Are We Winning the "War on Terror"?

READ THE BLOODY MANUAL.

Here let me help you...

www.smallwars.quantico.usmc.mil/sw_manual.asp

A mind is a terrible thing to waste, just take a moment, swallow your pride and learn something. I do it everyday.

Will do, tomorrow when I have energy. :coffee: After all, I'm here to learn so I always take interest when a veteran offers enlightenment.

Infern0 said:
terrible example for you to bring up the russians....they tried these tactics by carpet bombing whole villages off the map, and they are still trying it in cechenya without success

Israel has also tried it in a more limited fashion by destroying family homes....again without success
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:brave:

....

Just kidding!
 
motivational images not withstanding

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"it didn't work last time, or the time before...but lets try it again"
 
Israel has also tried it in a more limited fashion by destroying family homes....again without success


Yes - this was the traditional method of the military over the years of dealing with terrorists etc. The British Army always did it during the tenure of their mandate in Palestine. My father in law and my uncle, both Warrant Officers, took it as an everyday response. You try to kill us - we leave a black hole where your house used to be. Military necessity, perhaps??
Sadaam went further, very successfully - Not only the home -the whole family also bit the dust. Result - no suicide bombers. That worked. However, as civilised people we have a very different mind-set. But that makes us vulnerable to our current hideous enemy, and they know it, and they use it. As they tell us, we are at their mercy, because we love life and they love death, death of their minions that is, not quite so keen regarding their own.

So - any other methods available to us - like burying suicide bombers in pig-skins, the old reliable? Too uncivilised? Wouldn't smell very nice to all their virgins in paradise, would they. ( Sorry, just brain-storming)
 
Pershing and the Marine Corps, both have BTDT with great success. All we need do is revisit the successes of the past.
 
Maybe I overreacted a bit. But I knew people personally affected by terror attacks on American soil, perhaps what I really wanted was payback, not a real military solution.

Still, though, as far as I'm concerned, you use a dirty tactic on me and you open yourself up for the same kind of hurt.
 
With you there Major L . Absolutely. And let's face it, I feel likewise when these things happen. And I want them stopped, just as you do.
 
In a nutshell ...

In a nutshell ... absolutely not.
Best estimates place the number of terrorists and terrorists groups at a higher number now than on 9/11. That sounds like a failure to me.
 
So then CB other than declaring failure do you have a solution in mind to turn the tide and quell this sea of blood-thirsty exploding sapiens?
 
I wish there were an easy answer ...

So then CB other than declaring failure do you have a solution in mind to turn the tide and quell this sea of blood-thirsty exploding sapiens?

I wish I did ... I am tired of adding the names of neighbors, friends, acquaintances, former shipmates and those who's names I recognize but who I have never met, to a too long list of those who have died in Afghanistan and Iraq since 9/11. If these wars (except for Afghanistan), had never happened ... I could have died a happy man. Afghanistan was righteous.

Instead, GW Bush declared an undeclared war without any thought as to what would be necessary after the "enemy" was beaten, to be able to declare victory and bring our military home.

His "Mission Accomplished" was so much tripe. Here we are, we have been in Iraq longer than it took for WWII to run it's course and we are no closer today to bringing our troops home than we were the day GW declared "Mission Accomplished" from the deck of an Aircraft Carrier. The fact the personnel of the carrier placed the banner on the island is immaterial ... GW Bush took the opportunity for a 'photo op' that featured the banner to trumpet "HIS" triumph.

All of you know I am biased where either of the Pres. Bush's are concerned ... I make no bones about it - what gripes me the most are the decisions they made in my name and the policies they set in my name (most of which I disagree with). This is NOT a bash Bush post ... I am trying to honestly answer bulldogg's question ... but ... it is almost impossible because of the cost to so many.

IF we just pull out with out being able to sound a resounding "Mission Accomplished" for real, then it is just another Vietnam ... but ... on the other hand, how much higher will my personal list of "KIA" end up rising before we can answer up that we accomplished what we started out to do?

I REALLY WISH THERE WERE AN EASY ANSWER ... BUT .....
 
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Fair enough Chief and I understand your reasoning... I never thought there'd be an easy answer to the question.
 
In a nutshell ... absolutely not.
Best estimates place the number of terrorists and terrorists groups at a higher number now than on 9/11. That sounds like a failure to me.

Only thing is, Chief, that those were already being trained and developed before the Iraq situation.

I do agree with you that post-war Iraq has been a calamity so-far, unlike the execution of the war itself.
 
true, the war supposedly stopped three years ago.

Chief, you're right. More terrorists, and in Iraq, too. Saddam didn't harbor them, he thought they might be a threat to his command, and that citizens would be more loyal to them than to him.
 
Only thing is, Chief, that those were already being trained and developed before the Iraq situation.

I do agree with you that post-war Iraq has been a calamity so-far, unlike the execution of the war itself.

Not quite accurate DB ... the total number of terrorists estimated, outnumber any possibility all of them were already in the training pipeline ... after all, how long does it take to train someone to strap on a 'vest bomb' and walk into a bunch of civilians and set the bomb off (or) to give a gun and ammunition to a man/woman and point them towards American troops?

Let's face facts ... our presence in Iraq has brought people out of the woodwork (from all over the Middle East), who hate us more than they value their own lives. Us being there allows them to strike a blow for Allah.
 
Aye Chief, it does but they are striking us and blowing up Baghdad and not Boston. We didn't begin this movement, it began with Sayed Q'tub in the 1950's and was not related to anything the US was doing anywhere to anyone.
 
Aye Chief, it does but they are striking us and blowing up Baghdad and not Boston. We didn't begin this movement, it began with Sayed Q'tub in the 1950's and was not related to anything the US was doing anywhere to anyone.

Thats not 100% true, Sayed Q'tub chief arguement was not that we are all degenerate, but that we were degenerate and meddling in Arab Affairs. That too happens to be the opinion of al Qaeda.

Well, I could care less about their views of western society, the reason the Middle East is so backward has more to do with the Arabs spending the past 800 years killing each other, than of the 'corruption' of the west.

However, it is true that we do stick our nose into places that it doesn't belong. Iraq is a key example. We need to be finding ways to cut our ties to the Arab world, but instead we do things that insure that we stay, and all the unpleasantness with it.

Oils well that ends that ends well. -As the saying goes...
 
That too happens to be the opinion of al Qaeda.
Because Osama's teacher, Zawhirlibird was taught by Q'tub. It all begins with him and his objection began as a graduate student teacher in Greeley, Colorado. His objection to us was PRIOR to any involvement in ME affairs. I can go chapter and verse with you on this one with some pretty infallible sources.
 
Let's face facts ... our presence in Iraq has brought people out of the woodwork (from all over the Middle East), who hate us more than they value their own lives. Us being there allows them to strike a blow for Allah.

Point taken, Chief. I would opine that it is as you say, althought, without Iraq, was trying to make the point that the number of terrorists from, say 9/11 until now, would have grown any way, taking into account the networks. Propaganda -wise, i agree that the post-war situation in Iraq has been proved terrible, providing something of a recruitment widow for them. But doesn't this stop, perhaps, when we come to a resolved situation in Iraq?


Next Point :-

Quote from Bull- Dog

“Aye Chief, it does but they are striking us and blowing up Baghdad and not Boston. We didn't begin this movement, it began with Sayed Q'tub in the 1950's and was not related to anything the US was doing anywhere to anyone.”



And don’t forget that the grandfather of Al Qaeda, The Moslem Brotherhood, based in Ismalia on the Suez canal, also in the fifties, were and ARE STILL the proponents of the Islamic Caliphate.

For the moment I forget the name of their current leader, but he is a very big spiritual noise in Arabia, and was invited to London recently by the knave Livingstone, Mayor of London.

When he speaks in Arabic to the muslims of the world they hear that he is taking Europe without firing a shot, by population.

We shouldn’t shrug off these people – remember Khomeini v The Shah, coming from the same Egyptian tradition, and this is not a fairy story.

This is a continuation of their long-game, made possible by the discovery of oil wealth in the middle-east.

They hate the west anyway up, there is no price, they want it all.

As Bull-Dog reminds us, we are fighting them in Iraq rather than Boston.
 
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Point taken ...

Point taken ... and ... I agree that I would rather fight them in their towns and on their land than in mine. It's bad enough that we have a branch of the KKK in our vicinity - I don't need to worry about a bunch of ******* Terrorists at the same time.

I already told two of those KKK animals that I would shoot the first one throwing any of their propoganda BS onto my property (one of them was of the 'skinhead' variety [I was at our local county fair]). When the 'grand wizard' walked up, I don't believe he liked it very well when I told him the same thing. I threatened to put out his lights if he got within 10 feet of my property as I considered them to be nothing more than home grown terrorists (12 ga double 'oo' buckshot or 12 ga slugs does wonders to persuade them it is unhealthy around my property ... if that isn't enough, I know where I can lay my hands on some real military hardware [collector friend of mine]). Terry Nichols (Oklohoma City Bombing), lived just a couple of miles from my home ... so ... I don't trust any of that crowd any farther than I can throw a fully loaded tractor /trailer rig.
 
WOW, chief - now that's a phenomenon I have never come across, and the same goes for my countrymen. i know it alll started with the Scots, early days, but this stuff always seems ridiculous to us in this day and age.. So there you, Chief, we think we know it all, until we are confronted by other folks problems. I'm right with you on that one, but it must be tough having to deal with it. Respect.
 
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