I wanted to remark on a particularly astute comment left by one of my regular commenters. My remarks were inspired by this section:
There are groups of people who want to foist their agenda and ideology on others, but instead of doing it peacefully or violently against the primary targets, they use violence against unrelated targets – terrorist tactics.
and this:
As far as fighting the Islamist terrorist organisations using tanks and artillery, good luck. You can fight the conventional military branch of the organization, and you may defeat it. That leaves the remaining organizations without military branches free to do what they want to do, but I am sure it feels good.
Some nostalgic people wish we could fight the terrorists with the tactics that were effective during World War II against the Germans and the Japanese. We can’t. Contrary to the war movies you might have seen, during World War II the important campaigns were not the big set piece battles but the campaigns against the enemies’ productive capacity and civilian morale. What became clear during the Viet Nam War was that we were no longer willing to wage wars against civilian morale but the enemy was quite capable of waging war against ours, hence “asymmetrical warfare”.
The terrorists don’t have much productive capacity to speak of. They’re less an army as we understand such things than bandits. If they’re successful in their objectives, tens or hundreds of millions of their subjects will die, simply because they can’t be supported under the form of society and economy they want to impose.
They capture the munitions they use or the resources they sell to buy munitions. Consequently, they aren’t dependent on the morale of the people in the territories they control. Honestly, I don’t think they give a damn about their morale.
Objectively, we could fight a war of extermination against them if we were willing to kill terrorists and civilians alike. Alternatively, we can just let them have their way within the borders of the countries who won’t or can’t put them down and otherwise have no commerce with them other than under very constrained conditions. By “no commerce” I mean no trade, no communications, no seats in the UN, no travel other than within designated “trade towns”.
Since I don’t think we’re willing to wage a war of extermination or quarantine them, I think that the greatest likelihood is that we’ll just put up with the situation. Given the degree of personal empowerment in the modern world, that means we’ll put up with hundreds or thousands of deaths at the hands of terrorists every year and deteriorating conditions of security and freedom within our own borders.
However, our leaders will feel good about their high-mindedness.
Objectively, we could fight a war of extermination against them if we were willing to kill terrorists and civilians alike.
The biggest problem with this tactic is that our leaders want to import them HERE by the millions. And that’s on a “bi-partisan” basis here in the US, and across a broad swath of political parties in the EU, though the parliamentary nature of their governments allows for more anti-immigration parties.
So a war of extermination will be brought to a town near you! (Not me, because I live in a black town, and no one wants to live in a black town. So I’m vulnerable to mindless crime and rioting, but terrorism only when I go shopping.)
When you dig into the religious dogma of ISIS there are some weaknesses that could be exploited. I think it was Andy who posted an article going into some of this, suggesting how diminishing their credibility also decreases their allure attracting the disenfranchised to join their fight. Taking away the territory they have stolen also takes the air out of their claim to be an enduring, legitimate Caliphate capable of realizing an ancient prophecy of doing battle with the west.
Basically the longer you dismiss ISIS having it stand as a feared terrorist group, the greater it will grow in it’s social media reputation, and the more damage it will randomly and recklessly inflict onto unsuspecting and vulnerable targets.
The earlier WH doctrine dismissing ISIS’s initial threat and steady growth is another example of “what you allow you encourage.” ISIS is definitely encouraged…..
ISIS inspires terrorists in the west because ISIS looks like a winner. In fact it replaced AQ because AQ was looking like a loser relative to ISIS. The application of massive force would erase that “winning!” notion. People go with the strong horse, not the crippled one. Eliminate the source of inspiration (ISIS, and before that AQ) and you reduce the sense of momentum and inspiration felt in the banlieus. So there is a likely advantage in taking ISIS down in Syria/Iraq.
(People arguing that the only real problem is domestic Muslim populations are making an argument that runs directly counter to the wish to import large numbers of Syrian refugees. The Left doesn’t realize they’re making that case, but they are. And with it the case for right-wing nativist parties.)
We either need to do a massive amount of killing – not pinpricks, slaughter – or let Assad do it for us. There is no realistic answer that does not involve a whole lot of death. ISIS, now that it has decided to go international, needs to be killed. The force best positioned to do that is the Assad regime, with the Kurds retaking what’s theirs. I suspect that’s what happens next. We have an election coming, Hillary or Rubio or whoever can walk back from the anti-Assad policy and tut-tut while Assad and his Hezbollah and Iranian and Russian friends do the job.
If we are unwilling to do the dirty work ourselves, maybe it’s time for us to pack up and go home. Let the Shiites and Sunnis murder each other. Dave’s Islamic Theme Park idea. But we should be clear that this will not be the west behaving responsibly, or peaceably, and it certainly won’t bring happiness and joy to the ME. It’ll just be us walling off the leper colony and ignoring the horror that follows.
“Objectively, we could fight a war of extermination against them if we were willing to kill terrorists and civilians alike.”
Depends upon your goal. If you just want to get IS out of Syria and Iraq, you could do that.* It would probably mean killing millions of civilians in order to kill 50k-60k IS fighters. However, I think you can be pretty sure a couple of things would happen. First, a large group of IS would leave and go to Pakistan, Turkey, Somalia or wherever. Next, there would be a surge in the number of recruits from other countries wanting to join the jihadist fight.
This, in the short term, probably means a lot more terror activity in Europe and anywhere else they can attack. It probably means another Iraq, where we would have to occupy the territory we have taken, and face constant IED and suicide bombings. Having just killed off a bunch of the local population, the terrorists and insurgents will be able to hide pretty easily.
In the long term this does nothing to stop the kinds of terror attacks like we just saw in Paris. The only thing I see it doing would be to discredit the true believers who think they are joining IS because the final battle is near and Jesus will return to lead them to victory against the Romans. This might be enough to discredit IS, but with all of the new recruits pouring in to want revenge, I think you just get new groups vying to take its place. Lets face it, they already know we can stomp them in set piece war. We came in and took over Afghanistan and Iraq pretty easily. It is what comes after that is the hard part. If you don’t have plan for what comes after the extermination plan, you might as well plan on doing this every 5-10 years.
*We were certainly willing to accept civilian deaths in Iraq. Lots of them. I assume by your tone you are going to go way past that level of killing of civilians.
Steve
What I was envisioning is killing tens of millions of civilians until the population was so battered it would do anything including turning in their own fathers and brothers to get it to stop. What’s hard for me to envision is our thinking we should do that.
Hardly. Sure, we killed some civilians. Most were killed by other Iraqis.
Rule of thumb: 25% of the population.
The reason why you slaughter every man, woman, and child in the first city is to make the second city open its gates, and if they refuse, you keep it up until one city opens its gates willingly. They are spared. Historically, this tactic has been exceedingly effective, but it has rarely been deemed merciful.
If you want to play in the morally ambiguous areas, fine, but remember, history may not make the same judgement as you. Welcome to being one of the dirty workers.
” it would do anything including turning in their own fathers and brothers to get it to stop.”
This would end up a bit being like torture, in that you would never know when to stop. IS could just stop attacking. Families turn in a few. How do we know we got them all? Kill some more? I think we can be pretty sure we would see the same thing that happened in Afghanistan where people get revenge by turning in people who are not IS just for reward money or to make the killing stop. We would need a much bigger Gitmo, and just like the original a lot of them would not be IS. Or, since we are being nice and bloodthirsty and we might as well continue, we could just kill anyone turned in as IS. At that point, what difference would it make if we killed a few more innocents?
“Hardly. Sure, we killed some civilians. Most were killed by other Iraqis.”
Yup, which we accepted. Don’t forget that the ethnic cleansing also caused a lot of people to flee their homes, never to return.
Steve
Posting my question here because you are an intelligent group of readers.
Why? Why bring a million or more Muslims to the West instead of helping them there?
Compassion? That’s how our politicians want to be perceived, sure.
But what’s the REAL reason?
O.K. , My answer, its the money.” Lavishly compensated contractors”
“Many of the refugees are steered to our country by the United Nations Human Rights Council. Naturally, the UNHRC has a history of bashing Israel on behalf of Palestinian Islamists — indeed, it works closely with the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees, one of Hamas’s most notorious sympathizers. The UNHRC works in tandem with the State Department, which resettles the refugees throughout the U.S. with the assistance of lavishly compensated contractors (e.g., the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, other Christian and Jewish outfits, and the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants) — often absent any meaningful consultation with the states in which Washington plants these assimilation-resistant imports.”
Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/427698/syria-refugees-debate-muslim-immigration
“Historically, this tactic has been exceedingly effective”
Against nation states. The next time we fight Germany I am for it. However, we are fighting a relatively small group of jihadists. I am not convinced one plan fits all.
Steve
@steve
If you intend to employ the tactic, you slaughter every man, woman, and child in the city that hides a terrorist. At some point people get the message, but you will need to slaughter a lot of people. Also, There is no going back once you start down this path. You do not get to play Attila the Hun one day and Gandhi the next.
While I do not have a problem killing people and blowing up things, but I have stated multiple times that the way you deal with terrorist networks is primarily through covert espionage methods.
In the case of ISIS, they more than likely obtained the terrorist division through a Merger and Acquisition.
I think you’re overestimating the likely effectiveness of espionage in dealing with Islamist terrorism. Their networks are very close, based on families.
I am referring to terrorist networks in the US or which want to operate in the US. It is not as easy as going to the local bomb-making store and buying a suicide vest. Outside of the country, they still need to move money, move material, train, and communicate among other activities. These are all vulnerable points. You target those points and work out from there.
You snatch targets for intel, but you also use drones, larger missile strikes, conventional military strikes, and assassinations as needed. The goal is to get inside their network – physically, but more importantly mentally. They need to understand they are vulnerable and must be right 100% of the time.
Okay, let me give a concrete example. How do you infiltrate the Tsarnaev brothers?
Who wanted them here in the first place? Cui Bono?
Virtue-signalling.
Russia warned the US about the older Tsarnaev brother. There was communication and travel. Had there been a robust counter terrorist program, they probably would not have gotten as far. What was needed was not domestic contacts. They needed to investigate their foreign contacts, and for that, you need a robust program capturing people.
A terrorist organisation that must rely upon random acts of violence by people claiming to do it in their name is not very strong. They are pathetic. No respectable radical Islamist terrorist would want to join. I suspect this is al-Qaeda’s problem.
In any case, there will always be incidents. Dismantling the Mafia did not end crime.