(06-18-2014 09:45 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  

(06-18-2014 09:26 PM)NIU007 Wrote:  It's true you can't fight them the same way, but we don't have a good answer to any other way to fight. Nor does any other country anywhere on the globe - when they're fighting overseas. Bombing areas essentially indiscriminately will cause more uproar and reaction in the country you're fighting in which will cancel out any gain you got from taking out a couple buildings with 10 insurgents and 50 civilians. Sure you can point out a couple guys dressed like civilians that you are pretty sure are the enemy but it doesn't help much to kill a couple of them - that's what they're doing now. To kill all of them, it's like taking out a yard's worth of ants - you'd have to nuke the entire area.

Why all the talk about "indiscriminately"? Who said anything about "indiscriminately"? There's a huge wide gulf between "indiscriminately" and "you can't shoot until after they shoot first." Somewhere in between those two extremes is where I'm talking about.

If you think the alternative to what we have been doing over there is indiscriminate bombing, then I'm sorry but you don't understand what we've been doing.

Okay, "indiscriminately" was the wrong word, and I realize what you're talking about is between that and being gun-shy until somebody shoots at you. The point remains, there are few concentrations of enemy forces that you can bomb without having a high ratio of civilians to enemy combatants killed.

(06-18-2014 09:56 PM)EagleX Wrote:  

(06-18-2014 09:49 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  What's a win? Bad guys all dead. Kill them until they get tired of dying. I don't think the boundaries as they exist now allow the ideal either. But 1) this isn't about ideal, it's about good enough, and 2) winning isn't defined in terms of boundaries. This isn't western Europe.

Indeed. the only possible hangup is that we're talking about radical Islamists, for whom their promised afterlife (also, like their living society, simultaneously sexist and sexually repressed -- which is a pretty neat trick) is infinitely preferable to their miserable existence in the mortal's world.
Islam, as it turns out, is a religion that only appeals to people that don't have very much to lose in the first place.

This is definitely true of the guys at the bottom who actually do the dirty work. It's not so true of the guys at the top who fund these deals. We don't focus enough on cutting off the heads of the snakes. That should be our objective. Not occupying territory, not winning their hearts and minds, not establishing democracy, but killing the bastards at the top.

(06-18-2014 10:00 PM)NIU007 Wrote:  

(06-18-2014 09:45 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  

(06-18-2014 09:26 PM)NIU007 Wrote:  It's true you can't fight them the same way, but we don't have a good answer to any other way to fight. Nor does any other country anywhere on the globe - when they're fighting overseas. Bombing areas essentially indiscriminately will cause more uproar and reaction in the country you're fighting in which will cancel out any gain you got from taking out a couple buildings with 10 insurgents and 50 civilians. Sure you can point out a couple guys dressed like civilians that you are pretty sure are the enemy but it doesn't help much to kill a couple of them - that's what they're doing now. To kill all of them, it's like taking out a yard's worth of ants - you'd have to nuke the entire area.

Why all the talk about "indiscriminately"? Who said anything about "indiscriminately"? There's a huge wide gulf between "indiscriminately" and "you can't shoot until after they shoot first." Somewhere in between those two extremes is where I'm talking about.

If you think the alternative to what we have been doing over there is indiscriminate bombing, then I'm sorry but you don't understand what we've been doing.

Okay, "indiscriminately" was the wrong word, and I realize what you're talking about is between that and being gun-shy until somebody shoots at you. The point remains, there are few concentrations of enemy forces that you can bomb without having a high ratio of civilians to enemy combatants killed.

. . . especially when they hide in residential areas . . . And mosques. Cowards.

and what do mean by "gun shy". He was describing the rules of engagement, a violation of which will get you a ticket to Leavenworth.

(06-18-2014 10:00 PM)NIU007 Wrote:  Okay, "indiscriminately" was the wrong word, and I realize what you're talking about is between that and being gun-shy until somebody shoots at you. The point remains, there are few concentrations of enemy forces that you can bomb without having a high ratio of civilians to enemy combatants killed.

That's true. And guess what, as long as human shields work, they'll keep using them. Once they know that we're not going to let collateral damage stop us from killing a bin Laden or Mullah Omar grade target, guess what, human shields will go out of style.

(06-18-2014 10:03 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  

(06-18-2014 09:56 PM)EagleX Wrote:  

(06-18-2014 09:49 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  What's a win? Bad guys all dead. Kill them until they get tired of dying. I don't think the boundaries as they exist now allow the ideal either. But 1) this isn't about ideal, it's about good enough, and 2) winning isn't defined in terms of boundaries. This isn't western Europe.

Indeed. the only possible hangup is that we're talking about radical Islamists, for whom their promised afterlife (also, like their living society, simultaneously sexist and sexually repressed -- which is a pretty neat trick) is infinitely preferable to their miserable existence in the mortal's world.
Islam, as it turns out, is a religion that only appeals to people that don't have very much to lose in the first place.

This is definitely true of the guys at the bottom who actually do the dirty work. It's not so true of the guys at the top who fund these deals. We don't focus enough on cutting off the heads of the snakes. That should be our objective. Not occupying territory, not winning their hearts and minds, not establishing democracy, but killing the bastards at the top.

um, we did. there was always another bastard to take his place.

I refuse to concede the argument that Iraq was handled until Obama, either intentionally or through incompetence, phucked it up.

We didn't let collateral damage stop us from OBL.

(06-18-2014 10:06 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  

(06-18-2014 10:00 PM)NIU007 Wrote:  Okay, "indiscriminately" was the wrong word, and I realize what you're talking about is between that and being gun-shy until somebody shoots at you. The point remains, there are few concentrations of enemy forces that you can bomb without having a high ratio of civilians to enemy combatants killed.

That's true. And guess what, as long as human shields work, they'll keep using them. Once they know that we're not going to let collateral damage stop us from killing a bin Laden or Mullah Omar grade target, guess what, human shields will go out of style.

I don't think we've let collateral damage get in the way of those high level targets. We generally have better intelligence on them just because we focus on them. And if we know where those guys are we can send in more targeted attacks. If we bomb a building with high level targets in it with a bunker-busting bomb we might never know if we got them, since there won't be much left to identify.

(06-18-2014 10:07 PM)EagleX Wrote:  

(06-18-2014 10:03 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  This is definitely true of the guys at the bottom who actually do the dirty work. It's not so true of the guys at the top who fund these deals. We don't focus enough on cutting off the heads of the snakes. That should be our objective. Not occupying territory, not winning their hearts and minds, not establishing democracy, but killing the bastards at the top.

um, we did. there was always another bastard to take his place.

So you keep killing them until they run out of bastards. What actually happens is that once you establish your willingness to do that, they lose interest in being bastards. Nobody likes to die.

Quote:I refuse to concede the argument that Iraq was handled until Obama, either intentionally or through incompetence, phucked it up.

You don't have to concede that argument to me because I'm not making it. Iraq was screwed up when we went in with less than overwhelming force and not intending to win, before we had finished the job in Afghanistan, which took too long because we went in there with less than overwhelming force without intending to win. Obama inherited a mess and continued to make a mess.

(06-18-2014 10:08 PM)Machiavelli Wrote:  We didn't let collateral damage stop us from OBL.

Killing OBL and kiling Mullah Omar should have been our two primary objectives from day one. And once they were dead, killing whatever bastards replaced them should have become our primary objectives.

There's a story that made the rounds, and I had it confirmed by a source that I consider to be reliable, that we had drone shots at OBL and/or Mullah Omar in the first week of the war, but passed them up because the duty legal officer objected on the grounds that excess collateral damage would result. I said then that if I had been the Pentagon duty officer, my response would have been, "Sentry, arrest that officer. If he resists, kill him. Open fire."

(06-18-2014 10:17 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  

(06-18-2014 10:07 PM)EagleX Wrote:  

(06-18-2014 10:03 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  This is definitely true of the guys at the bottom who actually do the dirty work. It's not so true of the guys at the top who fund these deals. We don't focus enough on cutting off the heads of the snakes. That should be our objective. Not occupying territory, not winning their hearts and minds, not establishing democracy, but killing the bastards at the top.

um, we did. there was always another bastard to take his place.

So you keep killing them until they run out of bastards. What actually happens is that once you establish your willingness to do that, they lose interest in being bastards. Nobody likes to die.

Quote:I refuse to concede the argument that Iraq was handled until Obama, either intentionally or through incompetence, phucked it up.

You don't have to concede that argument to me because I'm not making it. Iraq was screwed up when we went in with less than overwhelming force and not intending to win, before we had finished the job in Afghanistan, which took too long because we went in there with less than overwhelming force without intending to win. Obama inherited a mess and continued to make a mess.

Blah, blah, yes. Killing killing. Got it. Not disputing it.

people that see these things as separate wars looking at it incorrectly, I think. They are battles in the GWoT.

anyway, "nation building" may have been out of the question in Afghanistan, since it had to be bombed UP to the Stone Age. Perhaps the goal should have been to just make the rubble bounce to the extent that it made it impossible for al quada to use it as a safe haven.

the bushies were in the process of changing strategies in the run up to the election -- in fact, the counter insurgency plan that the obamites implemented was a primarily a product of the bushies. not that it matters a great deal at this point.

Iraq was a relatively modern country, and had a chance. AND, it was flatly won until the Obamites childishly knocked over the game board.

(06-18-2014 10:08 PM)Machiavelli Wrote:  We didn't let collateral damage stop us from OBL.

I didn't consider killing anyone in his retinue to be "collateral".

You've hit on a big problem there. We don't have a counter-insurgency strategy. We still try to fight WWII against these people.

(06-18-2014 10:32 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  You've hit on a big problem there. We don't have a counter-insurgency strategy. We still try to fight WWII against these people.

david petraeus would be surprised by that statement -- if he ever came out from under his biographer's skirt . . .

(06-18-2014 08:45 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  

(06-18-2014 02:18 PM)I45owl Wrote:  

(06-18-2014 11:51 AM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  No way we stay there without a SOFA agreement. That would be an impossible situation.

Right. So the only valid criticism of Obama with regards to keeping troops there is whether he tried hard enough our could have gotten the Iraqis to pass the SOFA, and it's likely that there's no way that he nor Maliki could've pushed it through no matter how hard they tried. From there, it's Maliki's misuse of power that paved the way for ISIS.

No, he could have said, "We're going to win this war instead of playing for a tie," or he could have said, "This war is not worth winning, so we are bringing everybody home immediately." Either approach would have been better than basically continuing to play for a tie. Because wars don't end in ties. They end one of two ways--you win or you surrender. And leaving without winning is surrendering. So if you're going to surrender anyway, might as well go ahead and do it and get it over with.

Statement by the President on Afghanistan | The White House

http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-offi...fghanistan Wrote:I think Americans have learned that it’s harder to end wars than it is to begin them.  Yet this is how wars end in the 21st century -- not through signing ceremonies, but through decisive blows against our adversaries, transitions to elected governments, security forces who take the lead and ultimately full responsibility.  We remain committed to a sovereign, secure, stable, and unified Afghanistan.  And toward that end, we will continue to support Afghan-led efforts to promote peace in their country through reconciliation.  We have to recognize that Afghanistan will not be a perfect place, and it is not America’s responsibility to make it one.  The future of Afghanistan must be decided by Afghans.  But what the United States can do -- what we will do -- is secure our interests and help give the Afghans a chance, an opportunity to seek a long, overdue and hard-earned peace.

I think what was missing from his statement is that his plan to withdraw from Afghanistan conformed to the US election cycle and his departure from office. The fact is that wars in the 21st century don't end with all of that lofty ideal crap. They end on the US election cycle.

(06-18-2014 08:39 PM)EagleX Wrote:  but . . . ISIS didn't exist until Obama dicked the dog in Syria and Iraq simultaneously. ISIS would have never existed if Obama had not dicked the dog in Syria and Iraq.

this blood is on your hands. you people should grow up for once, and accept responsibility for the consequence of your actions.

Here, I disagree with you. ISIS has existed for a while in various forms, but really gained its strength in Syria with the power vacuum among the rebel groups. Obama wanted to throw support in to the rebels - he wanted to but not badly. What has happened in the absence of that is that the Saudis funded Salafists and Qatar funded the Muslim Brotherhood and al Qaeda groups, roughly in equal numbers. Rebels flocked to the groups with money and success, and that was generally ISIS. i heard discussion this morning that ISIS may be the first terror group that is self-funding, through criminal activities, oil revenue, and now bank robbery.

(06-18-2014 09:22 PM)NIU007 Wrote:  

(06-18-2014 08:19 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  

(06-18-2014 07:47 PM)I45owl Wrote:  

(06-18-2014 04:22 PM)NIU007 Wrote:  ... you don't know who the bad guys are. Intelligence can help some but you probably need at least some help from the populace. Which you will not get if you just killed their relatives. There's always going to be collateral damage, but I think there's a tipping point.

Those societies - in general - don't function with people giving information on their peers to foreigners. They operate out of fear of what their government or opponents will do if they don't get that information. They don't give up al Qaeda because they're afraid of what al Qaeda will do to them if they betray al Qaeda. They don't withhold information because someone's big fat al Qaeda wedding got ruined. That doesn't help, but fear is a bigger motivator.

They know that al-Qaeda will kill them if they tell, but we won't kill them if they don't tell. Guess what, they don't tell. Duh.

They will tell - if Al Qaeda starts killing their relatives and the US didn't kill their relatives. Once some of the tribes realized how bad Al Qaeda was they started informing on them.

This is spoken by someone that trusts in the rule of law, which has never existed in that particular part of the world. I think those that informed learned their lesson the hard way that the US could not protect them from the Taliban.

(06-18-2014 09:32 PM)Machiavelli Wrote:  I don't think Owl's scenario is realistic either. Much easier said then done. I've said it before and I'll say it again. We have no easy solutions over there.

Actually, there is a well worn model for solving the situation there. That's the one whereby Sadaam would send troops in chemical warfare gear through the streets of Shiite cities after years of sanctions and inspections had eroded his chemical weapons capabilities, but he kept enough ambiguity over his capabilities that no-one could be sure. It's the Assad model where troops use Sarin and Barrel bombs against civilian populations. That's how countries like Syria and Iraq are controlled (not to mention systematic rape and torture).

But, I agree insofar as we don't really have easy solutions.

(06-19-2014 12:43 AM)I45owl Wrote:  Here, I disagree with you. ISIS has existed for a while in various forms, but really gained its strength in Syria with the power vacuum among the rebel groups. Obama wanted to throw support in to the rebels - he wanted to but not badly. What has happened in the absence of that is that the Saudis funded Salafists and Qatar funded the Muslim Brotherhood and al Qaeda groups, roughly in equal numbers. Rebels flocked to the groups with money and success, and that was generally ISIS. i heard discussion this morning that ISIS may be the first terror group that is self-funding, through criminal activities, oil revenue, and now bank robbery.

They've all existed in various forms for a long time. It's a very tribal and amorphous situation totally unlike what we experience here in the west. We talk about al-Qaeda or ISIS like the were discrete entities. They're not. "My brother and I will fight my cousin, my cousin and I will fight the world." So Abdul and I will call ourselves al-Qaeda today and try to kill Rasheed. Tomorrow, Rasheed and I will call ourselves ISIS and try to kill Abdul. Next week Abdul and Rasheed will call themselves AQAP and try to kill me. And the following week the three of us will band together to kill the yankee infidels.

(06-19-2014 12:48 AM)I45owl Wrote:  This is spoken by someone that trusts in the rule of law, which has never existed in that particular part of the world. I think those that informed learned their lesson the hard way that the US could not protect them from the Taliban.

Not could not protect them, WOULD not protect them. That's one change involved in transitioning from not intending to win to intending to win.

The rule of law point is a good one. Think of how the rule of law would apply to the amorphous and constantly changing situation I described in the first part of this response.

By the way, just to be clear, I'm not ridiculing or putting down their ways here. That's a mistake westerners make. Because they don't do things the way we do in the west, westerners tend to think of their ways as inferior. They work for them, even if they are different from what works for us. In dealing with Arabs and Iranians I found that things went well when you observed--and badly when you didn't observe--two basic rules: 1) respect them, and 2) insist that they respect you.

solutions is even the wrong word.


I should say options. We have no easy options over there. Even using the term solution gives false hope.

(06-19-2014 06:33 AM)Machiavelli Wrote:  solutions is even the wrong word.


I should say options. We have no easy options over there. Even using the term solution gives false hope.

The problem was the short-sightedness of the entire process. You go into Iraq
with the plan of hanging out there for 50-60 years. If we as a nation weren't committed to that type of engagement, then we would have been better off simply letting SpecFor assassinate Saddam and his family while hunting OBL to the ends of the Earth.