[Lorric]

I think Nakura's major problem is that he's trying to define all "unfriendly" elements in a country as static, unchanging based on other factors.  As in, "Person A is an unfriendly element, while Person B is a friendly element", but failing to realize that killing Person A may very well make Person B unfriendly.

Hint: the reason the enemy blends into civilian populations is because a good chunk of them are pissed off civilians.

That is a valid criticism of my world view. Most people don't put the higher ideals above all else, and as thus, are willing to cast aside lesser morals for the greater good, which is entirely subjective. I have not disagreed with Battuta taht we need to do everything we can to minimize targeting innocents or even allies. I suggested that we obtain better and more accurate information, but as Battuta pointed out, there is a structural problem at work here. Regardless of how accurate or inaccurate our information is, those in command will still have the final call and some have accused them of potentially making errors in judgement (ordering a strike with incorrect or incomplete data).

And how do you think that father who lost a son, the mother who lost a child or the child who lost all his relatives feel when you tell them that you really did everything you could to "minimize" casualities?

You'll be a f****** hero in that country I am sure.


Frankly, if you really want to win people over in a country... you will have to use nonlethal force and actually arrest people and make what happens to them afterwards as transparent as possible.
(Yes instant killing is easier ... the point is that it is also always counterproductive, if you are actually interested in what people think of you.)

Because seriously... if you had to live with the occasional neighbors house being the target of drone strikes, would you really care about the statistics of how safe or unsafe innocents are from them?
I mean...  it really is like some kind of Orwellian Nightmare isn't it? .... except that it only happens "abroad" and "Big Brother" is not quite omnipotent and blows up houses - sometimes the wrong house - or even is tricked into blowing up the wrong house for other people's purposes.

Hang on, you want to try and arrest people who have guns and bombs and grenades and RPGs?

Or how about someone wearing a suicide vest? There's plenty of those, they'll just blow themselves and everyone nearby apart when someone gets close.

[swashmebuckle]

That's right, these guys wear their suicide vests 24/7. In fact, the #1 cause of death among suspected militants isn't targeted killings, but hitting the wrong button when the alarm clock goes off

[Grizzly]

Hang on, you want to try and arrest people who have guns and bombs and grenades and RPGs?

Or how about someone wearing a suicide vest? There's plenty of those, they'll just blow themselves and everyone nearby apart when someone gets close.

SWAT forces can do that. They do that all the time. And if they die, they die as heroes. They knew the risks when they signed up.

Regardless, we are talking about airstrikes here. The US airstrike policy in Afghanistan has for the longest of times favored saving the lives over US soldiers over saving the lives of civilians or civilian property. If civilians died, they are considered "Acceptable casualties". Strangely enough, somehow the people who signed up for a lethal job are not considered acceptable casualties .

[Lorric]

Hang on, you want to try and arrest people who have guns and bombs and grenades and RPGs?

Or how about someone wearing a suicide vest? There's plenty of those, they'll just blow themselves and everyone nearby apart when someone gets close.

SWAT forces can do that. They do that all the time. And if they die, they die as heroes. They knew the risks when they signed up.

Regardless, we are talking about airstrikes here. The US airstrike policy in Afghanistan has for the longest of times favored saving the lives over US soldiers over saving the lives of civilians or civilian property. If civilians died, they are considered "Acceptable casualties". Strangely enough, somehow the people who signed up for a lethal job are not considered acceptable casualties .

The terrorists would take full advantage of such restrictions. It would be playing right into their hands.

[AdmiralRalwood]

Hang on, you want to try and arrest people who have guns and bombs and grenades and RPGs?

Or how about someone wearing a suicide vest? There's plenty of those, they'll just blow themselves and everyone nearby apart when someone gets close.

SWAT forces can do that. They do that all the time. And if they die, they die as heroes. They knew the risks when they signed up.

Regardless, we are talking about airstrikes here. The US airstrike policy in Afghanistan has for the longest of times favored saving the lives over US soldiers over saving the lives of civilians or civilian property. If civilians died, they are considered "Acceptable casualties". Strangely enough, somehow the people who signed up for a lethal job are not considered acceptable casualties .

The terrorists would take full advantage of such restrictions. It would be playing right into their hands.

Are you ****ing serious? "Arresting terrorists would be playing right into their hands! Nevermind the fact that our current policies are actually turning innocent civilians into terrorists..."

[Lorric]

Hang on, you want to try and arrest people who have guns and bombs and grenades and RPGs?

Or how about someone wearing a suicide vest? There's plenty of those, they'll just blow themselves and everyone nearby apart when someone gets close.

SWAT forces can do that. They do that all the time. And if they die, they die as heroes. They knew the risks when they signed up.

Regardless, we are talking about airstrikes here. The US airstrike policy in Afghanistan has for the longest of times favored saving the lives over US soldiers over saving the lives of civilians or civilian property. If civilians died, they are considered "Acceptable casualties". Strangely enough, somehow the people who signed up for a lethal job are not considered acceptable casualties .

The terrorists would take full advantage of such restrictions. It would be playing right into their hands.

Are you ****ing serious? "Arresting terrorists would be playing right into their hands! Nevermind the fact that our current policies are actually turning innocent civilians into terrorists..."

Just think about it. What would you do if you were a terrorist and you knew the soldiers would only engage you with non-lethal methods?

[AdmiralRalwood]

Hang on, you want to try and arrest people who have guns and bombs and grenades and RPGs?

Or how about someone wearing a suicide vest? There's plenty of those, they'll just blow themselves and everyone nearby apart when someone gets close.

SWAT forces can do that. They do that all the time. And if they die, they die as heroes. They knew the risks when they signed up.

Regardless, we are talking about airstrikes here. The US airstrike policy in Afghanistan has for the longest of times favored saving the lives over US soldiers over saving the lives of civilians or civilian property. If civilians died, they are considered "Acceptable casualties". Strangely enough, somehow the people who signed up for a lethal job are not considered acceptable casualties .

The terrorists would take full advantage of such restrictions. It would be playing right into their hands.

Are you ****ing serious? "Arresting terrorists would be playing right into their hands! Nevermind the fact that our current policies are actually turning innocent civilians into terrorists..."

Just think about it. What would you do if you were a terrorist and you knew the soldiers would only engage you with non-lethal methods?

Wonder where the moral high ground just went, for one thing...

[The E]

Terrorism is, fundamentally, not a problem militaries are good at dealing with. It is a law enforcement issue, and should be dealt with on those terms.

However surgical your military is capable of being, using it to deal with terrorists is still like trying to get rats out of a building by setting it on fire.

[Lorric]

It's all one big mess.

But we shouldn't have more respect for the lives of terrorists than our own soldiers.

[General Battuta]

Terrorism is, fundamentally, not a problem militaries are good at dealing with. It is a law enforcement issue, and should be dealt with on those terms.

However surgical your military is capable of being, using it to deal with terrorists is still like trying to get rats out of a building by setting it on fire.

I wonder if you could effectively model counterinsurgency as a signal detection problem. Like a legal system, it's all about balancing false positives and false negatives.

[Mikes]

It's all one big mess.

But we shouldn't have more respect for the lives of terrorists than our own soldiers.

And the moment a single person who is not a terrorist dies, because you were focused on your soldiers lives (as opposed to protecting innocent lives), you possibly have just created more terrorists than you have "taken out" the whole year.

As said above... people still do not get it.

You either take the moral highground and fully well accept the casualities non lethal force would take ...   or you do not, and from that moment on you are not going to make any progress at all. Rather you will turn into the very "devil" that those terrorists are constantly trying to paint you as.

If you "have to" (or rather "feel you have to") intervene with military force, then those are your options: Choose lethal force, with the always resulting collateral damage, and quickly become the very evil you are accused of being by those terrorists (at which point you are merely waging for waging wars sake, if you stop to think about it for a minute.) or accept that employing lethal force at all is most likely counter productive to achieving any kind of longterm peaceful solution.

[Lorric]

It's all one big mess.

But we shouldn't have more respect for the lives of terrorists than our own soldiers.

And the moment a single person who is not a terrorist dies, because you were focused on your soldiers lives (as opposed to protecting innocent lives), you possibly have just created more terrorists than you have "taken out" the whole year.

As said above... people still do not get it.

You either take the moral highground and fully well accept the casualities non lethal force would take ...   or you do not, and from that moment on you are not going to make any progress at all. Rather you will turn into the very "devil" that those terrorists are constantly trying to paint you as.

Those are your options: Become the evil you are accused of being or accepting that there is more to actually fighting terrorism than killing people.

I feel skeptical about this.

We've got foreign insurgents and mercenaries that have nothing to do with the population of the country, we've got religious fanatics, people can be turned just because someone thumps the Quran and spouts some garbage about infidels and paradise. There were terrorists before there were soldiers in the country.

[Mikes]

It's all one big mess.

But we shouldn't have more respect for the lives of terrorists than our own soldiers.

And the moment a single person who is not a terrorist dies, because you were focused on your soldiers lives (as opposed to protecting innocent lives), you possibly have just created more terrorists than you have "taken out" the whole year.

As said above... people still do not get it.

You either take the moral highground and fully well accept the casualities non lethal force would take ...   or you do not, and from that moment on you are not going to make any progress at all. Rather you will turn into the very "devil" that those terrorists are constantly trying to paint you as.

Those are your options: Become the evil you are accused of being or accepting that there is more to actually fighting terrorism than killing people.

I feel skeptical about this.

We've got foreign insurgents and mercenaries that have nothing to do with the population of the country, we've got religious fanatics, people can be turned just because someone thumps the Quran and spouts some garbage about infidels. There were terrorists before there were soldiers in the country.

The point that it always comes back to is that our military, when employing lethal force, will always, always, cause a number of innocent bystanders to die.

That fact pretty much ruins anything you may achieve by killing any number of bad guys. If anything, you are already breeding the next generation full of enough resentment and feelings of revenge to become suicide bombers themselves.

Losing loved ones and family members to accidential drone strikes (oups, huh?) and death squad style raids appears to have that effect on people, you know?


The sad truth is that this idiocy is likely fueled by political necessity, as not doing anything after 9/11 would have been political suicide on the home front as would be policies leading to a huge amount of soldier deaths.
So this leaves us with the current policy, that satisfied voters at home, but on the other hand pretty much inevitably ensures that the "war on terror" will continue for generations to come, with growing numbers of terrorists, if anything.

[Lorric]

Does anyone know how likely this is to breed terrorists? As opposed to the other ways? How many terrorists exist because someone they cared about became "collateral damage"?

[Lorric]

The sad truth is that this idiocy is likely fueled by political necessity, as not doing anything after 9/11 would have been political suicide on the home front as would be policies leading to a huge amount of soldier deaths.
So this leaves us with the current policy, that satisfied voters at home, but on the other hand pretty much inevitably ensures that the "war on terror" will continue for generations to come, with growing numbers of terrorists, if anything.

Ah, you've wrote some more.

I saw that personally as necessity full stop. You can't just watch thousands of innocents die and not take action against it, and leave yourself open to a repeat.

It would however be a very cruel joke if it turns out action would just make it worse no matter what you do.

[Mikes]

The sad truth is that this idiocy is likely fueled by political necessity, as not doing anything after 9/11 would have been political suicide on the home front as would be policies leading to a huge amount of soldier deaths.
So this leaves us with the current policy, that satisfied voters at home, but on the other hand pretty much inevitably ensures that the "war on terror" will continue for generations to come, with growing numbers of terrorists, if anything.

Ah, you've wrote some more.

I saw that personally as necessity full stop. You can't just watch thousands of innocents die and not take action against it, and leave yourself open to a repeat.

It would however be a very cruel joke if it turns out action would just make it worse no matter what you do.

Considering the hilarious/sad amount of mistakes on the side of intelligence agencies that only made it possibly for this rather incompetent group of plane hijackers to pull of 9/11 ....... I dunno, I could think of a number of things "to do" to prevent such strikes in the future ... all of them more effective than anything that involves killing innocent bystanders abroad, which yeah, likely does make matters much worse than before.

/shrugs.

Of course...  giving the public a bad guy that you can retaliate against is politically much more effective "on the home front" than admitting up that your intelligence agencies well uh .... screwed up big time.

[Scotty]

Regardless, we are talking about airstrikes here. The US airstrike policy in Afghanistan has for the longest of times favored saving the lives over US soldiers over saving the lives of civilians or civilian property. If civilians died, they are considered "Acceptable casualties". Strangely enough, somehow the people who signed up for a lethal job are not considered acceptable casualties .

I think this needs a little bit more attention.  Current US policy considers that the life of a United States soldier is more important than the life of a civilian in theater.  While that looks good for the soldier in theory, it also has the rather questionable side-effect of ensuring that soldiers are necessary to remain in theater, because said theater remains dangerous.

When the United States government finally bites the bullet and realizes that a soldier's life in theater is not inherently more precious than the civilian's that live there, and takes action in a direction to show that, there may just be some progress to be made.  Do note, that while this is a personal opinion on a proper course of action, it's also my opinion as a soldier in the United States Army.

As an example, while rules of engagement vary based on location slightly, training in dealing with civilians that get too close is fairly standard.  In basic, again in advanced training, and again before deploying, we're endlessly drilled in the "Five Ss".  In order:

Shout
Show
Shove
Shoot (to warn)
Shoot (to wound/kill)

Shout is fairly self-explanatory.  Show is the act of brandishing your weapon to indicate that you both have one, and are willing to use it.  Shove is to physically remove the civilian from your area (making sure to keep weapon away from grabbing range).  In large part, the second step is skippable if there's little time, and it's taught that way.  As such, normal training for the first three steps consists of yelling at anyone who gets to close, and then shoving them out of the way.

The final two steps are frequently taught as one step.  While technically a soldier is not (in general) supposed to discharge his of her weapon without a display of intent to harm from the civilian, the criteria for "intent to harm" is ill-defined, and deliberately so.  If a civilian postures in an aggressive manner while any sort of weapon is present, ready and raised or not, it qualifies.  If a civilian repeatedly attempts to close, even without a weapon it can be considered intent.  There are a number of other criteria for what constitutes intent (also obviously including firing, or brandishing a readied weapon, of physically assaulting another soldier).  Shooting to warn is generally ignored in favor of shooting to wound/kill if intent is demonstrated, both because it tends to invite return fire even if the situation is still able to be defused, and because the prospective combatant doesn't get a chance to shoot back if they're already dead.

It's much the same deal with vehicles at checkpoints, minus the middle step (shove).  If a vehicle does not follow instructions completely, first shout (usually with loudspeaker, and at a fair distance.  We were taught 300 meters), brandish your weapon, shoot to warn/wound/kill.  Generally shooting to warn is ignored again.  When trying to disable a vehicle, we are specifically taught to aim for the driver, because it is the easiest part of the vehicle to disable.

That's the universal teaching standard for deployment.  It's aggressive, does very little to defuse actual belligerence before the point of violence, and incites belligerence amongst otherwise peaceful groups that happen to simply get to close or make a soldier nervous.

That method of thinking that a soldier's life comes before any other factor in the field contributes significantly to the wartime culture of shoot-first, identify-later that directly leads to so many civilian deaths.  It's actually bad enough that my MOS, Civil Affairs, spends a depressing amount of its pre-deployment readiness training learning how to deal with wrongful death compensation and relations repair.  It's a problem.

[Lorric]

The sad truth is that this idiocy is likely fueled by political necessity, as not doing anything after 9/11 would have been political suicide on the home front as would be policies leading to a huge amount of soldier deaths.
So this leaves us with the current policy, that satisfied voters at home, but on the other hand pretty much inevitably ensures that the "war on terror" will continue for generations to come, with growing numbers of terrorists, if anything.

Ah, you've wrote some more.

I saw that personally as necessity full stop. You can't just watch thousands of innocents die and not take action against it, and leave yourself open to a repeat.

It would however be a very cruel joke if it turns out action would just make it worse no matter what you do.

Considering the hilarious/sad amount of mistakes on the side of intelligence agencies that only made it possibly for this rather incompetent group of plane hijackers to pull of 9/11 ....... I dunno, I could think of a number of things "to do" to prevent such strikes in the future ... all of them more effective than anything that involves killing innocent bystanders abroad, which yeah, likely does make matters much worse than before.

/shrugs.

Of course...  giving the public a bad guy that you can retaliate against is politically much more effective "on the home front" than admitting up that your intelligence agencies well uh .... screwed up big time.

I remember being under the impression at the time that it was a simple matter that there were some terrorist training camps in Afghanistan that trained these men, and it was a simple matter of putting these camps out of business and that would be that.

But the Taliban sided with the terrorists. So we needed to put them out of business as well, and then that would be that. (I thought there should have been a show of force first before military action to make the Taliban back down and step aside.)

But it just carried on escalating, more and more enemies coming out of the woodwork...

[Grizzly]

I remember being under the impression at the time that it was a simple matter that there were some terrorist training camps in Afghanistan that trained these men, and it was a simple matter of putting these camps out of business and that would be that.

To simplify it further: There was a threat to civilian lives.

Everyone agrees upon disarming a threat on civilian lives and will put resources into that.

Due to the US policy, they became a threat to civilian lives.

Everyone agrees upon disarming a threat on civilian lives and will put resources into that.

Rinse and repeat.

<Snip>

That's an very excellent response. Especially since I just talked about you as if you were an expendable resource o_o.

[TrashMan]

And the moment a single person who is not a terrorist dies, because you were focused on your soldiers lives (as opposed to protecting innocent lives), you possibly have just created more terrorists than you have "taken out" the whole year.


You either take the moral highground and fully well accept the casualities non lethal force would take ...   or you do not, and from that moment on you are not going to make any progress at all. Rather you will turn into the very "devil" that those terrorists are constantly trying to paint you as.

I cannot agree with the above.

Moral highground is using non-lethal force, even if it kills you?
No, that is stupidity.
When you are engaged in a life-or-death struggle, there is only survival. Anything else is irrelevant.

If (a big if) you can capture the oponentalivewihout too big of a risk to your own life, do it.
If not...well, is his life more worth than yours? Or Bobs?