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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 20, 2023

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As for the perennial Afghanistan comparisons, it's one thing to fight halfassedly for ambitious-but-vague non-military goals, with your troops restrained by unworkable RoEs put in place by lawyers and by a State Department for whom the real enemy is the Pentagon, when you're halfway around the world, and can safely call it quits and go back home at any time without anybody near the top suffering even the tiniest of career consequences. It's another when "home" is where you're fighting. The consequences for losing a civil war/revolution are generally a lot more severe and lethal ("you win or you die" and all that).

Of modern wars, better comparison to hypothetical Second American Revolution/Civil War would be Syria.

Place where pious and traditional rural red rebels rose against godless coastal urbanite blue oppressors (and lost very badly).

It is one of best documented conflicts of history, but few people want to study and learn from this immensely depressing story.