

The drone war in Pakistan - prostoalex
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/11/24/unblinking-stare

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venomsnake
There was a military saying once:

"If it's stupid and it works, than it is not stupid"

We should have the opposite

"No matter how smart it is, if it doesn't work it's stupid"

The US war machine is working brilliantly on the tactical level. And yet there
is total inability of the military brass and the administration to deliver
tangible geopolitical results. No idea why this is, but the war on terror is
longer than WWI and II combined, and the world is quite possibly a worse place
right now than in 2001.

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cache87
"that mentality is what drives it all: if only we can get enough of these
bastards, we’ll win the war"

You would have thought they would have learned something from the last couple
of failed invasions - you don't win a war with technology. You win it with
troops on the ground.

This is the Rumsfeld Doctrine in action, and again we'll see it fail.

~~~
gizmo686
>You win it with troops on the ground.

This approach has a long history of being insufficient when you are fighting
against locals (unless you have a relatively specific tactical objective). You
win this type of war by gaining popular support of the locals. This normally
requires boots on the ground, but most of them should be work boots, not
combat boots.

~~~
waps
Sadly that's only accurate if you're not massacring the locals using said
troops. Ergo, it doesn't work for the US, but is working for China, Sudan,
Saudi Arabia, Iran, ...

I would argue that you're entire premise is wrong. You assume only the US is
doing the killing here. That these terror organisations are just the friends
of the locals. In reality, terror has 2 legs, one of which the US supports and
the other the US bombs. That won't work, and everybody realizes that. That's
not what they're doing. Locals, especially mothers, are perfectly aware of
what these terror organisations are trying to do and would like nothing better
than keeping their kids and husbands away from them. Yet that's not happening.
Why not ? Well ...

Terror organisations, like Hamas, ISIS, ..., mainly do "social" work.
Unemployment benefits, scholarships, marriage subsidies (and arranging
marriages in the first place, in islamic societies there's a huge need for
this for obvious reasons), jobs, resolving conflicts, policing, food aid,
child subsidies, ... They use the power they get through this to commit acts
of terror, massacres and, if possible, invasions. In the case of Hamas, it's
social work is subsidized by the UN, paid for mostly by the US (because most
UN member states don't actually pay their dues).

Needless to say, these organisations need to be replaced. But they make it
impossible to get to the local population, to offer them an alternative. You
want an education and had the bad luck to be born in Gaza, Hamas can give it
to you, no one else can. Needless to say, it comes with conditions. Getting
married is the condition if you're lucky, getting a family member to ... if
you're not. They are like the mafia, and will bomb anyone who tries to help
locals outside of their system (they have bombed UN kindergartens, for
instance).

In this way, the current islamic terror organisations are not all that
different from their Soviet equivalents of 3-4 decades back. There is one
company in Gaza : Hamas. There is one hospital in Gaza : Hamas. There is only
one landlord in Gaza : Hamas (and nobody owns an apartment aside from Hamas
leadership). There is one school in Gaza : Hamas. There is one university in
Gaza : Hamas. There is one marriage organizer in Gaza : Hamas. There is one
supermarket in Gaza : Hamas ... I don't know, but I imagine the situation is
similar in Iraq and other places. They are mafias that are a state,
effectively.

This is why the problem is so hard. You have to kill these organisations,
prevent their functioning, and then offer an alternative to locals. This is
what they're trying to do : kill off the top of these organisations. Give
their lieutenants and middle management the chance to run away with the school
money of half of Gaza, to give the UN a chance to open a fair school system
without those conditions (for example).

More generally what needs to be done is to give the local population a real
alternative for a life ("a career", plus a few things) other than the local
terror organisation. If you have better options available, I am positive
everybody is itching to hear them. Today we are seeing that these
organisations are moving into and establishing colonies in large European
cities (though at the moment their "net" is very leaky, but still tight enough
to make them grow anyway). Literally everybody wants to hear your solution for
this. From the US, Western European states, China, to the Pakistani state and
everybody in between. Please, please give them another solution, because,
frankly, there are places, outside of the middle east, where this war is not
going very well at all.

------
scotty79
kind of video tl;dr:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4NRJoCNHIs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4NRJoCNHIs)

------
joering2
This was on a HN a while ago... not sure if all victims are "legitimate" and
confirmed.

[http://drones.pitchinteractive.com/](http://drones.pitchinteractive.com/)

Take a look at 10/30/2006.. can you imagine being the one who pressed the
button?? Will "I was just a soldier, I was just following up with orders"
suffice in front of God? And if you happen to be an atheist, is it good enough
justification to make you sleep well at night?

RIP.

~~~
rgbrenner
> [http://drones.pitchinteractive.com/](http://drones.pitchinteractive.com/)

That website is a perfect example of design over function. Irritating.

After watching that animation, I'm treated to one line about what happened in
2006.. no more information. No link to an article. Nothing.

So I don't really know what happened in 2006. But the site looked pretty.

Why not link to an article about the actual strike?

