Re: Northern Alliance victories: too good to be true?

From: Brian D Williams (talon57@well.com)
Date: Wed Nov 14 2001 - 14:49:28 MST


>From: James Rogers <jamesr@best.com>

>>On 11/14/01 11:06 AM, "Eliezer S. Yudkowsky"
>><sentience@pobox.com> wrote:
>
>> Cities are easy to take, given overwhelming military
>>superiority.

>It depends on how you define "easy". The Germans had to use a "no
>holds barred" scorched earth policy to "control" the Warsaw ghetto
>in 1943, and that was against a handful of poorly armed people.
>And even then it was only marginally effective. Short of glassing
>a city, they are almost impossible to take if the defenders are
>determined (e.g. the Russian experience at Grozny).

Indeed, if the enemy is willing to put up a defense, urban fighting
is the worse, especially if there are civilians around. The
attackers are at a disadvantage and it's literally room-by-room one
grenade at a time. This is where the heaviest causalities usually
occur.

I suspect the Taliban are better bullies than soldiers.

Brian

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