U.S. Drone Attack Strategy Against Al-Qaeda May Be Wrong 433
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.'"
The Air Force never wins wars. Film at 11. (Score:2, Insightful)
Sorry to anyone listening at Fort Meade.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
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: (Score:3, Funny)
someone has to figure out how to keep the funding up and get the patriot act made permanent.
Correlation vs correlation (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
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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?
There's only one way to handle this. The US is a bunch of pansies with girlie underpants.
Drone Strike every leader, and at the same time hit every second-in-command
You will miss a few leaders so now you must drop heavy artillery all over their compounds
You will have missed a few followers so now you must drop nuclear weapons all over their towns
You will have missed a few sympathizers so now you invade the country and kill everyone using your might at land and sea.
Anyone who lives should be put in pri
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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?
Absolutely. I don't believe that the removal of certain individuals will stop them but it will add to their "management overheads", someone else will have to take control, people trust them and so on. If we're really lucky it could lead to power struggles and in-fighting within the group
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'Companies don't fall apart when they lose their CEO or CFO;
I find it hard to believe that if you keep killing the CEO and CFO of a company, the performance of that company will not suffer.
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Yeah. At some point, no one is going to want to be CEO/CFO.
Massive CEO/CFO churn is a sign of a company in deep, serious trouble. Companies can handle occasional sudden losses of key personnel, but if it happens on a regular basis - that company is fucked.
It's also going to be bad for morale if the CEO/CFO keep getting whacked. Now, in the short term the company might have enough succession/disaster recovery plans to keep continuity going, but if the CEO/CFO in a company keep dying (as do the CEOs/CFOs o
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Except the CEO was that was killed was your dear buddy and they also got some collateral damage like your sister and nephew and the point of the company is to attack those who did the killing.
You have to look at the bigger picture. I'm no pacifist but this stuff is not helping.
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Middle Eastern cultures of the type that produce terrorists use family ties as a way of cementing political connections anyway. By Western standards terrorist organizations are at insane levels of nepotism. Even if you just kill terrorists and magically save all innocents, you'll still have killed someone's nephew, or cousin, or brother-in-law, or other family member for whom they'll feel a need to take vengeance.
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Yeah. At some point, no one is going to want to be CEO/CFO.
Massive CEO/CFO churn is a sign of a company in deep, serious trouble. Companies can handle occasional sudden losses of key personnel, but if it happens on a regular basis - that company is fucked.
It's also going to be bad for morale if the CEO/CFO keep getting whacked. Now, in the short term the company might have enough succession/disaster recovery plans to keep continuity going, but if the CEO/CFO in a company keep dying (as do the CEOs/CFOs of all other companies in the same industry), the employees are eventually going to say, "Fuck this, time for a career change."
On the other hand, the motivations for a terrorist organization are not the same as they are for a corporation, regardless of how similarly they operate. CEOs expect their 72 virgins now, not after they die.
Religions and ideologies usually consider hardship to be a vindication of what they're doing, not something to slough off onto employees, investors, or future quarters.
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Suicide terrorists are not leaders; they're low level employees. Terrorist leaders expect a good portion of their 72 virgins now just like CEOs; Osama bin Laden had five wives, and he didn't have to wait to be blown up in order to get them. It's sort of like an actual CEO and low level employees; the CEO makes a lot more money and the employees suffer in ways the CEO might not.
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Osama bin Laden had five wives, and he didn't have to wait to be blown up in order to get them
Jesus! Five wives? He was already doing hard time! We did him a favor killing him.
Re:Correlation vs correlation (Score:5, Interesting)
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 (Score:4, Insightful)
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 (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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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?
If there is no significant correlation between successful strikes and a reduction in al-Qaeda attacks, then, no, things wouldn't be worse. It would be the same.
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. The people we are dealing with today are literally insane. No amount of mil
Re:Correlation vs correlation (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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There's an Islamist group in Nigeria right now, Boko Haram, whose name means "Western education is sinful". Their stated goals are to end education of girls.
"They hate our freedom" is very appropriate.
Re:Correlation vs correlation (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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?
How would things be worse? Keep in mind, our actions in the middle east over the past decade have killed hundreds of thousands of people directly... and probably many more indirectly. How many innocent foreigners are you willing to sacrifice to save 1 US citizen? 3000 people died in 9/11 and we've killed at least 100x that to prevent another attack. It seems just a tad over board to me.
Re:Correlation vs correlation (Score:4, Insightful)
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...
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Cutting their funding would mean interfering with the money laundering operations of the mega-banks, their single most profitable line of business. It's not a coincidence that within two weeks of taking office Shrub withdrew the US from the international anti-money laundering pact that Clinton had spent seven years building. The family fortune was built on international banking much more than oil, his grandpappy even got a bank taken away from him in WWII for laundering money (of course they didn't call i
Yes, you pretty much are... (Score:2, Interesting)
Am I the only one thinking things might have been much worse if no terrorist leaders had been taken out at all?
Yes, you pretty much are...at least, I hope so, because you're wrong.
Groups like A Queda need an external focus. Without an enemy, they aren't going to be able to motivate their rank-and-file every day, and the US is kind enough to provide that focus. Drone attacks are only part of it - the US is busy mucking about all over their back yard: Libya, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Syria...
Before anyone says
Re:Correlation vs correlation (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Eventually they'll run out of employees
Unless the drone strikes polarize them even more and cause people to join their cause out.
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That is the only way to end the cycle of violence - extermination of the other.
Or, you know, not choosing violence as your tool. The thing is, people don't want to end the violence; they want to win. As long as the goal is victory and not peace, you are correct.
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No, you are not the only stupid cretin that does not understand how reality works. AQ would long have collapsed without this mindless US aggression.
If terrorist organisations need a visible enemy in order to exist please explain why Boko Haram exists.
Wait, so dropping bombs on people isn't working? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Imagine if you got into an argument, whipped out an AK-47, and razed a half circle. You're in an open restaurant, the guy who pissed you off is dead, there's half a dozen others dead and dozens wounded, many dying, a few maimed for life.
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Well, it worked for Germany and Japan. Of course we dropped a lot more bombs on them....
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Think about what you just said for two seconds and realize that "dropping bombs on people" is a large component of the problem. Imagine that your mom went to the market for groceries and a bomb went off and killed her. Car bomb, Hellfire missile, doesn't matter, she and a bunch of other innocent people are dead along with some guy you never met and never heard of. Is your first reaction to tuck your tail between your legs, roll over and show your belly? If you're a Pentagon general or basic knee-jerk co
Am I the only one (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
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.
Now if you compared them to US defence corporations? ;D
Maybe just get out of the middle east altogether? (Score:5, Insightful)
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."
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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."
What makes you think that stopping terrorism is the primary goal? It isn't. In fact, from a certain point of view, terrorism is a feature. All those lives and trillions of dollars are spent to secure American hegemony. Have you seen the ads for the Navy recently? A global force for good? Who falls for this shit anymore?
Why buy the oil when you can take over the field? When Americans buy gasoline, we want the profit going to Exxon/Mobil, not the Iraqi National Oil company. When you rely on someone to
Re: Maybe just get out of the middle east altogeth (Score:2)
Re:Maybe just get out of the middle east altogethe (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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As I said, we supported Sadam also. They were the "good guys" at the time.
Remember how we cheered "Arab Spring?"
As I understand it, even Kuwait hates us now. So why do we do it?
Involvement in the mid-east is a guaranteed no-win situation.
Besides, how is it our business? Other than buying their oil, what business is it of ours?
I think we should remove our embassies as well - the embassies only serve as targets for those crazies.
You kill a company by.... (Score:3)
Burning it's assets and operating capitol. They know that the illegal drug trade is their only form of income, so you either try to burn all the poppy fields or you utterly flood the market with insanely cheap product to the point that they cant make any money.
Burning the land and Boiling the sea did not work in Vietnam, so it will not work in afganastan.
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Killing va remote control and video game interface (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
The Hydra (Score:2)
So what this boils down to is the notion that head of organizations, be they terrorist or corporate (insert joke here), we overspend on resources directed at the top.
In targeting terrorists, we spend big bucks on weapons systems and focus intelligence attention at the top.
In the case of corporations, we pay huge salaries -- believing the heads to be irreplaceable.
In both cases, there are plenty of qualified, motivated individuals ready to do a
start shipping truck loads of money there (Score:5, Insightful)
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
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Much of the mid-east in drenched in oil. But what good does it do the common people? There is enormous poverty in Saudi, while a few billionaires enjoy all the money that comes gushing out of ground, and most of the population is dirt poor.
If the US sent money there, it would be grabbed by the leaders. That is what happened in Iraq.
Besides, how about using those trucks of money to help fix poverty in the US? You know, the country that has 50 million people who cannot afford health care? The country that is
Re: (Score:2)
Whats the alternative? (Score:2)
Invading the countries that they have their bases (and supporting tribes and religious leaders) turned out to be too expensive (in both american lives and money)
Re:Whats the alternative? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Everything I needed to know in life I learned from (Score:3)
Star Trek.
sadly enough, they could have learned that from listening to Major Kira on DS9. And lots of more lessons on how to run your group of resistance/freedom fighters/terrorists/guerilla/whatever underground organization.
The article in the 2nd link is a joke (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
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The collateral damage to civilians makes drone strikes little more than murder. Drones really are the tools of cowards and they are the best recruitment for terrorists that money can buy.
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Garbage in Garbage out (Score:3, Informative)
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.
But But But... (Score:2, Funny)
We've been told that Al Queda isn't real and that there aren't really any terrorist organizations. It's all a neocon plot.
So basically, how can drone strikes or any other strategy be effective or ineffective against something that doesn't exist?
Anti-Drone arguments are so frequently flawed. (Score:5, Insightful)
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: (Score:2)
The problem with the VAST majority of criticisms against drone warfare is this: /They don't cite alternatives./
Invest in the targeted country. Build up roads, improve healthcare and the education system, provide security locally. People turn to terrorist groups because they have problems, problems they feel the central government can't fix. Sure, they might spout something about global Islam, the Great Satan, or Pan-Arabism, but these are just outlets for their frustrations. The simple fact is you have to engage with local populations, speak with them, improve their community. This requires money and boots on t
Re:Anti-Drone arguments are so frequently flawed. (Score:4, Insightful)
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?
Leveraged Buyout? (Score:2)
If they are run like a company, treat 'em like a company. Take them over, plant a new CEO (I hear Carly Fiorina is available), and let that CEO run them into the ground for a multi-million dollar golden parachute.
Or, turn them into a reality TV show. Anyone remember the movie "NETWORK" (I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore). Well, in that film, they made a TV show about a terrorist group, and the terrorists were so busy negotiating their contracts, they forgot all about blowing up shit.
Netwo
Venture Capitalism for Terror (Score:5, Informative)
They are just now realizing this? I read a book [wikipedia.org] 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?
Of course (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course it's a bureaucracy, it was created by the CIA.
Am I joking? I don't even know.
Geneva Conventions, whassat? (Score:4, Funny)
So pissing off terrorists... (Score:2)
... pisses them off?
It's like the Palestinians who constantly launch explosive devices into Israel, you're not going to win that way, all you're going to do is create new enemies.
Hmmmmm... (Score:3)
So the Nazi's were a large, bureaucratic organization, and despite that it seems like our 'winning strategy' was to kill large numbers of lower level people, and smaller numbers of higher ranking people, and yet it seems to have worked in the end? The claims made by this paper seem very silly.
Missing the (well, a) point (Score:4, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Right. Strategic bombing was always a dumbass move.
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Strategic bombing involves a beatable enemy with clearly definable material & infrastructure. "Ending terrorism" is about as likely as "ending drug abuse", you'll never do it and you'll do a massive amount of damage in the process of trying. You mitigate its effects (building design, reasonable security measures, arrest/prosecution, etc) & try to remove the impetus for those committing it (listen to complaints from the region, stabilize economy, prevent collateral damage, etc) and accept that ther
Re:If you have the opportunity (Score:4, Interesting)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:If you have the opportunity (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Funny)
Nuke the site from orbit. It is the only way to be sure.
Re:If you have the opportunity (Score:5, Funny)
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?
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You've convinced me. Clearly the only solution is genocide on a greater scale than even Hitler managed.
Re:If you have the opportunity (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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You jest but that's not far from the truth. That's unacceptable to modern morals, of course (as it should be) but maybe that means that you should avoid starting such actions in the first place. Don't start a fight you're not prepared to finish.
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And on an ethically just as despicable level, why not do an US nuclear suicide to deprive them of their target?
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Well, if you whacked him, and the VP, and the next to him, etc. You'd certainly cause the company to stumble, and if you get enough of them quick enough in a small company, sure, it might fail.
Re:If you have the opportunity (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:If you have the opportunity (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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And somehow, this administration finds these stories and situations to be perfectly fine; but "walling" someone (and leaving them alive) is somehow morally reprehensible.
I find both to be repugnant, but let's get serious: The Obama Justice Department finds killing innocents that happen to be in the same area as a suspected bad guy to be okay, but smacking around known assholes to get information on other known assholes to be a prosecutable offense.
Re:If you have the opportunity (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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Re:If you have the opportunity (Score:4, Insightful)
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:If you have the opportunity (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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To summarize:
"It is better than ten innocent persons be murdered than one guilty person escape".
Right?
Re:If you have the opportunity (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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I would assume that at the very least, it could give some potential candidates second thoughts abound joining the upper ranks.
I wouldn't exactly feel comfortable and secure as an Al-Quaeda leader.
On the other hand, I wouldn't feel very comfortable with blowing myself up in the middle of a crowded space either, so ho knows how the terrorist mindset ticks.
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While I agree they think they're the good guys, they don't have a lot of credibility in this. The fact is, they started this war, and they've been waging it since the very beginning of islam when their warlord prophet told them hundreds of years ago to kill or enslave all the infidels. When they slaughter innocents, they're not thinking, well, the ends justify the means in a war against imperialism. No, they're thinking those are all guilty people because they don't pray to allah, and nothing is a crime if
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I agree they are ineffectual, because they don't understand us and never will. Their ideology is opposed to understanding others. I don't believe they can win.
I also don't believe fascism or communism could have ever won. We still considered those threats to be existential threats. Not because they could actually destroy us, but because it was their stated goal to destroy us. The same is true of fundamental islam. We ignore them at our own peril, of course, because while they can't win the war, they can cer
Re:If you have the opportunity (Score:4, Informative)
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We could drop several hundred nukes on any area with Al-Qaida activity, I suppose. That would probably get the leaders.
Look, killing an Al-Qaida leader is good, all other things being equal. If we could get them to drop dead of heart attacks, without affecting anybody else, great. However, attacking innocent civilians means that there's more radicalized people out there for Al-Qaida to recruit. If, on the other hand, we didn't use indiscriminate attacks, we'd benefit because most of the radical Musli
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So we turn al Qaida into the Hewlett-Packard of terrorist organizations.
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Or just honestly address the points in their manifesto. Very few terrorist groups have manifestos written in crayon or faeces. Most have encountered (perceived) serious grievances and want them addressed. Al Qaeda, if I remember correctly, were not too pleased with the unending support of Israel's occupation of Palestine and the Palestinians, the massive US military bases in Saudi Arabia, and the extortion of Arab states in the first Gulf War for unneeded missile defense systems.
When people have no reaso