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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.'"
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 who finds this article comparing terrorist orginizations to (US) corporations darkly humorous? ... Maybe I just haven't had enough coffee this morning.
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.
Nuke the site from orbit. It is the only way to be sure.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
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?
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.
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!
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.
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.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
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."
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.