Cities are easy to take, given overwhelming military superiority. This
was known at at the beginning. None of the difficulty in dealing with
Afghanistan was expected to consist of difficulty in capturing Kabul.
Nothing has changed. The media is trumpeting these easy milestones
because it's what's available in the way of news. Someone with a more
conspiratorial outlook might say that it's the media trumpeting a few easy
and expected victories in an effort to make as much capital as possible
off the few victories that are expected; to shore up support for the much
more difficult efforts that are expected to follow. One can distinguish
between the two hypotheses by watching to see if minor setbacks are blown
equally out of proportion. I expect it's a mixture of both causes.
-- -- -- -- --
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/
Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
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