Slashdot Mirror
U.S. Drone Attack Strategy Against Al-Qaeda May Be Wrong
An anonymous reader writes "A new study (abstract) in the journal Informational Security evaluates the U.S. military's strategy for killing off al-Qaeda's leadership using remote drone strikes. The study argues that the strategy is ineffective, calling into question both the military's rationale for doing so and the allocation of defense funds to run it. Essentially, there are two different types of terrorist organizations: those held together by a small number of charismatic leaders, and those who have developed their own bureaucracy, almost like a business. 'Companies don't fall apart when they lose their CEO or CFO; other people are being trained to do that job and there are institutional mechanisms preserving the knowledge the CEO brought to the table. Also, rules create clear lines of succession, so destabilizing struggles over who gets to take over the group's leadership become less likely.'
Intelligence on al-Qaeda indicates it's more of a bureaucratic group — unsurprising, since terrorist organizations that have been around for a while tend to evolve that way. Since the drone attacks started, there has been no significant correlation between successful strikes and a reduction in al-Qaeda attacks. 'The case for the drone program, at its heart, is that killing significant numbers of underlings AND a small number of high-level leaders is severely weakening the group's operating ability. Jordan's study suggests that al-Qaeda just isn't the kind of group that can be beaten that way.'"
Intelligence on al-Qaeda indicates it's more of a bureaucratic group — unsurprising, since terrorist organizations that have been around for a while tend to evolve that way. Since the drone attacks started, there has been no significant correlation between successful strikes and a reduction in al-Qaeda attacks. 'The case for the drone program, at its heart, is that killing significant numbers of underlings AND a small number of high-level leaders is severely weakening the group's operating ability. Jordan's study suggests that al-Qaeda just isn't the kind of group that can be beaten that way.'"
Sorry to anyone listening at Fort Meade.
The solution is to eliminate all members and the supporting population.
Yeah it might* be wrong, it also might* be completely retarded but that doesn't stop them.
*is
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
OK, so "there has been no significant correlation between successful strikes and a reduction in al-Qaeda attacks".
Am I the only one thinking things might have been much worse if no terrorist leaders had been taken out at all?
My security clearance is so high I have to kill myself if I remember I have it...
But why not just bribing (The ultimate weapon) them?
It works everywhere else.
You can bribe politicians
You can bribe lawyers and judges
You can even bribe the police.
Every f... where on the planet.
Is Al-Queda more diciplined.. ehm or civilised than everybody else?
It would be far better to capture the leaders and use the information we can get from them to unwind the organization from the top. But that means soldiers might get killed doing something constructive rather than for trivia as we've been doing in Afghanistan. With drone attacks there is no danger some terrorist might get a bent pinkie fingernail and scream about it. There is also no danger we'd actually be able to stop the threats.
Color me cynical about the twits in DC.
{^_^}
So let me get this straight.... Dropping bombs on people doesn't make them stop attacking you?
Whenever I get into an argument, I just punch the other guy in the face. That usually stops the argument and everyone walks away with a happy smile.
want to beat them other wise you american pussies will stop being so shit scared of the terrorist bogeyman and may actually oppose how they are twisting your laws.
Am I the only one who finds this article comparing terrorist orginizations to (US) corporations darkly humorous? ... Maybe I just haven't had enough coffee this morning.
No troops, no money, no sanctions, no weapons sales, nothing. Not to any mid-east country, including Israel.
Just buy their oil, and that's it. What other business do we have there? Let the chips fall where they may.
Why is the US putting itself in the middle of their ancient, perpetual, non-sensicle, squabbles?
I hate to say it, but: let the crazies kill each other, if that's what they want to do. They have been doing it forever, and US presence only gives them somebody else to blame.
All those lives, all of those trillions of dollars, for what? We are no safer from terrorism. In fact, we may be more at risk.
Help one tribe, and you piss off another. Never fails. The "good guys" one day, are despotic leaders, and US haters the next. I think the US supported both Sadam, and Osama, at one point.
As the computer said in "War Games" : "The only way to win is to not play."
Burning it's assets and operating capitol. They know that the illegal drug trade is their only form of income, so you either try to burn all the poppy fields or you utterly flood the market with insanely cheap product to the point that they cant make any money.
Burning the land and Boiling the sea did not work in Vietnam, so it will not work in afganastan.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
When you kill their friends and family via remote control and using a video game interface is it any wonder that there are more "terrorists" created every year?
Keep in mind that one person's "terrorist" is another person's "patriot", we should reverse all the Presidents' "Foreign Policy" which is really a Foreign Entanglement Policy.
It really is no wonder that the peoples of the Middle East refer to the USA as the Great Devil, I think I would too were I borne there.
So what this boils down to is the notion that head of organizations, be they terrorist or corporate (insert joke here), we overspend on resources directed at the top.
In targeting terrorists, we spend big bucks on weapons systems and focus intelligence attention at the top.
In the case of corporations, we pay huge salaries -- believing the heads to be irreplaceable.
In both cases, there are plenty of qualified, motivated individuals ready to do a hydra-like head regeneration of the top levels.
get the governments to support western investment into the business structure to put people to work. people who have a life tend to not become terrorists.
look at the US. military recruitment falls with a good economy
Invading the countries that they have their bases (and supporting tribes and religious leaders) turned out to be too expensive (in both american lives and money)
Ignoring global threats and not supporting their allies quickly enough was what got the U.S. involved in World War II on two different fronts on opposite sides of the planet. The US will not make the same mistake twice.
We not only supported Osama, we had the CIA and others train him in guerrilla warfare not that that came back to bite us or anything.
Freedom.exe
if (target == suspicious){
drone.attack(target)
check(target)
while (check(target)=="civillian casualty"){
spin(drone.attack);
}
}
git clone ALQUAEDA
leader==leader.name()
if (leader.status != 1){
leader.close();
global leader=new leader(extreme=1,militant=1,relig=1)
}
new attack(leader.lead(), adv_notify=0, proclaim_relig=1,antiwest=1)
Good people go to bed earlier.
Star Trek.
sadly enough, they could have learned that from listening to Major Kira on DS9. And lots of more lessons on how to run your group of resistance/freedom fighters/terrorists/guerilla/whatever underground organization.
bickerdyke
The article in the 2nd link (1st link only says "abstract" in the link) is a joke. Well, the people who wrote it are serious, but it's a joke. They honestly cited The Onion as a source for one of their points without mentioning that The Onion is a satirical site. Do they even know that? They offer no alternative. They only say that the whole drone strike idea isn't working.
I think this is another situation on Slashdot like talking about electric cars where some people don't understand what the real reason for them is. Slashdot talks about electric cars and then someone inevitably says "The manufacturing isn't carbon neutral. It spews tons of pollutants into the air. And the electricity that powers the cars isn't carbon neutral either. It doesn't reduce greenhouse gases to have electric cars." and so on. The point of electric cars is not at all to reduce greenhouse gases or that they are supposedly made in environment beneficial ways. The point is to reduce dependance on foreign oil, which just happens to mostly belong to countries that are US hostile and Western hostile.
The US government may claim that the strikes are to cripple Al Queda, but that's not the real point. The real point is to kill bad guys. Anwar al-Awlaki was a constant thorn in the US government's side, managing to even recruit US born terrorists to his cause. He's dead now. He can't personally recruit any other Americans or work to destabilize Yemen any more. Dead terrorists may be replaced by less competent terrorists. That's a win for the US. Younger people may not know, but the US and Western Europe have both tried the "let's do nothing" approach in the 70s and 80s and all that accomplished was that terrorists got emboldened to do even deadlier things because they believed that they'd never be held accountable. Killing some of them may convince some people who haven't joined that joining them may be a really bad idea. There's value in that.
This study assumes they know who they are killing. Considering the number of wedding parties they have struck and also admissions that they sometimes do not even know the names of who they are killing there is an alternative conclusion. You do realize that it is common knowledge that they record all the phone calls, text messages etc. so it is very unlikely unless you have a very stupid terrorist that they are going to pick up the phone and talk about some terrorist plot. The NSA cannot listen to a phone call that never took place. The alternative conclusion is that they are often killing the wrong people. Killing people bases on evidence that would not be considered strong enough to uphold a parking ticket.
We've been told that Al Queda isn't real and that there aren't really any terrorist organizations. It's all a neocon plot.
So basically, how can drone strikes or any other strategy be effective or ineffective against something that doesn't exist?
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
Al-Qaeda is not totally stupid, they may have very odd ideals, but they have shown that even the Koran can be ignored if using western ideas will allow them to achieve their goals. I bet this is just once possible way for them to try and reduce attacks on them.
Only love can conquer. Kill them with kindness, don't make more martyrs.
CIA still uses the drug market as a main budget contribution to finance its BlackOps. Killing the drug market would leave a big hole in several major US intelligence agencies...
The problem with the VAST majority of criticisms against drone warfare is this: /They don't cite alternatives./
If an author has a problem with intervention policy. THAT is what the author should be targeting! Drones are incidental to the intervention policy and are off-point. If the goal is to persuade the audience against intervention, then the subject of intervention needs to be directly addressed.
If an author has a problem with drone warfare itself, then present the alternatives. If "boots on the ground" is a more effective way to ensure surgical precision and minimal collateral damage, advocate for that and present the supporting arguments, and preemptively address the counter-argument of the potential for taking casualties along the way as a necessary cost of preserving civilian life and reducing the amount of backlash that creates new terrorists. If the author believes that counterintelligence and local partnerships is more effective, then THAT should also be presented, citing past successes in reducing insurgency and improvements to civilian quality of life.
But if the author has a beef with drone warfare, and presents no alternatives, then they leave the massive hole in their argument of "If not drones, then what?". If the perception of drones is that they kill enemies and prevent us from losing soldiers in the process, and the author wants to do away with drones, then the audience is left to wonder: "Is this author really suggesting that we should lose our soldiers for no good reason, when we could have used drones instead?" Address that question head on!
This entire promise just sounds horribly forced and shoe horned. Stating that many businesses survive the loss of key leaders is beyond a weak argument. It's pretty overwhelmingly clear that losing key leaders is on the whole worse for an organization than keeping them. In particular, losing multiple key leaders in a relative short time span is almost without exception damaging to an organization. I get concerns and opposition to drone strikes, but that's not a license to twist and manipulate every angle you can to condemn them.
Imagine if you got into an argument, whipped out an AK-47, and razed a half circle. You're in an open restaurant, the guy who pissed you off is dead, there's half a dozen others dead and dozens wounded, many dying, a few maimed for life.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
Well, it worked for Germany and Japan. Of course we dropped a lot more bombs on them....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Am I the only one thinking things might have been much worse if no terrorist leaders had been taken out at all?
Maybe not the only one, but I disagree.
You're thinking like a military tactician; not as a religious/political/get-out-of-our-country fanatic.
Killing their leader only increases their resolve against the Great White Satan and increases their need to get the invaders out of their country.
When we kill one of their leaders a new one pops up and makes the old one a martyr to the cause.
If killing the leaders was effective, Israel would be a wonderfully safe Middle Eastern country. But instead, the cycle of violence continues and will continue probably forever.
The only time when violence can solve the problem is going all Roman Empire: kill every last man, woman, and child. Burn everything down and then salt the Earth.
The Roman never had any more problems from their enemies.
That is the only way to end the cycle of violence - extermination of the other.
If they are run like a company, treat 'em like a company. Take them over, plant a new CEO (I hear Carly Fiorina is available), and let that CEO run them into the ground for a multi-million dollar golden parachute.
Or, turn them into a reality TV show. Anyone remember the movie "NETWORK" (I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore). Well, in that film, they made a TV show about a terrorist group, and the terrorists were so busy negotiating their contracts, they forgot all about blowing up shit.
Network, is surprisingly accurate about how right now is playing out. I suggest you watch it, and watch it a second time.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
This is a ridiculous comparison to make. Corporate executives don't have to worry about a missile being lobbed into their BMW on their morning commute. Middle managers also don't have to worry about being caught up in the collateral damage.
There are legitimate arguments to be made against drone strikes, but I struggle to see how it isn't effective. Al-Qaeda clearly been forced to change the way it operates. That big open air meeting they held in Yemen, in broad daylight was their attempt to pretend that they're not intimidated. The fact that a drone strike followed the release of that video shows the reality of the situation they face. If nothing else, it brings the same level of fear to these terrorists that they inflict on their own fellow citizens.
yes, there is a high fixed cost to develop the drones, and the control satellites, and spying equipment to use in afghanistan. thanks to that, expensive us soldiers in afghanistan can be outsourced to cheap us soldiers in the us. i imagine the kills from drone attacks could be much higher, if desired, with higher outrage from pakistan. the lower cost of drones allow a somewhat acceptable restricted killing, that would be economically infeasible if done entirely be a conventional us army.
well punching a guy and killing him are different, if you're in an argument and kill the other party then you win the argument....for some definition of win.
If Bob is attacking me and I kill Bob, Bob is no longer attacking me. If it's somehow not clear Bob is a single person in this scenario.
So dropping a bomb on a person stops that person from attacking you but may not stop the group he's a member of.
I think basically we're fighting the war like we're still trying to get Osama Bin Laden, but we got him, so it's time to change strategies a bit since the organization we're fighting has changed.
They are just now realizing this? I read a book written all the way back in 2004 that described al-Qaeda as not a terrorist group, but more like a venture capitalist firm. All of these groups-Lashkar-e-Tayyiba, al-Shabaab, Boko Haram, all the local al-Qaeda groups- aren't all actually part of al-Qaeda. Instead, they come to al-Qeada with a plan and essentially ask them for money. If al-Qaeda agrees, they give them the money and let them claim affiliation. Cut off the head of al-Qaeda, the successor still has access to all the funds. Cut off the head of one of the other groups, and that group might fall apart (or just get a new leader), but all of the other groups remain unaffected. To take down terrorists groups you can't go for the head, you have to go for the base (see what I did there?). Go after the funding sources, whether that be blood diamonds, sheiks dripping in oil money, drug production, etc. Go after the recruitment base (predominately young, educated, ideologically motivated but politically or economically disaffected men) and the structure will collapse from the ground up. Drone strikes do nothing for the former, and do the opposite for the latter.
Remember what bin Laden did in the war against the Russians: he wasn't a fighter, he ran a support structure in Pakistan that funneled fighters, weapons, and money to the Mujaheddin. Why would you think he would have started an organization that did anything different?
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
That would mean involvement in Ukraine/Crimea. Not the middle East. Bullying smaller nations is an American past time dating backto our relations with the Iroquois.
You are making the classic mistake of fighting the last war.
These are not the 1930s or 1940s. We are not fighting countries but loosely connected groups.
There is no way to win in the middle-east. Any involvement just makes us the bad guy.
Of course it's a bureaucracy, it was created by the CIA.
Am I joking? I don't even know.
As I said, we supported Sadam also. They were the "good guys" at the time.
Remember how we cheered "Arab Spring?"
As I understand it, even Kuwait hates us now. So why do we do it?
Involvement in the mid-east is a guaranteed no-win situation.
Besides, how is it our business? Other than buying their oil, what business is it of ours?
I think we should remove our embassies as well - the embassies only serve as targets for those crazies.
...I thought that that strategy could be wrong because of innocent victims and extra-judicial executions.
And you're just wrong about how the US got into wars with Japan and Germany.
It's clearly working against Boko Haram.
Incidentally, I wonder why this is considered "U.S. policy" and not "Obama's policy". Guess the liberal media doesn't want their boss looking bad.
As long as the drone targets are persons of color and poor ones at that, it does not matter about so-called "collateral damage". The US of A is militarily superior and therefore in their legal rights to do as they wish, without concern of consequences. We are on a mission to bring freedom and democracy to these people, and if it takes a lot of drones and a lot of collateral damage, than so be it. Here is an important link on the topic: http://drones.pitchinteractive...? These people in Pakistan/Afghanistan need to be educated about freedom, the hard way. http://www.clowncrack.com/wp-c... America is doing all it can to correct these people and those who contest her policies are a bunch of unpatriotic cowards.
"SO we bide our time, waiting for a purer kick to bloom and the future is still bleak, uncertain and beautiful" -GSYBE
Am I the only one thinking things might have been much worse if no terrorist leaders had been taken out at all?
Yes, you pretty much are...at least, I hope so, because you're wrong.
Groups like A Queda need an external focus. Without an enemy, they aren't going to be able to motivate their rank-and-file every day, and the US is kind enough to provide that focus. Drone attacks are only part of it - the US is busy mucking about all over their back yard: Libya, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Syria...
Before anyone says "but 9/11", let me: Why did they pick the US as a target? Because the US has been mucking about in their countries for decades.
Go home, leave them alone and let them rot in the desert. Especially now that the US could realistically stop buying Middle-Eastern oil, the US has an incredible opportunity to just pack up and leave.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
Everyone from my friends asks me this question.No body knows it, but I think he is death because the U.S.A wouldnt lie.
... pisses them off?
It's like the Palestinians who constantly launch explosive devices into Israel, you're not going to win that way, all you're going to do is create new enemies.
XML is a known as a key material required to create SMD: Software of Mass Destruction
Blah blah blah. More False Utopian dilemma BS.
There are bad guys out there, they need to get ended.
So lets go punch their tickets.
You guys are over complicating this.
If Pakistanis don't want their wedding parties turned to strawberry jam, then maybe they should round up the jihadis and execute them.
Speak for yourself. Only Obama and his lackeys cheered the Arab Spring. The rest of us saw it for the sham it was.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Well, it worked for Germany and Japan. Of course we dropped a lot more bombs on them....
Remember that Germany also bombed the crap outta England and it didn't break the British. Worked against Japan due to the few (not a lot) big bombs on them and it broke the Japanese. For Germany, the invasion (from two sides) was the real turnover, and thankfully the big bombs didn't have to be used there. And I hope for the human kind that the big ones do not have to be used again, especially not on some countries where most of the population aren't the real terrorists.
Think about what you just said for two seconds and realize that "dropping bombs on people" is a large component of the problem. Imagine that your mom went to the market for groceries and a bomb went off and killed her. Car bomb, Hellfire missile, doesn't matter, she and a bunch of other innocent people are dead along with some guy you never met and never heard of. Is your first reaction to tuck your tail between your legs, roll over and show your belly? If you're a Pentagon general or basic knee-jerk conservative the response is probably "Yes, might makes right!" If you're anyone else your reaction is to get pissed off and if possible lash out in return.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
Yes, but his brothers and sons and daughters are alive. Next time you go to a restaurant you better watch your back. Oh, better let your son and daughter and friends know about it as well. Because they're not in their friends list as well.
No troops, no money, no sanctions, no weapons sales, nothing. Not to any mid-east country, including Israel.
Just buy their oil, and that's it. What other business do we have there? Let the chips fall where they may.
Why is the US putting itself in the middle of their ancient, perpetual, non-sensicle, squabbles?
I hate to say it, but: let the crazies kill each other, if that's what they want to do. They have been doing it forever, and US presence only gives them somebody else to blame.
All those lives, all of those trillions of dollars, for what? We are no safer from terrorism. In fact, we may be more at risk.
Help one tribe, and you piss off another. Never fails. The "good guys" one day, are despotic leaders, and US haters the next. I think the US supported both Sadam, and Osama, at one point.
As the computer said in "War Games" : "The only way to win is to not play."
What makes you think that stopping terrorism is the primary goal? It isn't. In fact, from a certain point of view, terrorism is a feature. All those lives and trillions of dollars are spent to secure American hegemony. Have you seen the ads for the Navy recently? A global force for good? Who falls for this shit anymore?
Why buy the oil when you can take over the field? When Americans buy gasoline, we want the profit going to Exxon/Mobil, not the Iraqi National Oil company. When you rely on someone to sell you what you need, they have power over you. When you control the means of production, you can control those who rely on it. And if people there don't like it, we'll deal with them. Which is what we're doing.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
Musk is a good venture capitalist and manager in certain tech areas, and has money. Tesla and SpaceX both had more people with more expertise than Musk. So, yeah, kill him off and take his money. Kill off a bunch of the top people, and then there will be problems.
You need the top people for the innovative and complicated stuff, like rockets, or September 11th. For random car bombs, not so much. It's been a long time since al qaeda has done big innovations. So, drones seem to be working.
Oh come on. You act like they were smuggling cocaine through Arkansas or something!
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
Why don't you pick up a tire iron and defend us instead of blaming America form all of your problems?
There have been several cases where the intentional killing of a gifted leader has been effective in diminishing the capability of a much more organized force than al-Qaeda. Shooting down Admiral Yammamoto's plane took out an irreplaceable leader. The IJN had no one as capable to replace him. The IJN did not "fall apart" after his death but it was much less efective.
I wish people who spew stuff like this "study" would hold up their argument to history and not just their cherry-picked canard.
Cheers,
Dave
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
Indeed. And they will come after you as they rightfully see you as unmitigated evil after that cowardly act of murder.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
So, how do we go after these guys then? The reason that the terrorists hide amongst civilians is threefold: 1) they know we're (supposedly) reluctant to target civilians; 2) they want to hide their identity from us, and from everyone else; and 3) they want to intimidate their innocent countrymen (Don't rat us out or we'll kill you and your family). They actively seek out and co-opt/corrupt the local law enforcement, so we can't really rely on the police systems in place. How do we stop them from coming after us? Even if we pull out of the ME entirely, apologize for everything we've done, and pay blood money to everyone we've ever done harm to, we're still going to be targets because of our cultural influence. Look at Boko Haram... groups like that don't just stop at national borders. If you're a hardcore nationalist/religious fascist, you won't be satisfied until you're directly striking the source of all that you imagine to be evil.
Here's to hot beer, cold women, and Glaswegian kisses for all.
The weapons industry constantly needs a way to field test its technology. Al-Qaeda provides much better trial run than blowing up barrels on an island. Plus as we expend drones we can buy new better ones and keep that old economic engine churning! We don't want the strikes to be too effective because then who would we fire drones at?
You cannot "beat" an organization like al-Qaeda (as this study implies) any more than you can "destroy" an idea. You can MANAGE the risk posed by al-Qaeda by using tools like drone strikes. This can be done fairly efficiently for a very long time while the political maturation of Islamic culture is manifested naturally and through shaping efforts. It will take several generations, but eventually Islamic cultures will embrace their more positive attributes while eliminating most of their self-destructive practices. They've missed out on a thousand years of scientific and cultural advances, from the Renaissance and Reformation to the Industrial Revolution (and all the other advances in the fields of medicine, mathematics, physics, chemistry, plus improvements to women's rights, etc., etc...). They can only keep the blinders on for so long to the largely positive changes brought about by the Western world in the past 500 years. As with any other culture, they are their own worst enemy.
This is what Al Qaeda have been asking for since the beginning. They want the US out of their affairs, out of their lands, and to stop aiding people who are equally meddling with them and their brethren. Happy, contented people don't become terrorists. Imagine what it would take for you to take up arms against someone - these people, or those they strongly identify with, have been through that, and many worse.
All Hail Dear Leader.
So the Nazi's were a large, bureaucratic organization, and despite that it seems like our 'winning strategy' was to kill large numbers of lower level people, and smaller numbers of higher ranking people, and yet it seems to have worked in the end? The claims made by this paper seem very silly.
So the author doesn't like drone strikes. Ok fine, what's his idea? These people have declared holy war upon us and pretty much won't be satisfied until we're all dead. The enemy considers civilians to be valid targets and also routinely uses them as cover for militant activities. Any sort of action against them is going to result in some collateral damage, yet failing to take action will merely embolden them to further atrocities. Asymmetric warfare is nasty business, that's just the way it is.
If you kill enough leaders, you are left with a bunch of bureaucrats. And as everyone knows, bureaucrats don't do much of anything.
So yes, killing leaders works, in the sense that removing people who are able and willing to take risks will eventually cause their organization to atrophy and die.
Think about it. If you were in an organisation at any level and other members of the organisation tended to just explode suddenly wouldn't you want out? Would you want your friends and family members signing on? Our only real problem with drones is that we should be using far, far more drones that carry lethal pay loads. I'll bet there little terror training camps would shrink quite a bit if drones hit five or six times every day or night. And the cleric in the mosque preaching that all Americans must die might make a great impact when he exploded while preaching. In war one must be more menacing and perhaps more brutal than one's opponents.
...it's more of a bureaucratic group — unsurprising, since terrorist organizations that have been around for a while tend to evolve that way.
Yes, well, it's like, you know, how humans do things. Age brings dementia. As a correlation, the US is sinking into an ever deepening bureaucratic morass also.
But "terrorist organizations"? That can be anyone with a gun, or even a big stick..
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Not exactly. Japan was being firebombed like Germany was. Add to that the points that Japan has fewer natural resources for war, was being heavily blockaded from gaining more resources, the limited resources they had were pushed further into total war than most nations*, and it was clear by the time of the two nuclear bomb drops that a land invasion would be manned by malnourished recently-civilian mostly-unenlistable** men who only at a fanatical level*** would keep fighting, and I'd say Japan was on a razor's edge of having an internal coup, anyways.
I'd say most the rest is revisionist history on both sides. On the US side to justify the need for the use of nuclear weapons when people came to recognize the possible horrors of a nuclear war. On the Japan side to save face on just how utterly beaten Japan was and how broken they would have become if the fanatics had managed to run the country completely into the ground--because even though a coup would likely have occurred, it may well have occurred too late to make much difference. Really, the same thing appears in the US with the Civil War and I imagine in most any conflict that is personal enough to the population--total war tends to be--that you end up with the wildly opposite views of just how wrong/right one side was or how wrong/right war itself is.
*You're likely to give more of yourself to your emperor God (or an idea) than to a mere Fuhrer (or some vague notion of a "superior race" with its feel-good justification of genocide but dubious origins).
**The old, the feeble, minors, etc.
***A lot of those were lost in the kamikaze attacks which undoubtedly spurred a lot of people to, you know, give up on the notion of the emperor God or the glory of the Japan empire ruling the world.
Sometimes I get a bit disturbed when I read Slashdot stories with lots of commentary about the topic without any challenges to the premise on which the article is based. Its like the technically literate people turn the blinders on when the subject is political and controversial. Slashdot readers accept for certain that the atmosphere has warmed by 0.7%, the universe was created 31 billion years ago, there is no God and terrorist groups are run just like Safeway.
How could anyone accept the analogy that terrorist groups are just like businesses? That premise is ridiculous unless one can believes they have an IED Division, they sponsor summer camps in the Afghani desert, they are paid bonuses at the end of the year and they work in a sprawling campus in Sinai. If anything, one could say that terrorists groups are organized like the mob.
If you throw out that stupid argument, the summary of the article should be more like "We don't like droning."
Saying that drone warfare is not particularly good at decapitating an institutional terrorist organization like Al Qaeda is missing the point. Or at least a key point. Drone warfare has made large scale terrorist training largely impossible. The boot camps and months long, practical courses in guerrilla warfare that used to be an Al Qaeda staple are now just very visible, attractive targets for drones. Drone warfare occasionally knocks out a head, but it really undermines the base.
In all force, there is some deterrence power. For some technologies, the deterrence is the whole point. For example, land mines aren't meant to be a good way to blow up people, they're meant to be a good way to prevent groups of people from traversing an area once you advertise that it's full of mines. Here, drones are useful for rapid, cheap attacks of opportunity... but the fact that they are almost always ready means long-term, open-air training camps are suicide.
It worked for Japan, period. And it's not like it would not have ended like that anyway. Germany was bombed back into the stone age (basically every city and industrial area, but also things like water reservoir dams, drowning several ten thousands, many of them actually prisoners of war) but that did not change their military offense. It was only when the allied forces invaded Germany that Hitler committed suicide and Germany surrendered.
The bombs were, all in all, just making a statement but did not change history.
If you have ever followed the video incoming of a drone strike and watched the resultant massive ordinance like explosion, it would easily be viewed as quite the opposite of ineffective. Maybe its not very fair or chivalrous in terms of actually fighting an enemy face to face, but ineffective?
Just buy their oil, and that's it.
With what? Little green pieces of paper they can feed to their camels? Nope, you have to actually buy it with something better than that ultimately. And since control over the oil is an important asset, tanks and other weapons for keeping the populace of a restrictive autocracy firmly oppressed are a suitable exchange for those little green pieces of paper, a mutual exchange of expensive desirable goods that are put to use for stabilizing the respective productions.
Unfortunately, exactly this kind of stuff is what annoys the little people forced out of the loop who then tend to turn to terrorism.
So no, "just buy their oil" isn't going to work since you pay for their oil by supporting large-scale oppression and social injustice. The only thing that works is "not even buy their oil". And then you will, at least temporarily, annoy other people in the Near East. It will take a long time until the mess that the U.S. and other nations created in return for oil will settle down.
When you kill their friends and family via remote control and using a video game interface is it any wonder that there are more "terrorists" created every year?
That's standard video game practice. After fighting one stage through, you get to combat an end game monster, and the next stage gets harder. What were our end game monsters in the Middle East so far? Khomeini, Saddham Hussein, Osama bin Laden?
Yes, those brothers and sons will be so angry they will also start an argument with you. At which point you have to kill them too (and another dozen bystanders). Even if the AK-47 strategy is not effective, which is unclear, let's not pretend that the strategy of the martyr is any better. Sometimes it's better to let things go, some cultures don't get that and possibly never will.
They have already managed to flood the market, the price of heroin is crazy low since we kicked the Taliban out and the area went more lawless.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
There are a lot of other countries that the USA screwed over in just as many ways over the years, but you don't see them training terrorists.
USA is just a convenient target to use as a political lever. Nothing more. Once they kill each other enough and a stable regime comes to power, they'll cry out for peace within months.
Those people, might be misinformed, but they're not all retards. If they wanted to really start some terror, they would've done better so far. Fact is, the "jihad" is all just an excuse, a way to draw funds and build political power.
So just who the heck is Informational Security? http://muse.jhu.edu/about/cont...
So they're at John Hopkins? And what would be their motivations?
When considering something like this report, it's useful to understand its provenance. Esp on such a politically-charged issue.
Did it? Or wasn't Japan trying to give up before it was double-crossed and the US bombed them anyways?
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
Just like how any corporation will run out of employees when their current crop retire.
It didn't work for Germany and Japan. When Germany (against Russia) and Japan (against the USA) tried dropping bombs on people, things turned out quite badly for them.
Glad to learn that. I thought everybody, except me, was cheering "Arab Spring."
> Happy, contented people don't become terrorists.
Boston bombers? Osama bin Laden? Fort Hood Slayer? John Walker?
These people had absolutely no reason not to be content. They were comfortable, plenty of money for what they needed. Nobody was threatening them.
You either do not understand Islam, or you act like you don't.
> Little green pieces of paper they can feed to their camels?
They can do the same things with money that you, or I, can do. Buy goods and services - but not military grade weapons - at least, not for the US government.
Drone strikes have killed thousands of innocent people, assassinated people without a right to any kind of trial, and collectively intimidated a whole population.
These are called War Crimes. The United States, as a non-signatory to the International Criminal Court, tries to avoid prosecution. Anyone who questions whether this kind of behaviour 'may be wrong', clearly has little grasp of international law, and the basic principals observed by a democratic society.
Get out and take our drones, and our troops, and our financial aid with us.
Let's focus on using US money to fix US problems.
Islam demands hatred, and death, to all infidels. They will never be our friends. The mid-east is a no-win situation.
Its easy to eliminate most terrorism with a simple thing called a good education and a job. But killing people is easy, and educating them means you have to actually talk with them so don't expect a change soon.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Your definition of "everyone" obviously does not include everyone.
The words paranoia and efficiency are not present in her article. I have seen first hand how paranoia in a company's executives hampers an organizations efficiency. Jenna Jordan seems to ignore just how inefficient it is to have your leaders constantly looking over their shoulders.
Look, the problem is we know where the terrorists are from.
Saudi Arabia
Yemen
Pakistan
and to a lesser extent Afghanistan and NW China
They become terrorists because they're losing.
Fight that.
Bombs don't work.
(caveat - I have done counter-terrorism ops and other related things - this is only my opinion)
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
It is unlikely. A car bomb is a cheap and simple way of killing lots of people. Drones are relatively complicated and incapable putting a six foot hole in the middle of a busy market. You may not realize this, but building a good, reliable bomb in a third work country with ad-hoc parts is somewhat challenging and dangerous.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Mistake? WWII was far kinder to us than it was to our allies. You're forgetting that we were so isolationist during the interbellum because we so quickly supported our entangling alliances in the first World War, and then paid for it dearly.
We should avoid World War 3 at nearly any cost. Let Russia conquer Ukraine (again) and the CIA can support resistance movements instead of waging war overtly, chipping away at the Russian empire (again). I'd much rather risk a war on two fronts than an irradiated backyard, thank you.
The alternative is to not do drone strikes. We create more terrorists for every one we kill and indiscriminately cause collateral damage. We don't need an alternative if doing this is worse than doing nothing.
Some do.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Of course it's wrong. It's a drone attack strategy.
The strategy is successful, it's just that some people are confusing the actual strategy with the fictional strategy.
The goals of the actual strategy are to
(1) Funnel money to defence contractors
(2) Give politicians the appearance of doing something
(3) Convince the US public that their country is number one in something high-tech and glamorous sounding
and
(4) achieve goals (1), (2), and (3) without significantly reducing the effectiveness of al Qaeda, thereby ensuring the perpetuation of the strategy.
These are not the 1930s or 1940s. We are not fighting countries but loosely connected groups.
Yes, we're being more proactive. To use the WW2 analogy, it's as if we're attacking Hitler and his brown-shirts before he managed to get elected as leader of Germany.
I suppose you'd rather we wait until after?
Translation: They can't get a job or a wife and their government is so corrupt that nothing will improve.
Changing this is a good idea but it falls down at ideology. Most of the ills in any country stem from a "I'm right, you're wrong and my gun proves it" philosophy. (Drone strikes being a case in point.) The most common ideology is religion: Killing in the name of God or Allah. Next is the family or tribe with there rarely being a third place for law and country. If a man's tribe says it's good to grow drugs, that's what most of the town will do. Similarly if it says "An eye for eye" or everyone murder the tribe in the neighbouring town. When allied governments (or worse, multi-national corporations) move into a town they want to take as much as possible. At best this is economic imperialism, at worst it denies and belittles the ideology of the local tribe. The locals become very unfriendly very quickly. This also occurs in the township of western nations but the townsfolk rarely react by getting a gun. Unfortunately such restraint is rare in countries that experience a lot of political conflict or economic distress. For some men, the ideology of protecting tribal needs is replaced by one that blames a segment of society and encourages a militant group (another type of tribe) to use violence against that bigger culprit.
If you wait until after you'd have a chance of winning. Just killing them off before you will be perceived as the "great satan" and just ease their recruiting task.
Are you kidding? The international bankers make commissions laundering money than any other single source of revenue. Half of that money is from drug sales. Do you think the US banks are going to give up $50,000,000,000 in annual profit (we are the world's largest money laundry, after all) just to prevent a little terrorism?
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
I'd like to comment on one specific part of your statement.
Re: "... the recruitment base (predominately young, educated, ideologically motivated but politically or economically disaffected men)"
From what I understand there are plenty of relatively uneducated recruits coming from the Arab world. They get a limited education via a madrassa and get recruited there. The phenomenon of educated recruits is, I believe, something we experience mostly in the developed world. And it happens there primarily because everyone is educated there.
Also, I understand there are a significant number of radicalized women being recruited in the Arab world as well. I'd be willing to believe still a minority of the total, but it's important enough to comment on.
Otherwise I mostly agree with your comments.
Interesting factette, courtesy of Wikipedia:
All that ended when the US and allies invaded in 2002. Since then, opium production has flourished.
mrxak is on of the very few posters on slashdot who actually understands Islam.
So we just kill anybody who might, someday, be a potential threat? And don't worry about collateral damage either?
We start doing that, and people with say, with some justification, that we are just a great bully. We start doing that and others will feel fully justified in attacking us in every possible way. Even our allies we snort that we are getting what we deserve.
This not like WW2 where we had soldiers fighting soldiers. We are not fighting a nation that can ever negotiate any kind of peace.
The more the US involves itself in mid-east affairs, the more they are motivated to attack the US. Nobody flew airplanes into building in Switzerland.
Mixing ethical considerations with political asessment in the same title? The article doesn't conclude that drone strikes "may be wrong", but rather that they may be counter-productive, and / or ineffective. We all (well, most of us, anyways) *already* know that these strikes may be, and in fact, are, "wrong".
Please Alquaedadian do something about this stupid argument!
Actually, it did work. Until we took the mines out of Haiphong harbor. Just as in Korea we were fighting China and Russia. Al Qaeda is funded by Iran and Saudi Arabia. England and France will soon fall due to demographics. The US is on its way to Hispanic majority. Then there is AGW, interesting times indeed.
How many innocent foreigners are you willing to sacrifice to save 1 US citizen?
All of them! What are you a hippie?
3000 people died in 9/11 and we've killed at least 100x that to prevent another attack. It seems just a tad over board to me.
Yep, you're a hippie.
So we just kill anybody who might, someday, be a potential threat? And don't worry about collateral damage either?
Nope - we kill those who ARE a threat; we just don't wait until they're such a huge threat that it takes millions of lives to defeat them.
Even our allies we snort that we are getting what we deserve.
No, a subset of the people who live in nations which are your allies and buy into the same "fuck america" bullshit that you do snort that you are getting what you deserve. Imagine that; ideologically identical people thinking the same way. Your actual allies, on the other hand, are generally on board with your policies. You make some dumb mistakes, of course, but no more than any other nation, and far fewer than most.
This not like WW2 where we had soldiers fighting soldiers. We are not fighting a nation that can ever negotiate any kind of peace.
Ah, so you think because we can never negotiate a peace, we shouldn't bother fighting. Interesting logic. I wonder what the 200 missing girls in Uganada would say about that reasoning.
I suppose by the same logic ... since we'll never eliminate crime, we may as well get rid of police, courts, and jails. You'll never win, so don't bother fighting it.
The more the US involves itself in mid-east affairs, the more they are motivated to attack the US. Nobody flew airplanes into building in Switzerland.
Totally. Everyone should just sit back and let the evil people do what they're going to do. Nobody ever got hurt while watching a rape, but if you try to intervene ... that's dangerous!