In this day an age we still perch men on top of mountains in

>>35150760
Because there will always be people bitching about "civilian casualties" in those regions of the the world. They make everything look bad so war is kept in a unfavorable viewpoint to the american people. Only true victory would be to wipe out two generations in the area and rebuild from there.

>>35151020
Yeah. That's not to say that civilian casualties don't happen, but just that no one should really give a shit. Then again the root of the problem really isn't even the people themselves, it's their religion. Inb4 calling me /pol/, I hate that fucking board.

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>>35152016
Who let them in?

>>35152037
Are you calling me a kike?

>>35150760
Because we have three options in Afghanistan:
1: Continue slowly losing as we have the past decade.
2: Kill literally everyone and watch as newly radicalized Muslims flock to ISIS and other trans-national groups.
3: Declare victory and leave.

Option 2 is stupid and option 3 is political suicide. So we will continue to continue in Afghanistan for the foreseeable future.

>>35150760
A drone can't conquer a country asshole.

>>35152533
LOL, if all the hype is to be believed we're not conquering anyone ,we are simply installing democracy in a shit stain country Doubt there will ever be a Walmart in kabul.

>>35152533
This is no different from ISAF

>>35150760
Democracies can't into war, especially ugly assymetric warfare. Leaders do not have the political courage and/or capital to do whatever needs to be done to win or gtfo, whatever they do will be undermined by their domestic opposition.

We used to be able to win those wars when it took 6 months to bring news back home and nobody gave a fuck about heathens anyway, nowadays a single fuck up makes the news.

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>>35153150
And even if leadership didn't suck, who the fuck wants to die for afghanistan and their rights to fuck little boys in the ass. Most people can't even explain what the fuck we're doing there.

This is how you do it but can't.

> In 1982 the regime of Syrian president Hafez al-Assad was on the point of being overwhelmed by the countrywide insurgency of the Muslim Brotherhood. al-Assad sent a division under his brother Rifaat to the city of Hama, known to be the center of the resistance.

> Following a counterattack by the Brotherhood, Rifaat used his heavy artillery to demolish the city, killing between ten and 25 thousand people, including many women and children. Asked by reporters what had happened, Hafez al-Assad exaggerated the damage and deaths, promoted the commanders who carried out the attacks, and razed Hama's well-known great mosque, replacing it with a parking lot.

> With the Muslim Brotherhood scattered, the population was so cowed that it would be years before opposition groups dared to disobey the regime again and, van Creveld argues, the massacre most likely saved the regime and prevented a bloody civil war.

>>35152068
I like the sound of number 2. Right now the problem is telling the "radicals" apart from the "peaceful muslims", not killing them. More hajjis just makes the job easier.

>>35153161
> Van Creveld condenses al-Assad's strategy into five rules:
> - There are situations in which cruelty is necessary, and refusing to apply necessary cruelty is a betrayal of the people who put you into power.
> - Once you decide to strike, it is better to kill too many than not enough. If another strike is needed, it reduces the impact of the first strike. Repeated strikes will also endanger the morale of the counterinsurgent troops.
> - Act as soon as possible. More lives will be saved by decisive action early, than by prolonging the insurgency.
> - Strike openly. Do not apologize, make excuses about "collateral damage", express regret, or promise investigations.
> - Do not command the strike yourself, in case it doesn't work for some reason and you need to disown your commander and try another strategy.
The goal isn't so much to kill the enemy, it is to demoralize them, make them give up any will to fight back.
Inb4 tooedgy4me, that's how every fight ends, when one side gives up.

>>35153161
>the massacre most likely saved the regime and prevented a bloody civil war.
Which is ironic since when they massacred protesters back during the Arab spring the country was pushed into a bloody civil war and the regime had to be saved by Russian and Iranian intervention.

>>35153199
It's too early to tell what was really going on with the arab spring, there was probably some fuckery afoot nobody is telling us about. You could also argue the civil war happened because he didn't strike hard enough.