[Autumnleaf]

The US is currently using preemptive war to deal with terrorists using asymmetric warfare. Is this the best way to fight it or are there other ways that would be more effective?

[Ghostwheel]

The best way to fight terrorism is not to perpetuate it. In other words, stop meddling in other people's affairs.

[INTelliJent]

	Originally Posted by Autumnleaf To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	The US is currently using preemptive war to deal with terrorists using asymmetric warfare. Is this the best way to fight it or are there other ways that would be more effective?

Somehow, addressing the actual reason for the war/mitigating/avoiding it is never an option.
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Asymmetric warfare has been around for thousands of years. The problem for the nation state is that, by definition, it cannot be "asymmetric".

Some rules of war: Pick the battleground, don't let your opponent do so. When you defend everything, you defend nothing.

These rules of warfare are why it works.

[Ray9]

You should always fight a war to win. I did not agree with invading Iraq but once we did we should have conquered it completely by annexing it and making it part of the United States. We should have converted Iraq into a huge military state and used its oil reserves to defeat the parts of the Arab world that threaten us. Going further back we should have listened to Curtis Lemay and took out the Soviets as soon as it was revealed that they had nuclear capability. We could have avoided the cold war and easily supplanted communism with democracy. The best way to enforce peace is to utterly defeat those who threaten it. If we had taken out the Soviets when we had the chance there never would have been a Korean or Vietnam war. Long live Curtis Lemay.


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[LaoTzu]

I think they're doing it the best way.

Imprisoning people without due process is a big win.
You can lock up anyone who even smells a hint like trouble.

(we are talking about removing the ethical question right?)

[INTelliJent]

Originally Posted by Ray9 To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

You should always fight a war to win. I did not agree with invading Iraq but once we did we should have conquered it completely by annexing it and making it part of the United States. We should have converted Iraq into a huge military state and used its oil reserves to defeat the parts of the Arab world that threaten us. Going further back we should have listened to Curtis Lemay and took out the Soviets as soon as it was revealed that they had nuclear capability. We could have avoided the cold war and easily supplanted communism with democracy. The best way to enforce peace is to utterly defeat those who threaten it. If we had taken out the Soviets when we had the chance there never would have been a Korean or Vietnam war. Long live Curtis Lemay. To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

I'll take Patton over LeMay.

It didn't really make any sense to go after the Soviets after WWII though. The whole purpose of the US allying with Russia was to get eastern Europe for the USSR. The MIC needed an ongoing excuse for $$$.

[Booko]

Originally Posted by Ray9 To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

You should always fight a war to win. I did not agree with invading Iraq but once we did we should have conquered it completely by annexing it and making it part of the United States. We should have converted Iraq into a huge military state and used its oil reserves to defeat the parts of the Arab world that threaten us. Going further back we should have listened to Curtis Lemay and took out the Soviets as soon as it was revealed that they had nuclear capability. We could have avoided the cold war and easily supplanted communism with democracy. The best way to enforce peace is to utterly defeat those who threaten it. If we had taken out the Soviets when we had the chance there never would have been a Korean or Vietnam war. Long live Curtis Lemay. To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

Yeah, maybe we should've kept Iraq as a colony. We could defend it with a ham sandwich.

[Autumnleaf]

I heard when the British Empire fought Muslims they would bury the dead ones in pig skins. When the Soviets dealt with terrorists during the cold war they castrated a family member of a terrorist and after that terrorism there ceased. The Romans took hostages of conquered people so they would not defy Roman rule. There seems to be ways of winning these types of wars that involve a willingness to do things others would find immoral or distasteful. If such things would save lives and end wars faster, are they worthy of consideration?

[Subgenius]

Originally Posted by Autumnleaf To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

I heard when the British Empire fought Muslims they would bury the dead ones in pig skins. When the Soviets dealt with terrorists during the cold war they castrated a family member of a terrorist and after that terrorism there ceased. The Romans took hostages of conquered people so they would not defy Roman rule. There seems to be ways of winning these types of wars that involve a willingness to do things others would find immoral or distasteful. If such things would save lives and end wars faster, are they worthy of consideration?

And you should take notice that none of those empires are around anymore, and the two modern day states still are being terrorized.

[pironiro]

Originally Posted by Autumnleaf To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

I heard when the British Empire fought Muslims they would bury the dead ones in pig skins. When the Soviets dealt with terrorists during the cold war they castrated a family member of a terrorist and after that terrorism there ceased. The Romans took hostages of conquered people so they would not defy Roman rule. There seems to be ways of winning these types of wars that involve a willingness to do things others would find immoral or distasteful. If such things would save lives and end wars faster, are they worthy of consideration?

I don't think severe cruelty is even necessary. Just round up their women and children and put them in internment camps. You provide them basic necessities and just keep them there, no mistreatment required. Let it be known that they will be returned unharmed if the men lay down the arms. That way you shame them for not being able to protect their own, but also provide a way out for them. You add some uncertainty as well, since they will think twice before really pissing off the people who hold their families.

I bet this would also be cheaper than waging years of high-tech war, despite having to provide care for the captives.

[Boreal]

Well, one advantage about being the United States is that you don't need to use brutal methods to destroy terrorists.

There are some more effective ways to fight terrorists, but they would usually involve repercussions in global and domestic politics which you would rather avoid. Ethics do matter, if for no other reason than everyone believes in them.

[nowt]

Race-based viruses. What could go wrong?

[larkin]

It's not possible to "win" asymmetric warfare in the traditional sense, that is by supposedly "eradicating" the enemy. For every inch cut the roots grow ten where you can't see them. (To steal from Rilke.)

So we're left with policing the activity and mitigating the causes until we buy enough time to broker a political solution. The best example here is the British in Northern Ireland, although certainly by no means perfect. Use local police to pursue terrorists undertaking criminal activity; work with local communities (and hopefully, adopt a more appropriate and sustainable path of foreign policy); and split "terrorist" groups by isolating violent factions/ parties and engaging non-violent ones. The Taliban in Afghanistan, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Fatah (and yes, even Hamas) in Palestine and the IRA in Ireland are also legitimate political parties. Work with the people you can to isolate the people you can't, until violent factions have lost their base of political support.

Note: none of this is possible under the context of an occupation, or at least dramatically more difficult.

[stasis]

	Originally Posted by Ray9 To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	If we had taken out the Soviets when we had the chance there never would have been a Korean or Vietnam war.

As I understand it, domino theory was erroneous in Vietnam. The Vietnamese hated the Chinese and as such would not have acted as a projection of Chinese and therefore Soviet power.

[Hydro]

Cut them off their money supply and the problem is solved!

In the past it were the Soviets and today it's the Saudis and Iran.

[larkin]

	Originally Posted by stasis To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	As I understand it, domino theory was erroneous in Vietnam. The Vietnamese hated the Chinese and as such would not have acted as a projection of Chinese and therefore Soviet power.

There's a "joke" in Vietnam about how (not) close to China they were, especially when they were starving in the 70s and 80s -

Vietnamese cable to Beijing: Need food.
Beijing cable to Vietnam: Times are tough, tighten belt.
Vietnamese cable to Beijing: Need belt.

	Originally Posted by Hydro To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	Cut them off their money supply and the problem is solved! In the past it were the Soviets and today it's the Saudis and Iran.

This implies cutting off our dependence on oil, is that what you intended?

If you're talking about Treasury Department monitoring of foriegn transactions, that's already happening.

[Hydro]

	Originally Posted by larkin To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	This implies cutting off our dependence on oil, is that what you intended?

Nope, what do you think the Arabs can do when the West declares that the oil wells are from now on under international control? We are talking about war, don't we?
Spraying pesticides on Afghan poppy fields would also do it's wonder.
Or Arabs who are known to support terrorists could be arrested when in the West.
Whatever works to make their supporter life miserable won't be without effect on the terrorist matter.

	Originally Posted by larkin To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	If you're talking about Treasury Department monitoring of foriegn transactions, that's already happening.

Not only monitoring. Freezing the accounts of certain supporters. Similar to what the US did to the banks in Switzerland just recently.

[thod]

	we should have conquered it completely by annexing it and making it part of the United States.

What? More brown people, more socialists, voting in their Muslim congressmen?

You are too liberal. The correct way to deal with the situation is to kill all the men, the old and the infirm. The young and attractive women can be brought to the US to work as unpaid domestic slaves and sex dolls. Heck give them to the Mormons, they can never have enough wives.

[larkin]

	Originally Posted by INTelliJent To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	I'll take Patton over LeMay.

The guy who's basically an anarchist opposed to the non-occupying military actions of NATO prefers the General who openly discussed invading Russia? Hmmm.

	Originally Posted by Hydro To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	Nope, what do you think the Arabs can do when the West declares that the oil wells are from now on under international control? We are talking about war, don't we?

This is really misunderstanding the concept of "asymmetric" warfare, typical if someone's always been in the position of having the most conventional power, and thus not understanding the many ways that less powerful actors can still do significant, unwanted and unnecessary damage. Whether or not they'll "go to war" with us in the traditional, symmetric sense is irrelevant. You'd immediately and dramatically expand the political support base for terrorist actions.

Plus, good fucking luck keeping those oil wells you're summarily appropriating operational. Oil production will go down to zero virtually overnight.

Look, again, key to the understanding of asymmetric warfare is it's in no one's best interest, no one wins. Actions are preventative. Which means: not engaging in actions that build the case for war, whether they can fight it symmetrically or not. Not acting like that asshole country that can do whatever it wants without consequence, basically. There are consequences.

	Originally Posted by Hydro To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	Spraying pesticides on Afghan poppy fields would also do it's wonder.

Spraying pesticides does not work, not the least of which because it destroys the legal agriculture in Afghanistan. Unsurprisingly, illegally denying people their primary income also has a tendency to increase support for insurgencies, not decrease them. (See: Colombia and the FARC, as well as other Colombian paramilitary groups.)

We'd do better to decriminalize the poppy trade. After all, there are legal uses for poppy - opiates are used in hundreds of legal drugs, and thousands of Indian farmers grow it. (Which only increases the Pashtu/Urdu sense of injustice, that there's a double standard at play, that the Taliban successfully exploits. And there is a double standard.) But that involves rethinking the war on drugs on any level, so I'm not holding my breath.

	Originally Posted by Hydro To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	Not only monitoring. Freezing the accounts of certain supporters. Similar to what the US did to the banks in Switzerland just recently.

The treasury also does this regularly, of course.

[INTelliJent]

	Originally Posted by larkin To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	The guy who's basically an anarchist opposed to the non-occupying military actions of NATO prefers the General who openly discussed invading Russia? Hmmm.

Well if we were to agree to operate in the paradigm where we want to go take out the bad guys all over the world, the right thing to do would have been to invade Russia, especially after helping Russia take over East Europe. Of course I don't subscribe to the original ideology, so the second step wouldn't have been needed.

I do like Patton though, as a case study if nothing else. Not only of the man, but how those around him reacted to him. He was America's greatest field commander (greatest modern field commander at the least), if I dare say so. He was a "pure military man", by all accounts I can find. Not like all political bitches that thoroughly infest the officer ranks of the military both now and in the past.

Originally Posted by larkin To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

This is really misunderstanding the concept of "asymmetric" warfare, typical if someone's always been in the position of having the most power, and thus not understanding the many ways that less powerful actors can still do significant, unwanted and unnecessary damage. Whether or not they'll "go to war" with us in the traditional, symmetric sense is irrelevant. You'd immediately and dramatically expand the political support base for terrorist actions. Plus, good fucking luck keeping those oil wells you're summarily appropriating operational. Oil production will go down to zero virtually overnight. Look, again, key to the understanding of asymmetric warfare is it's in no one's best interest, no one wins. Actions are preventative. Which means: not engaging in actions that build the case for war, whether they can fight it symmetrically or not. Not acting like that asshole country that can do whatever it wants without consequence, basically. There are consequences. Spraying pesticides does not work, not the least of which because it destroys the legal agriculture in Afghanistan. Unsurprisingly, illegally denying people their primary income also has a tendency to increase support for insurgencies, not decrease them. (See: Colombia and the FARC, as well as other Colombian paramilitary groups.) We'd do better to decriminalize the poppy trade. After all, there are legal uses for poppy (opiates are used in hundreds of legal drugs, surprise surprise) and thousands of Indian farmers grow it. But that involves rethinking the war on drugs on any level, so I'm not holding my breath.

The guy who supports "any intervention not originated d by the Bush Administration" is against actions that build a case for war........

Otherwise I agree.
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[larkin]

	Originally Posted by INTelliJent To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	The guy who supports "any intervention not originated d by the Bush Administration" is against actions that build a case for war........ Otherwise I agree. To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

Give me a break. I could give a shit who initiated the action. I don't support all of the military interventions of NATO, but at least they're multilateral, non-occupying, sustainable, and largely achieve their stated foreign policy goals.

Originally your argument was there's no difference between Libya and Iraq; not only do I fundamentally disagree, implying that there isn't undermines arguments against the war in Iran. You're empowering neocons by implying that it's pacifism or nothing, that all military actions be held to the same nonsensical, reductive, and frankly absurdist standard.

But I suppose it makes sense to someone who thinks that if WWII is morally justified at all, then it would have been equally justified to engage in the bloodbath of marching into Russia, destroying both of our countries in the process. Thank god you have your moral standards!

[Ray9]

	Originally Posted by stasis To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	As I understand it, domino theory was erroneous in Vietnam. The Vietnamese hated the Chinese and as such would not have acted as a projection of Chinese and therefore Soviet power.

This is what I remember. In 1966 when I was 19 there was grave concern that if one country in southeast asia fell to the communists the rest would fall like dominos. Now at 19 I really didn't know very much about what a communist was but I knew they were bad because I'd been hearing how bad they were since about the seventh grade. Don't get me wrong. I'm a lot smarter today than I was at 19 and I fully understand what a communist is and they are bad news but at the time I like a lot of other kids thought I was going to the jungle to save our freedom. I wasn't sophisticated enough to understand that the US and the USSR could never go at each other head to head because each could risk annihilation. So we and the Soviets used surrogates or client states to threaten the balance of power. The Soviets knew better than to directly invlove themselves in the conflict so they funneled their support through the Chinese who supplied the Ho Chi Minh trail.

At the end of World War Two the US had sole ownership of the atomic bomb. One wonders how the world would be different today if we had used that advantage to control the Soviets. Instead we let them catch up and they are still very much a threat today. This is why I brought up Curtis Lemay. He understood this but was out voted. Think about it. We could have rolled into Russia and they would have done nothing because they would have known we could turn everything into scorched earth. We just had done it to the Japanese. Sorry, I guess I'm just a monday morning quarterback.

[larkin]

	Originally Posted by Ray9 To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	Sorry, I guess I'm just a monday morning quarterback.

Yep, invading Russia always works out so well for everyone involved.

[INTelliJent]

	Originally Posted by larkin To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	Yep, invading Russia always works out so well for everyone involved.

When some over-eager nation tries invading in some other time of the year besides the dead of winter, who knows what might happen?

You seem to have a difficult time dealing with discussion within different paradigms. There are ideals, there are possibilities, and [actual] history/current events. It is possible to theorize and discuss in those different paradigms.

---------- Post added 05-22-2012 at 04:35 PM ----------

Originally Posted by larkin To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

Give me a break. I could give a shit who initiated the action. I don't support all of the military interventions of NATO, but at least they're multilateral, non-occupying, sustainable, and largely achieve their stated foreign policy goals. Originally your argument was there's no difference between Libya and Iraq; not only do I fundamentally disagree, implying that there isn't undermines arguments against the war in Iran. You're empowering neocons by implying that it's pacifism or nothing, that all military actions be held to the same nonsensical, reductive, and frankly absurdist standard. But I suppose it makes sense to someone who thinks that if WWII is morally justified at all, then it would have been equally justified to engage in the bloodbath of marching into Russia, destroying both of our countries in the process. Thank god you have your moral standards!

Do explain. Your ignorance or hyperbole in confusing nonintervention with pacifism is telling though. You claim non-interventionism is absurd. I claim stomping around like the big bully you just described in the previous post as absurd.

If WWII was justified, then the US could have used it's immediately superior, "moral death dealer" nuclear weapons to take out Stalin's Russia, a much more evil entity than the three countries the US was at war with to start with.

[Ray9]

	Originally Posted by INTelliJent To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	You seem to have a difficult time dealing with discussion within different paradigms. There are ideals, there are possibilities, and [actual] history/current events. It is possible to theorize and discuss in those different paradigms.

Some don't like it when there is a digression from the storyline. Especially when they've read the book and believed every word of it.