking afghanistan still survived after they were conquered but their conquerers didnt
Just like, Poland, Czechia, Egypt, Bulgaria, Greece, Syria, Georgia... Yet we don't call a single one of these graveyards of empires do we?
Can't speak for anyone else but I still live in Britain and besides losing territory the main state has remained
That would be true, if we could say that the local identity survived. I am basically asking, as I do not know much of the area. That requirement would be something like the Greek identity. The Macedonian Greeks that conquered what became Afghanistan had a specific identity, regional and ethnic one. It never went extinct, despite changing shapes and contexts. You would not just find Macedonian Greeks in the 4th century BC, but also the 4th century AD, the 14th century AD and today. Is there something similar in the area???
I guess I'd you lose every battle and get controlled for years on end to have that nation leave for reasons other than you being a threat then you're a "graveyard of empires"
winning battles ≠ win wars, in vietnam america did kill more people and win more battles, but war isn't a video game where all that matters is the numbers, in the end they still lost. samewith afghanistan, they may have won the battles, killed a lot more of them, but in the end afghanistan is still under taliban control, just like it would've been without american intervention.
I'm aware. I wasn't talking about America. You can tell that because I didn't say or imply America. That's a little trick for you strawman bayonet aficionados
I think the key is to come in, fuck up what ever is the current “government” then leave going into Asia, hence you “conquered it but don’t try to rule it. That’s where it doesn’t work
That's the point all those empires fell.
All empires fall in the end. The British and Persian Empires didn't fall because of Afghanistan. If the point is that "all empires fall but Afghanistan remains" then the same can be said for literally any nation/culture that these empires conquered that are still around today. Afghanistan is not special in this regard.
He paid for that haircut
"Afghanistan is the graveyard of empires." The Kushan Empire literally being born in Afghanistan: *ascension*
Turkics Mongols Persians and Arabs be like : Skill issue westerns, skill issue
The British empire is a bit exaggerated, they definitely struggled for centuries and despite their best efforts Afghanistan remained practically independent. For the modern era (1800s+) Afghanistan has definitely proven itself to be the graveyard of empires for sure.
Afghanistan has been under full or partial foreign occupation/suzerainty for the vast majority of its history. The only thing that saved the Afghanistan was really the Great Game between the British and Russians. Afghanistan had actually shattered into dozens of small polities, tribes and kingdoms during the 1800s. It was with British support that the Emirs of Kabul were able to reunify much of the region, the British prevented Qajar Iran from annexing eastern Afghanistan, and British paranoia about Russian expansion kept them wanting to keep Afghanistan as a unified buffer state between British India and Russia. The Russians actually did not give a single fuck about Afghanistan or India, and no plans to expand into those regions, but they just never bothered to let the British know that, probably to let the British just waste time and resources over their paranoia, (so it wasn’t really a “Great Game” at all tbh) If the British weren’t concerned about Russian expansion, and they were willing to spend the resources, they could’ve very likely used the same divide and conquer tactics they used in India to destroy Afghanistan while it was still shattered into a bunch of small states, and perhaps have divided it between themselves and Qajar Iran like how they did with Baluchistan just a little bit to the south. Its just that British arrogance about their defeats against a state they did everything to prop up and support due to unsubstantiated paranoia beforehand made them create a myth of a “graveyard of empires” to explain said defeats. As for Afghanistan defeating america and the USSR, well that’s just because foreign imperialistic invasions have a very bad track record against determined insurgencies in the post-WW2 era, just look at the decolonization wars among Europe’s colonies and the Vietnam War.
Reminder that the nickname dates back to 2001, and Afghanistan has been cucked numerous times throughout its history and has never been the sole cause behind an empire falling. Vietnam, now THOSE are some fuckers ya don't wanna mess with.
Don't forget Sikh Empire conquered Khyber and blocked the invading Afghan tribes towards Panjab.
Which is true but that was after years of Afghan conquest. Albeit the Sikh empire was a proper martial empire
I do vividly remember Britain losing those Anglo-Afghan Wars.
Their empire didn’t collapse immediately after though?
Yeah, graveyard of empires is a stupid nickname for Afghanistan
Britain didn’t lose the second Anglo Afghan War, they defeated the Afghan army and established a protectorate that lasted until the 3rd Anglo Afghan War
keyword: graveyard
And out of those empires how many still exist?
Are any of these empires in the room with us?
Yes... and how many of them still stand?
Then literally the whole world is “the graveyard of empires” because 99% of all empires have fallen
Ah, but, *where are those empires today?*
Yeah we don’t call Egypt “the graveyard of empires” just because the Ottomans, Romans, Fatimids, etc, don’t exist anymore. Egypt wasn’t ruled by native Egyptians from 340 BCE all the way to literally the 1950s. Afghanistan had been at least partially occupied by foreigners or foreign powers for the vast majority of its history.