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I believe we could win the war on terror if we had to stomach to be as brutal as necessary. I won't go into details as they are incredibly violent.

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I believe we could win the war on terror if we had to stomach to be as brutal as necessary. I won't go into details as they are incredibly violent.

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If we were to level the playing feild and surrender the moral high ground it would be over in months

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I'm going to go ahead and disagree completely.  See: Soviet Occupation of Afghanistan.

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We are not the Soviet, their ham handed usage of fire power, inflexibility  and inability to target condemned them from the very beginning.  

Unfortunately, ISAF is making many of the same mistakes, sans the killing.

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The only conceivable way total war is going to work is if we killed every human being in the entire country and then brought in colonists from the mid-west and repopulated the country.

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Doesn't take kill them all, it takes killing enough to do the job and you don't know what that tipping point is till you get there.  


Not saying the US has the will to do, but it most  works when you do.  Ask the Carthaginians what happens when you prove to be big enough ass holes that you incur the wrath of the lone super power.

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I've walked among those people.  If it came to that, they would fight until there was none left alive.

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I'm going to go ahead and disagree completely.  See: Soviet Occupation of Afghanistan.

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So have I and they have said that about numerous other peoples also, in the American experience the Morros and numerous Indian tribes.   In end there is always a tipping point at which the all those willing to fight are dead.   To include the Romans famous destruction of Carthage, most weren't killed but keep or sold into slavery.

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See the nuking of Japan.  They love us now.

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If such a tipping point existed, and it probably does, it's much farther away then what the American or world public opinion could stomach.  The Taliban and AQI know this.  That means we have to keep doing it the way we're doing it.  It will take longer, but it will work under the constraints we're in.

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I don't disagree that the West doesn't have the will for it, and that is one reason AQ and most Muslim groups won't give up.  When you read their literature, they take our unwillingness to take all measure necessary to win as weakness and why they won't stop fighting.

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Great video. I know a few of those guys.

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Here's where their biggest weakness is.  They want to "keep things the way they are."

But, when we come in.  Build a clinic, dig a well, put in basic roads, inoculate their livestock, provide medical care to their children, and develop a local economy that leads to jobs and growth.  They see real improvement in their lives.

Then AQI comes in, busts all this stuff up because it's an evil outside influence from the Great Satan of the West and tells the village that they need to "go back to the way things were."  The people are like "Fuck you, we like this new shit."

Enough people do that, we eventually haves places stable enough that we can start training Afghan police/soldiers, start getting Afghan's educated, leading to Afghan doctors, teachers, engineers, etc.  Then, over time.  It's not American's coming in and setting up clinics, digging wells, putting in roads, inoculating livestock, providing medical, it's other Afghans from the central government.

This makes the local villagers even more inclined to tell the Taliban or AQI to go fucking pound sand.  It is essentially giving these people something worth standing up and fighting for.  They don't give a shit about freedom or democracy or patriotism.  This is a 3rd world shit-hole, they're far more concerned with just surviving the coming winter or having enough crops to feed their family.  If we can give them the tools to build a better life, they will be far more willing to stand up and defend that better life and the tools they achieved it with.

That's what counter-insurgency is all about, and primarily what Special Forces is about which the video the OP posted demonstrates very clearly.  I suggest you all watch it, and learn from it.

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I believe we could win the war on terror if we had to stomach to be as brutal as necessary. I won't go into details as they are incredibly violent.

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The Surge in Iraq is a sign that it works.

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This isn't a war of land, resources, oil, food crops, etc... This is a war of racial/religious superiority.

We are fighting an enemy that believes they are the Master Race. Same mindset of the Japanese during WWII. The Germans were all about the Master Race and all but that was more of a political tool and most of the German Army and People weren't brainwashed to the level that the Japanese were. The Islamic Terrorists are on the same level of the Japanese.

Japan was preparing for the invasion of the Home Islands by having every house make bamboo spears. They were on a Total War mindset. When we invade Okinawa, Japanese civilians threw themselves over cliffs and were given hand grenades by the Imperial Japanese Army to commit suicide with.

Our enemies today are of the same mindset. They gladly use themselves as weapons, use civilians as weapons, fight to the death, and prefer death then surrender. Their mindset is that they are the master of the world and that any culture, religion, and thought other then theirs should be wiped off the face of the Earth.

This is a war that can only be won if the USA went to total war. If we fought them to the point of destroying their entire mindset and culture we will win. That is how we beat Japan and Germany in WWII. We destroyed them to the point that they were nothing left.

Japan was a warrior culture. We fought them to the point that we literally beat it out of them. Two Nuclear Bombs were needed to do it. But it sent them the message that all that awaits them is death and failure. If we proceeded with Operation Downfall we would have faced up to a half a million casualties. Nuclear Weapons gave us the option that allowed us to use force that would spare American Lives.

That is the same mindset that is needed today. Total War and Brute Force. Sometimes simply destroying an entire culture is better then trying to agree and be friendly with it.

They want to kill us.... they will not stop until they have achieved said goal. As such our goal should be to wipe that thought form their cultural mindset.

The Surge in Iraq is a sign that it works. Except we need to do the surge on a larger scale. Terrorist operate out of Yemen.... hit Yemen hard. Iran is supporting our enemies. Knock Iran into the ground. Iran strikes back with Chemical weapons? The nuclear option is open and wipe them off the face of the Earth.

If I was president it would be simple.... my first official act would be that I nuke Sweden. After the attack I'd go on the air and tell the world that I nuked Sweden because I liked them.... don't fuck with America or her allies. Because if nuking Sweden was done because we liked them picture what we'd do to our enemies.

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Kilcullen in his seminal work, Accidental Guerrilla, would somewhat disagree with you,  although as an anthropologist won’t come out and say it. We are fighting a culture and the Pustu culture is like all the worst parts of Islam on steroids.    He goes into great detail about a fight an A-Team had in Urzgon province.  The A-team was ambushed and their route of withdrawal was cut off by locals who started shooting at the team.  In the end one staff sergeant was killed and the team was able to break contact using all available CAS in the area.  Following the ambush, many of the locals were interviewed and said in effect, “no we actually like the Americans, they give us all this free stuff.” However, we had to fight them because that is the Pustho way.

That's a cultural problem, and why there are cultural doctrines that have been and are being developed to deal with it and adapt it to policy on the ground.

This actually gets into another question as to why A teams get into more fights than comparable sized line units  and have had to drop more bombs than conventional forces ever do; if all the locals know they are going to get free stuff from them?  Could it be the team who is seen as “doing good works” tends to be targeted more than the team who goes out with the mindset we are here to kill everything we meet?  

The basic reason there, is that 12 men who are lightly armed is a much more appealing target than a mechanized Infantry battalion with armor support.

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The surge in Iraq wasn't about total war concept.  The majority of the surge troops where infrastructure and support personal tasked with developing local infrastructure and economy.

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This actually gets into another question as to why A teams get into more fights than comparable sized line units  and have had to drop more bombs than conventional forces ever do; if all the locals know they are going to get free stuff from them?  Could it be the team who is seen as “doing good works” tends to be targeted more than the team who goes out with the mindset we are here to kill everything we meet?  

The basic reason there, is that 12 men who are lightly armed is a much more appealing target than a mechanized Infantry battalion with armor support.

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The "Surge" in Iraq actually occurred after the An Anbar "Awaking."  Most don't know the real story behind the awaking, many academics take at face value the claim of the Iraqis that it occurred because they got tired of the brutality of the AQI and didn't want to marry their daughters off to the members of AQI.  

However, being one those of the ground when it all started, the Iraqi/Arab view is BS.  What happen was the Ubedi Subtribe of the Abu Mahal lost approx 30 percent of their male population and decided to switch sides.  They gave use a Col to act as the Bde commander for the Bde operating in their home town, we from that point forward beat down all the other tribes and the awakening started.  

This is part of the problem academics and most COIN "experts" often want to ignore all the Kinetics necessarily to set the conditions for all the Line of Operations development.

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Terrorism is the symptom of poverty and conditions in the middle east.  

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Poverty has very little to do with it, if you look at most founders of Islamist movements, they came from the educated, upper class.

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Kinetics should never been the primary means of winning, but you cannot ignore the stick when you are offering carrots.

That is a huge part of the problem right now, we are going almost all carrot and no stick.  We give the locals no incentive to not side with the enemy because they know they can side with them and very little if anything will happen to them.

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I'm going to go ahead and disagree completely.  See: Soviet Occupation of Afghanistan.

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I'm going to go ahead and disagree completely.  See: Soviet Occupation of Afghanistan.

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Nukes are off the table, not even worth introducing to the conversation.

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wow, anyone see that thing zip by during part 2 @ 1:06?



what was that?  looked like it skipped off the ground.

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Saw that too, was wondering wtf that was..

cool set of videos either way.