>When the topic of conversation came around to ways of defeating

What isn't working?

>>28930829
>>'Oh yeah, we killed that guy last month, and we're getting more IEDs than ever.'

>>28930835
Right, depending on the structure of an organization targeted assassinations vary in effectiveness. But there are a lot of factors that go into the decision making process that eventually ends in the death of an aggressor. I think the proper question to ask here would be do we have the right tools to deal with the widest possible set of circumstances possible or are we putting all our eggs in one basket?

>>28930872
>we need more technology
thanks lockheed

I feel like what is actually needed is something that is not palatable to western society; and no I'm not talking about hurrrr just kill them all lol. But defeating an insurgency takes time, about a generation in fact. You have to have control of the entire area of operation. You can't just do seek and destroy shit, it doesn't work. It essentially takes a police state that controls all urban areas and controls education and utilities of the people for their own sake. If we could occupy all urban areas with like multilateral divisions for the next 25 years we could probably crush Isis and any other piss ant Islamist shit. But it would be hell on earth. Cops/soldiers would get killed in the streets and there would be shootouts all the time until weapons cache's dried up.

>>28930905
if you stop killing people they're not as likely to attack you

>>28930817
If we keep killing them and it always results in someone younger and smarter, eventually we will have easily impressionable children who can design spaceships to send them all off planet. Immense logical issues with that line of thought.

Violence has solved more conflicts than any other tool in history. The problem we are having now is we aren't fighting a war, we're fighting a cute police action. Anytime you stop with conventional warfare and start with all this asymmetrical BS of course you have problems. These guys don't get their supplies and personnel off magic jihad trees in the desert. It's nation-state funding we just don't have the will to go after, just like we didn't burn down Hanoi and Beijing during Vietnam. If you persist in fighting war with rules like it's some game, don't be surprised when everyone has a shot at winning.

>>28930984
>Violence has solved more conflicts than any other tool in history.
>>'Oh yeah, we killed that guy last month, and we're getting more IEDs than ever.'
clearly not

>>28930984

>If you persist in fighting war with rules like it's some game, don't be surprised when everyone has a shot at winning.

Imma steal this.

>>28931123
>>28930984
but they're not fighting by any rules

>killing terrorists
>not stripping them naked, getting a gay stripper to give them a lap dance, and recording the whole thing on tape
Seriously. We can do better than this.

>>28931136
the military is not about your erotic fantasies

>>28931156
You've never heard of blackmail, have you?

>>28931000
We could ask the Carthaginians how effective violence is. I wonder what happened to those guys...

>>28931200
>>'Oh yeah, we killed that guy last month, and we're getting more IEDs than ever.'

>>28931123
You're literally retarded, every war has political constraints dictate rules. Stop living in a fantasy land of masturbating over how efficiently weapons can kill people

>>28930817
Why don't we stop fighting in the middle east for once in a century?

bloody oil
i hate the shitty stuff
fuck the Rothschilds "Royal Dutch Shell", the Rockerfeller's "Standard" and the Saudi sunnavabitches

anyway, you stop the insurgency by stopping the need for insurgency e.g. placate them with xboxes, marxist dreams and porno

>>28931223
the USA is not in the Middle East to get oil

the USA gets its oil from its own production, Canada, the Gulf of Mexico, Venezuela, and some really horrible dictatorships in West Africa

The USA is in the Middle East to control everyone elses supply
An American finger on the spigot of supply grants an unstated defacto veto power over the policies and decisions of industrial nations
And also as a secondary concern the wealth to be made extracting it

>>28930817
>'[O]nce you knock them off, a day later you have a new guy who's smarter, younger, more aggressive and is out for revenge.'"

Keep killing them until the new guy isn't even born yet.

Read some David Kilcullen

Theory of competitive control.

IMO we need to run occupations more feudal lords. Dole out rewards to our friends and punishment to our enemies. Stop building schools and hospitals for people who hate us, and build them as a reward for our allies.
Build a reputation worldwide as a great friend and a terrible enemy.

>>28931376
>implying middle east production or lack of doesn't have an effect worldwide.

>implying euros have any kind of force projection beyond their own borders.

The US is not prepared for the level of wholesale slaughter required to actually solve this problem.

The logistics of literally killing every man, woman, and child in an entire nation is more feasible than "stopping terrorism". You can't kill an ideology.

>>28930905
>what is the U.S occupation of the Philippines

>>28930817
Just keep killing them. They'll run out of new guys eventually, even if the entire region dies in the process. Oh well, it's not like they were insurgents or anything.

>>28930971
If you kill the people that are attacking you its impossible for them to continue doing so

We weren't attacking anyone when the twin towers were attacked but it happened none the less

>>28930817
Drone strikes are working, it's just that their purpose was never to eliminate terrorism, it is to keep the threat at a manageable level in a politically sustainable(low expenditures and casualties)way.

You'll probably take issue with the manageable part, but it doesn't really matter that there's ten new guys in place of the one killed, or that each of them is a Sun Tzu, if all they can do is plant more IEDs. It's the temporary disruption of the chain of command that matters, you can't just replace your leaders in a instant.

>>28931706
But it is engaged in wholesale slaughter

>>28931825
They weren't before you started bombing

>>28931201

More IEDs scattered out of frustration isn't nearly as bad as an organized IED effort that the last group was doing.

>>28932002
If people are attacking you because you kill them its impossible for you to say they're to blame

>we weren't attacking anyone when the twin towers were attacked but it happened none the less

What do people in Afghanistan and Pakistan and Iraq and Yemen and Somalia and Syria have so to so with that?
Is it collective punishment?

>>28932349
Bombing didn't start till the terrorist attacked

>>28932354

Especially since without careful planning by their leaders we have an easier time finding IED factories.

>>28932153
It is not working
It is increasing terrorism
You don't manage something by making it worse

>>28932363
The people in those countries are part of an organization that reaches past boarders, they are being targeted for that involvement, it doesn't matter who's country they reside in

>>28932354
I they're scattered randomly then they wouldn't have much chance of being encountered
If they're seeing more then its a concerted effort

>>28932366
Bin Laden cited American aggression

And was trained in terrorism by America

>>28932399
>its a central organisation
Top kek

>>28932380
>It is increasing terrorism
In the long term. No one gives a shit about the long term. What matters to the people that order these strikes is that the guys who were plotting attacks are now dead and no American soldiers died in the process.

>>28932399
>they are being targeted
Because the drones are incredibly vague and imprecise, it is described as trying view through a straw, and very gung ho attitudes are taken interpreting poorly visible actions, and then there are the lifestyle patterns used to confirm guilt for people they don't even know the names of
And then there are people targeted as a tit for tat retaliation because the Pakistani ISI detained a CIA agent
And then there are the people targeted because local tribes in conflict are sobbing one another in to the Americans to use them to carry out hits
And then there's people named because a warlord wants a cash bounty and will have over some random shmuck to get it

>>28932457
>guys plotting attacks
They think
They are often simply targeting a SIM card or someone who has checked off sufficient "lifestyle patterns"

>>28932439
But Americans weren't attacking them as has been asserted, they struck first and caused the drones to start being used

>>28932447
They are all terrorist doing the same things, thier ideology or names can be different but the result is the same, they are all the enemy (by there choice)

>>28932473
So?

>>28932457
>in the long term
>and no American soldiers died in the process
Do you remember the original quote?
>'Oh yeah, we killed that guy last month, and we're getting more IEDs than ever.'
And the original question?
At what point does the military stop and say maybe this isn't working?
You're that guy.
That guy that keeps doing it and doesn't see its not working.

>>28932495
The Pharmaceutical factory
Helping Israel

And you still haven't explained out it gives cart blanche to just go around bombing anyone you feel.
You speak of 'they' as a single monolithic entity

>They are all terrorist doing the same things, thier ideology or names can be different but the result is the same, they are all the enemy (by there choice)

Well no it does matter because they're not connected and they're being encouraged by what you so

>So?
So its not working, so its targeting the wrong people, so its making a lot of people madder and angrier and wanting to fight who didnt before, so what, so why is that important, so how can that have consequences, so?

>>28932529
It is working

What isn't working? Rich people getting richer, poor people getting poorer. Its not a bug, its a feature.

>>28932485
Yeah, they are. That's an issue of methodology though. And though the method is flawed, the alternative is to put boots on the ground to verify strike targets 100% accurately, and that costs money and possibly American lives. Which is why you fire a missile at a SIM card instead. Because it's cheap and low risk.

>>28932496
>'Oh yeah, we killed that guy last month, and we're getting more IEDs than ever.'
God you really like that quote. So what of it? There would be IEDs anyway, IEDs are all they can do, who doesn't expect IEDs in fucking Afghanistan? The number of attempts at armed retaliation in Afghanistan is not a viable measure of success or failure, and you are deluding yourself if you're thinking there's any sort of military solution to that problem.

>That guy that keeps doing it and doesn't see its not working.
What does it even mean that "it's not working"? In order to even consider if something is working, you first need to ask yourself what its objective is. And no, decreasing terrorism as an occurence is not, and never was, the purpose of drone strikes.

the idea that the old guy is always replaced by a new guy who is smarter is what immediately makes me throw this observation in the trash.

Not only is it improbable in my view (experiential intelligence is mostly acquired by age; we don't push for 20 year old to be generals for a reason), but it also just makes no statistical sense. You simply can't assume that everyone in the new generation is smarter than the old generation.

You kill the leader, you disrupt chain of command, you make them roll the dice on their next leader, and overall you reduce the willingness of people to head up these groups if you can do it well enough, which is important because previously these douchebags were the ones with a great deal of immunity, raising up women, children, and young men to go blow themselves away for their false movement.

We can't do hearts and minds super-effectively because their culture really can't get over corruption and a monarchical attitude yet.

We can't do total war because that's immoral and even if we don't care the rest of the world does.

We can't embargo them like the iranians because they aren't a national entity.

We can't let them alone because ISIS.

We can't counter-revolution because again people bitch about our regime-change past and the heartless despots we end up propping up if we go that route.

To be perfectly honest the only thing we could really do otherwise is land a bunch of troop ships and offer to cart off any able-bodied person who wants a steady job and then employ them as field workers here in america - but we don't even need that many field workers; it would just be a massive welfare program in disguise. the whole region is poisoned by oil dependence and now that the barrel price isn't going up any more we've had nothing but revolution and bloodshed, because young men are going nuts in an extremely conservative patriarchal culture, unable to make the money to get themselves ahead in life.

So we done them.

>>28932689
To be fair I think the spirit of the comment is that the old guy is replaced with someone who innovates, or otherwise learns from what has happened before him.

Still I agree with you that it's not the new generation that comes into command, rather they are the lieutenants and field operatives replacing former bombers with more effective bombing techniques.

Personally I say let them kill each other till it sorts itself out, most terrorism is directed at other arab muslims anyway so it's no skin off my back. Additionally the frequency of mass terror attacks in the states just isn't enough to scare me, we've had more deaths from domestic anarchist terrorists prior to 9/11 than foreign muslim ones since.

of course this is just, like, my opinion, man.

>>28930984
>Violence has solved more conflicts than any other tool in history.
In that it always forces both sides to the bargaining table, where diplomacy happens, yeah.

>>28932689
>We can't do hearts and minds super-effectively
That sure as hell is true.

It's like American's can't figure out that standing around with a boot on someone's neck, and casually treating them like shit, isn't going to endear them to them.

>>28931132
Of course we're fighting by rules. We go into these nations and engage in street to street fighting against savages. This is practically the only way they can hurt us. We know damn well they are being supplied by organizations and nations, and if we killed what was supporting them, they would just shrivel up and die. Terrorists don't fund themselves sufficiently to fight first world nations selling f'ing camels. The fact of the matter is, no one wants to take out the nations supplying them.

>>28931200
Exactly. Nice to know someone here has a good grasp of history. As many have said "Rome and Carthage had a permanent peace."

>>28931201
Anecdotal testimony doesn't prove anything, and for the reason I stated earlier, this is total logical fallacy. There is no possible way that you can keep killing people and they just keep getting more competent and well armed. That doesn't even make sense.

>>28932349
Islam has been at war with the west for well over a thousand years and nearly obliterated it several times. There is absolutely no need to feel empathy towards a bunch of sociopathic savages.

>>28933488
Violence is the only thing these people understand. Diplomacy and kindness are weakness to be exploited. See what they do to all those kind young ladies taking them in in Sweden.

>>28930817

A better option would be to leave their leaders in place, so that the leadership has a chance to get in pissing contests with eachother and waste their resources on stupid hoarding shit.