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Originally Posted by FlamesAddiction
With Vietnam and Afghanistan, modern conventions of war practically stopped any hope for a complete victory. Has any war since WW2 ever been "won" without the ensuing "war crimes"? Capitulation just doesn't happen without complete destruction.
ISIS is even worse because it is essentially a borderless conflict. It's like playing whack-a-mole. How do you beat that? It's like the war on drugs and other borderless conflicts. It's hard to win when you have nothing to take away from them. If you let them establish a state, then they would have something to lose, but no one is their right mind would ever want to do that.
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Honestly you're probably not going to beat it with a set piece battle plan. You can role in and take territory, but you're going to be facing a ghost enemy that looks like civilians and acts like civilians and wants mass civilian casualties.
for the most part the average foot soldier for ISIS welcomes death or martyrdom. The only way to fight these groups is to go after the people that don't want to die. Which is the leadership who have it pretty good.
You basically have to start killing leaders, and I'm not just talking the senior guys, but you go after their field commanders, who are the real zealots.
If you kill enough experienced leaders or good leaders, their logical replacement are eventually going to be inexperienced or hesitant leaders who are going to make mistakes that you can capitalize on.
The other lesson that probably won't be learned, is that eventually you will have to fight the enemy on the same brutal level, if the enemy hides among civilians, then conventional wisdom means that you have to take out that enemy no matter what the cost is.
the other big requirement is based around the intelligence war. The United States and the other western powers have become too reliant on technology, tapping cellphones, use of satellites and drones. There needs to be more of a focus on human intelligence in the region to help predict intentions and patterns.