Drone strike victims to address US Congress

[broken robot]

[Professor]

[exploited]

*shrug*

I'm one of those types that think if you go to war, there is alot to be said about being as brutal and terrifying as possible. I think the whole "precision strike" stuff is just propaganda, and that the idea of war crimes was developed specifically to make Westerners think that going to war is no big deal, since we take such care to minimize civilian casualties (lol no we don't).

If it were me calling the shots after 9/11, I would have gone on the news and said that my forces would be ordered to carpet bomb a major city or town for every day that went by without Taliban and Al-Qaeda being handed over. And I bet this would have resulted in less casualties overall, both civilian and otherwise.

The problem with the drone strikes is the same problem with most WoT strategy. For every bad guy it takes, it creates five more. The only way to break this cycle is to go with overwhelming soft power, or terrify the civilians and enemy fighters so completely that they give up, with overwhelming hard power. There is no room for middle ground.

[jimmyz]

I cry as much about some Paki tending their goats getting blown to bits as they do about some American devil sitting at their desk watching a 767 coming at them at 500 miles per hour getting blown to bits. I'm a monster.

[eynon81]

[eynon81]

[spacemonkey]

We invade their countries, then wonder why we're shot at. We were dick'n around with the goat herder's long before the goat herder's flew planes into our buildings. Collateral damage is just another word for oop's moment. And we are the only one's entitled to an oop's moment,right?

[exploited]

The goal should have been the destruction of Al-Qaeda forces and the kill/capture of all persons implicated in the 9/11 attacks. Occupation was and is stupid, a waste of time with zero benefits.

Have the Afghans do it. It is their mess. All the Taliban had to do was hand over everybody involved. When they didn't, we occupied them. We should have carpetbombed a town a day until they gave in. Either that or negotiate peacefully while closing off the borders so they couldn't get out.

None of this "compassionate" warfighting, which ends up killing more people than if we just treated war like what it is.

[eynon81]

[exploited]

Taliban want control of territory. They fled to the hills and took up an insurgency because they knew we were coming, and that we'd use troops as occupation forces. They knew they stood a good chance of getting back all their power if they simply prevented us from winning. And so now we are negotiating with them.

Their strategy panned out, and with tremendous cost to the Western world - which also happened to be Bin Laden's stated goal.

It makes more sense to deny them what they want - territory - and make the decision to not cooperate way more costly than having to go live in a cave someplace. And you have to remember that many of Afghanistans major players are not really Taliban... they are drug dealers and war lords who desire wealth and power, and that's it. How do you think they would respond to the Taliban if they knew they would be utterly destroyed?