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.'"

Comments

Correlation vs correlation

[SplatMan_DK]

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?

Re:Correlation vs correlation

[Simon Brooke]

You're not thinking at all, you're just emoting.

If you were thinking you would realise that drone strikes on a civilian population - on women, on children, on funerals, on weddings - recruit a thousand terrorists for every one they kill. Of course the CIA and the military promote this policy. More terrorists means more money for the CIA and the military, terrorism and counter-terrorism are inherently symbiotic. But foreign policy should not be dictated by the needs of inter-agency pissing matches in Washington DC.

Re:Correlation vs correlation

[fredrated]

Probably not, but that doesn't make it correct. The drone murder of innocent people, which has been widespread and widely reported, is the best recruiting strategy for terrorists money can buy. I fear that much more than not replacing replacable leaders.

Re:Correlation vs correlation

[r1348]

You're not the only one, but you're wrong. The "collateral damage" is effectively supplying terrorist organizations with unlimited manpower.
Cut their fundings instead, this might also lead to some surprising discoveries...

Re:Correlation vs correlation

[kilfarsnar]

You're not thinking at all, you're just emoting.

If you were thinking you would realise that drone strikes on a civilian population - on women, on children, on funerals, on weddings - recruit a thousand terrorists for every one they kill. Of course the CIA and the military promote this policy. More terrorists means more money for the CIA and the military, terrorism and counter-terrorism are inherently symbiotic. But foreign policy should not be dictated by the needs of inter-agency pissing matches in Washington DC.

Agreed, but it's not about pissing matches. It's about the ability to project power to get what you want, using those counter-terrorism and other agencies. It's also about using the blowback to demand ever more power. Hegelian Dialectic anyone?

The US's core policy of manipulating governments and societies in the Middle East to secure energy sources and stave off competitors isn't going to change any time soon. So the coercive tactics used in that policy likewise will not change. We'll just go on pissing off local populations, creating more terrorists, and treating it as a problem to be managed, like industrial waste.

I don't see the situation changing unless the US changes it's foreign policy, or the locals give up national pride and radical Islam.

Re:Correlation vs correlation

[AthanasiusKircher]

The bigger issue that no one wants to admit is that we are dealing lunatics and engaging them, is a mistake. During World War II, both Germany and Japan eventually admitted defeat and gave up. But that's because you were dealing with people who were somewhat rational.

Yep. 'Cause gathering up millions of people and mass murdering them is "somewhat rational" behavior. (Germany -- see "Concentration Camps") Or ordering thousands of soldiers to go on suicide missions, sometimes without any hint of success, and without any good evidence that it actually was a more successful strategy... very rational. (Japan -- see "Kamikaze") Or... well, isn't that enough for a start?

The people we are dealing with today are literally insane.

Yeah, I know. They are willing to blow themselves up in suicide attacks, and they don't even care about whether they take women or children with them. Oh wait... that sounds just like some of the things Germany and Japan did.

No amount of military action will ever convince them to quit.

No amount of military action convinced Hitler to quit -- when surrounded, he simply committed suicide, along with convincing a lot of others to do the same. As for Japan, well, the militarists who were basically running the show through much of the war would have never given in -- in fact, they staged a coup against the Emperor's wishes to surrender, taking over the Imperial Palace. Luckily, the surrender broadcast recording had been hidden, and once that was played on the radio, it was over.

There was a "whole lotta crazy" going on during WWII as well -- and it was only through superior military forces and intervention at the highest level of leaders (the general staff in Germany after the suicide of Hitler, the emperor himself in Japan, who had previously been less assertive in reining in the militarists) that they were "convinced to quit."

Re:Correlation vs correlation

[JohnnyComeLately]

Very good articulated and supported point which is valid, however, the targeting is no longer the guys with an idea. Meaning, 5 years ago you'd have targeted the emplacers (the guy with a shovel, or in your analogy, an idea). With time, the lesson was learned the effect was small and it is relatively ineffective. Now, you go up the chain and after those who enable others to become more effective. Let me give an example, let's say AQ has three targets in the US: A general officer, a private and an NCO (Non-Commissioned Officer).

Taking out the General is symbolic but has very little impact on the effectivness of the US Army. If you take out a private, there are 10-20 others identically trained and with similar levels of proficiency. However, the NCO leads several squads. The NCO is a trainer, mentor, coach, knowledge manager and adult babysitter.

Taking the NCO out has a real effect on the battlefield as General Officer orders may not get correctly implemented, new troops may not come up to speed (read: battle effective) as fast, etc.

So, the best target for having an effect on battle is the NCO. The US and NATO are not after the General or the Privates... yes if there's a target of opportunity, a real threat, and the RoE/LoAC allows, a shot is taken, but the active targeting is at the NCO level. I wish I could be more specific but I won't. Just as most of what you read in mainstream or see in the movies about computers, technology, etc is wrong, so is the supposed, "wanton carnage from UAVs bombing everyone." I spent 3 years watching hundreds of strikes and you couldn't even apply most of what I read here to the exceptions, much less the "norm." People read a few articles and suddenly are experts on tactical military operations 1/2 way around the world (ignoring the few who incorrectly refer to it as "strategic bombing").

Re:Correlation vs correlation

[Savage-Rabbit]

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?

The problem is that US has gone overboard with these 'decapitation strikes' (read: assassinations) and they are causing blowback. A further problem is that Al-Qaeda is highly resistant to this kind of strategy because it is just as much an idea as it is an organization and you cannot kill an idea with a drone strike or an M4 carbine. Because it is primarily an idea or a philosophy, Al-Quaeda operates more like a franchising company (or maybe like an MLM outfit) than a traditional guerrilla organization. In addition to a religious philosophy, Al-Quaeda provides information on bomb making, how to train, how to operate weapons and how to obtain them, how to communicate securely and how to evade security forces etc... People motivated by Al-Quaeda's message often form cells first and then contact the organization for support, not the other way around. Al-Quaeda will bankroll promising groups and operations but their control over these groups can be pretty limited. I've heard accounts of motivated 'Mujahideen' showing up in the Pakistani tribal country, seeking out al-Quaeda and 'pitching' operations to them like a Hollywood director would 'pitch' a movie script or a TV show to a studio. Decapitating al-Quaeda cells with drone strikes or special forces ops is like a never ending game of whack-a-mole because there is an endless supply of martyrs that are often recruited from the human 'collateral damage' of drone strikes. Even if the director of the CIA could snap with his fingers and every al-Quaeda fighter on earth would drop dead today the idea of al-Quaeda would live on and new cells would form and the 'war on terror' would continue tomorrow because, as I said before, you can't kill an idea.

Re:Correlation vs correlation

[aaarrrgggh]

The Allies won WWII because the US had substantial natural resources *and* industrial production capability that was not damaged in initial volleys. Guerrilla warfare is different, which is why using "shock and awe" or "invisible hand" get tricky.

Ultimately to defeat "terrorism," you need to create cultural ties to societies that "hate our freedom." (Gag!) Education is a strategy, as are religion, charity, entertainment, and simple brainwashing. Immigration seems to have some effect, but not much.

The goal should not be for everybody to be best buddies, but to at least tolerate each other with *mutual* respect. To that end, it seems like Americans are in much better need of education than whomever else.

Wait, so dropping bombs on people isn't working?

[terevos]

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.

Am I the only one

[kyldere]

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.

Maybe just get out of the middle east altogether?

[walterbyrd]

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."

Re:If you have the opportunity

[Anonymous Coward]

Using laughable intelligence from foreign powers and bad actors, using signature kills, and making errors that murder innocent civilians effectively turns a non-supportive population into a supportive population IS the problem. Your final solution will just create more opportunities for people to become supporters of the terrorists (and not the USian ones that are raining down death on everything remotely from thousands of miles away), so you're really suggesting genocide. Good luck with that.

Killing va remote control and video game interface

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

start shipping truck loads of money there

[alen]

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

Re:If you have the opportunity

[peragrin]

Nuke the site from orbit. It is the only way to be sure.

The article in the 2nd link is a joke

[Zontar_Thing_From_Ve]

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.

Garbage in Garbage out

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:If you have the opportunity

[Anonymous Coward]

Nuke the site from orbit. It is the only way to be sure.

Well, that would be rather harsh towards Maryland and Virginia, wouldn't it?

Re:Whats the alternative?

[Simulant]

IMHO,

Ultimately this is a culture war and will only be won over the long term. For starters we could push back against Saudi Arabia instead of coddling them. I don't see how anyone can expect to win a war against Islamic fundamentalist terror when the spiritual center of Islam is controlled by fundamentalists with unlimited funds from oil sales. We also need to promote a more equitable distribution of wealth, world wide. Poverty breeds violence, ignorance, and fundamentalists of many stripes.

We could quit behaving like hypocrites, ignoring blatant and obscene human rights abuses by our Islamic dictatorship "allies" because it's profitable in the short term.

We could quit pissing our pants at the thought of terrorism, accept that it may occasionally happen (as it always has), and carry on instead of over reacting. Islamic fundamentalist terrorism has never represented the existential threat to western society that some would have us believe. It may be a thorn in our side for quite some time but the pain and damage it inflicts is entirely absorbable.

We should quit using this pathetic war on terror as an excuse to destroy ourselves.

Anti-Drone arguments are so frequently flawed.

[Kelbear]

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!

Re:Anti-Drone arguments are so frequently flawed.

[david_thornley]

Look, the argument is that drone strikes aren't effective against terrorism, and the critics give reasons why. If correct, that means that drone strikes aren't working, and that we should look for other ideas. Suppose we were using voodoo dolls to attack terrorists, and somebody pointed out it didn't work. Would you then insist on using voodoo dolls until the guy came up with other ideas? Isn't it useful to know just that something isn't working? Is it sane and intelligent to do something that you know doesn't work because you don't get an alternative wrapped up like a present?

Re:If you have the opportunity

[bluefoxlucid]

Imagine you're at a wedding.

You have a Pakistani friend, nice girl. Moved here to get away from all this bullshit.

She invited two of her cousins. They have friends as well, who were invited. One of those friends is a suspected--but not proven--terrorist. He's on a list of people who may or may not be associated with a terrorist cell which may or may not exist and may or may not be associated with Al Qaeda.

A missile comes in. You're at the edge of the crowd, fortunately; you get scraped up a little, but you're fine. You find yourself surrounded by the wounded, by pieces of bodies. The mangled upper half of your cute Pakistani friend lies beside you, silent, bloody, almost unrecognizable. There's nothing left of the maybe-could-be-might-not-be-terrorist, of course: we got him.

This is the story of many. For many more, there is no story: they were too close.

Re:If you have the opportunity

[mfh]

If anything happened to Musk as of right now, Tesla would be divided and absorbed into the old model. He is a visionary and visionaries have to be protected like you protect the King in a game of chess. Look at what's happening to Apple.

Venture Capitalism for Terror

[Nidi62]

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?

Re:Maybe just get out of the middle east altogethe

[walterbyrd]

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

[Richy_T]

Of course it's a bureaucracy, it was created by the CIA.

Am I joking? I don't even know.

Geneva Conventions, whassat?

[ikhider]

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.

Re:If you have the opportunity

[Anonymous Coward]

Replace the word "terrorist" with "criminal" and see how absurd your argument is in the context of *BOMBING CIVILIANS*. No, the correct thing to do is to treat terrorists like the criminals they are, try them, and arrest them. The point isn't to end terrorism by capturing all the terrorists. It's to have a system of justice in place so (1) less people have a desire to become terrorists and (2) because it's just to have a justice system and unjust to just bomb civilians because one of the people may be a criminal.

Nah. We should start drone striking board rooms with CEOs in America. In America, the mere fear of being arrested for the white collar crimes you commit is so horrible and catastrophic to the organization--and all the other organizations which apparently also have CEOs guilty of white collar crimes--we must let the CEOs free and at most demand a percentage of their ill gotten gains from the corporation (with no admission of guilt). Organized crime on the other side of the planet gets a lot of collateral damage with bombs where they "try" not to kill civilians. Imagine if during Prohibition the fed had used car bombs against the mob. And, hell, the mob at times was more respectable than what we have today in corporate America.

Re:If you have the opportunity

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with this is in 10-20 years they too will have flying remote bombers and when they bomb our military and hit our civilians, they can legitimately claim, "Well that's what the US gets for hiding its military leaders within civilian populations." Don't doubt that what comes around will go around regarding this technology. And that is a scary thought.

Re:If you have the opportunity

[gweihir]

Well, the one thing the US has never understood is that basically all opposition it faces is because nobody likes a primitive bully. Rater obviously, pissing people off more is not the solution to make them less pissed-off. Killing a lot of innocents in a Goliath-like and completely unapologetic fashion makes the US the of of the least likable and least honorable nations on the planet, and that is saying quite something.

Re:If you have the opportunity

[Alioth]

That's no excuse for the drone attacks.

The young man in the (not really hypothetical, but real situation since it happened) is that he's now probably gone from a young man trying to just get on with life to an angry young man who now wants revenge against the United States and is thinking of joining a terror group. You may have or may not have killed a terrorist off in your drone attack, but you've almost certainly turned a lot of not-particularly-bothered-about-the-US young men into angry young men now out for revenge and liable to become terrorists.

Drone attacks are also extremely cowardly. People perfectly safe sitting in bunkers thousands of miles away attacking wedding parties is cowardly. Cowardly and unproductive. If you're going to kill people at least have the valour to do it while facing them.

Re:If you have the opportunity

[JohnnyComeLately]

You're pretty close which is good considering the lack of credible information available in this article, and in general on /. The drone strikes don't get a few henchmen and one or two leaders. Are leaders targeted? Absolutely. However, the real push is to get the people who have an __EFFECT__ on the battlefield. If killing bad guy A leaves an organization, which has a deputy, without a leader, but killing bad guy B eliminates a guy who trains 10 others every week how to create bombs, then guy B get's the prioritized assets (an armed, eye in the sky escort if you will). The author of this cited article doesn't really understand who's targeting and who's effectively taken out. I don't know if it's because a university researcher stateside doesn't/won't have a need-to-know and the clearance to review SIGINT, HUMINT, and other intellegence on the effects of UAV strikes. I can say her stated conclusions are detached from reality.

Re:If you have the opportunity

[Anonymous Coward]

The US has only performed strategic bombing twice, and it was back in WWII over Japan. Nuclear bombs are strategic. A GBU dropped from a Predator, Reaper, of manned fighter is tactical bombing.

This is completely wrong.
Strategic bombing was employed extensively in WWII.
When you bomb factories, worker populations, or rail and transportation networks, that is strategic bombing.
When you bomb the enemy units directly engaged with your units, that is tactical bombing.

Strategic bombing was the bombing of choice for particularly the British Air command in WW2 and used extensively by the United States as well. We also did tactic bombing of course, but it was quite an argument at the time of which was preferred.

I'm sure additional examples from other conflicts can be provided as well, but to suggest that strategic bombing strictly implies nuclear weapons is false.

Missing the (well, a) point

[Ghostworks]

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.

Re:If you have the opportunity

[mrxak]

You really think they wouldn't use those weapons regardless? Their religion tells them to kill the infidels, not just the infidels' military. They're following a warlord prophet who slaughtered and raped his way across the whole middle east. Either you convert or you're enslaved or you die. I don't want to convert and I don't want to be a slave, I imagine you don't want to be either, so it's kill or be killed.

We didn't start this war, let's not forget, and I certainly don't want us to have to commit genocide to end it. But they are intent on wiping us out, and there is no peace to be made since their ideology is directly opposed to our ideology. They cannot permit us to exist. They are like communism, or fascism before that. They are an existential threat that cannot be reasoned with. All we can hope for is the secular muslims to gain enough power and numbers so they stop being afraid of the fundamentalist elements of their religion, and police their own. Until they do that, we have to defend ourselves. That means killing terrorists. Sometimes those terrorists hide among civilians. Do we want to tell them that if they do that, we won't ever fight them? Do we want to tell them that we have no stomach for this conflict, and they can take hostages, and blow up civilians, and we'll just surrender?

Let's also not just take their word for it either, when they claim civilians were killed in a drone strike. They have every reason to lie, and they've been caught falsifying evidence before.

Re:If you have the opportunity

[Jmc23]

Wow, you sure have a lot of unfounded beliefs for someone who is a proponent of Science.

Re:The Air Force never wins wars. Film at 11.

[davester666]

not trying to win. we are working hard trying to boost their ranks via drone strikes on homes and funerals with a bunch of collateral damage, so there are a lot more younger people with a big grudge against the US and nothing better to do than join an organization that can do something about it.

Re:If you have the opportunity

[david_thornley]

Strategic bombing contributed materially to the defeat of Germany, if only from the resources Germany used opposing strategic bombing. It wasn't possible against Japan until the decisive naval battle had already been fought and won by the US, but the nukes appear to have given the Japanese a way to surrender without losing too much face. It took a lot of resources, but it wasn't until late in 1944 that the Western Allies could have used those resources more directly against German forces.

It's only going to work in a total war situation against a defined enemy relying on a functioning modern economy, and it would only really be worthwhile if there was a strategic barrier (like the English Channel) that prevented more direct use of airpower. Nowadays, you have to add in "against a non-nuclear power", so it's not real useful anymore except for providing a credible second-strike capability, and missiles are better at that.

Re:If you have the opportunity

[mrxak]

It won't take genocide to win the war. It will take a lot of deaths, but considering they want to wipe out everyone who doesn't follow islam, we should at least acknowledge the stakes.

There are secular muslims. Just like there's secular people in every religion and society. There are cultural muslims just like there are those who put up Christmas trees and talk about Easter bunnies but don't go to church every Sunday. Not everyone in muslim countries is convinced they should slaughter the infidels as their prophet commands. The problem is, those secular muslims are terrified of the practicing muslims, and for good reason. You don't dare speak out against jihad, call yourself an atheist, or suggest that maybe mohammed wasn't right about absolutely everything.

So long as we can prevent nuclear weapons from falling into the hands of the fundamentalists, I'm actually pretty optimistic that this war can be won with a minimum of bloodshed (and by minimum, I think back to the minimum of bloodshed it took to defeat fascism or communism in the last century). The world is becoming more and more interconnected. I certainly believe that, given a real choice, everyone would rather live in a westernized democracy than a fundamentalist theocracy where you can be executed for your beliefs or speaking your mind. The more they know about us, the more they will want to be like us. It's just a matter of getting our message, our ideology, out there for people to hear it.

But, in the meantime, we do need to wage the war that they declared on us. We need to do so with all the tools at our disposal, recognizing that there are, indeed, secular and cultural muslims that would support our ideology if given the opportunity to do so, and can be allies against the fundamentalists in the long term. Killing those individuals would be a mistake. But don't for a second think a lot of those individuals are hanging out with terrorist leaders.

Re:If you have the opportunity

[whistlingtony]

His scenario happens all the time. It's not rare at all. And it's a small village! You hang out with who you hang out with. If they ARE militants, they have guns and men. Are you going to stand up to them? Hell no.

You need to read more. Vice has some excellent videos from the ground over there. Check 'em out on Youtube.

Re:If you have the opportunity

[mrxak]

I believed very much as you do, once. But after seeing how terrorist leaders tend to be more affluent than most, and the foot soldiers come from every economic background, I wanted to find out for myself the actual causes of jihad.

So I'll ask you, have you bought into a narrative? Have you done your own research or are you just listening to what others tell you? Have you read the qur'an and hadith, and the writings of islamic scholars who have studied islamic scripture? Seriously, go do your own studying of the issue and reach your own conclusions. I was surprised by what I found and you will be too.

I am not advocating genocide, here. I recognize that there are secular muslims who do pay only lip service to islam to prevent from getting killed by those who do more than just pay lip service. I would much rather empower them and make them our allies. But I don't think we should do nothing while the fundamentalists are killing us. This is a war that mohammed himself declared on all non-believers, and there will be no peace negotiation because the only acceptable end to them is the extermination of our way of life and all who oppose them. Again, not everyone who calls themselves a muslim thinks that way, but those who don't are considered heretics and the terrorists want to kill them too.

Re:The Air Force never wins wars. Film at 11.

[krashnburn200]

It's called planning ahead.
someone has to figure out how to keep the funding up and get the patriot act made permanent.