Quote from: Andrew Bitcoiner on February 16, 2012, 10:05:54 PM

Quote from: Herodes on February 16, 2012, 09:16:58 PM

Hm, just wanted to put this out there and see what are your opinions.

But let me ask you this, if someone attacks you and your family, what do you do, do you just stand there and let the attackers run over you, or do you fight back with all you've got ?

Isn't it so that you receive what you give (most of the time) ?

So I was thinking, in the case of Afghanistan, Al-Qaeda and the US was on terror.

From what I've learned the US and the coallition forces are trying to eradicate Al-Qaeda from the surface of earth. I'm not the slightest surprised that this really leads to even more anger and willingness to attack US and US friendly parties by Al-Qaeda and their supporters.

I was thinking, what if the US forces stopped killing and stopped attacking, but rather did their best to help building infrastructure, social systems, providing a higher standard of living etc. Would not this make the people of Afghanistan welcome the US more, and the urge to do terrorist attack etc. would be reduced ?

After all, who wants to kill your helping hand ? But the attacking hand, who wants to be kind to it ?

Sure enough, the 9-11 attacks was devastating, but haven't there been enough killings now. There's been so many reports about drone attacks, and innocent people being killed by the US. Would it not make sense to stop waging war against 'terrorism' if the goal was to stop terrorism ?

Or perhaps there really is no wish for peace, because what should the US forces do if there was peace everywhere ?

What do you think ?

I think you need to learn about the history of Islam before making such suggestions.

Actually Herodes is theoretically correct on how to properly fight an insurgency. This battle is not about the number of enemies killed. It is for the support of the local population. A guerilla insurgency uses terrorist tactics to cause chaos and fear among the local population. They can quickly blend in and out of the local population. When the occupying force comes in to sweep out insurgents, those insurgences put up a small fight while the main force moves to a new location.

The tactics of the insurgency is to show the local population that the occupying force cannot protect them. Without that proper protection the local population will then give their support to the insurgency that will protect them.

With this in mind, the only possible way for the occupying force to win is to build services for the local population. As they do that they have to have lots of security. They have to use a lot of intelligence to find the insurgents living within the population. The occupying force has to take heavy casualties. In the case of Afghanistan, the occupying force is NATO, and the NATO allies have to keep their populations in support of these tactics. It is not just go in and kill a bunch of "evil-doers".

One of the best books written on this subject is Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice . Also check out the free journal published by the United States Army War College, Parameters.