alt Hacker News> They can obviously cause a lot of damage but they would obviously lose that war if the US decided they had to remove the regime by force.
That is far from obvious. A command structure scattered around a huge country should be able to outlast U.S. willingness to throw bodies into a shredder.
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The Vietnamese proved that it's not the bombs you can throw at the country - it's whether you have hearts and minds on your side.
The Americans learnt from that and went to Iraq claiming to have hearts and minds on their side - but quickly discovered that, in fact, they did not (and still do not).
The Americans need to take stock of their own actions in this conflict - they put Trump in the white house, they allowed him to be influenced by other governments, they gave him the power to get involved in the conflict.
It’s easy to look at Ukraine for example. Since drones came into the picture it’s way harder to do a successful ground invasion. Russia has unimaginable losses and they still haven’t reached their strategic goal.