The Human Element In Unwinnable Wars

We cite three examples of Unwinnable Wars: Afghanistan; Palestine; and Yemen. The failure of combat there is due largely to the existence of indigenous populations on the ground. You can never vanquish that stubborn element. That element is so unyielding that no amount of force can prevail over it. That is regardless of how much physical power you apply against it.
  
Force has been brought against the Taliban by the US and its western allies since 2002. By Israel 
aganist the Palestinian Arabs for seventy years. By the Saudis and Emaratis against the Houthis in 
Yemen for four years. To no avail. No military solution, and no political compromise. In the three 
instances, the high dam against that solution is the human will on the ground. 
  
There is the limit of technology, blunted into oblivion by the rag tag resisting humans wearing their
funny looking turbans or head gear. But laughing among themselves at the ineptness of the foreign 
element. It is a centuries old lesson that anteceded the Crusaders in the Middle East, Western 
intervention in China, or British failing hegemony in China. 
  
What makes that element obdurate? Mainly the resisters know the power of their dark alleys much 
better than the drones overhead. Aside from the human sovereign inclination to resist, the indigenous 
populace has nowhere else to go. That option is reserved for the foreign interveners. But not for those 
oppressed by it. 
  

These calculations about who will eventually win, and who shall fail at last do not come through UN 
resolutions or foreign declarations. These spring naturally from the ground on which the locals stand. 
Those locals need no more than the ground from which they have sprung.

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