Do you think Colonel Peters is correct?

Liberals are taking our liberties you ignoramus Originally Posted by nevergaveitathought

That does not mean that you fucking nuts are not doing so too. Shit.

Do you agree with Lt Col Peters or not? Originally Posted by WTF

Look, the guy says things on FOX for maximum effect and ratings, not as serious policy prescriptions. What does "leave behind smoking ruins and crying widows" mean? Drop more bombs on ISIS in Kobani? Only a fool like you would equate it with "nuking the Muslim world". I can agree or disagree with a specific strategy. That's not even a strategy.

Now STFU and let Old-T tell us what he's got.

Where do you get that, fagboy? I'm voting for whatever works. I want to see if Old-T has anything substantive beyond "Read Che". He always acts like he has inside sources or superior information that would make the rest of us look like fools. Maybe he drinks beer with some special ops guys trained in counter-insurgency. Or maybe he has read Che. Let's wait and see if he can articulate for us what he has learned.

You're up, Old-T. Where's the beef? Originally Posted by lustylad

I'll give you the basic, short version. I have no reason to believe you actually care to learn--plus Che said it better than I can. Or read Ho Chi Min. Yep, they were commies, but guess who WON in VN and Cuba? Learning from the winners is typically more useful than repeating what the losers did. You don't have to like them to understand that they may know something.

Unconventional warfare, terrorism, insurgency, whatever you care to call it, is not about killing tanks or airplanes. It is about the hearts and minds of the local populous.

The populous responds to Maslow's hierarchy just as any other people do--though Che did not use those words. The citizenry will have no patience for philosophical niceties of democracy if they are hungry, or fear for their safety. Even then, freedoms are relative.

The essence of Che’s plan for revolution—essentially the same as the Taliban and the Viet Cong—is to avoid conflict with the regime’s military until the end game. They want to make the real fight between the government and the mass populous. And by having the RWWs and LWWs in the US more worried about winning elections at home than making true progress against the Islamic militants we play along with them like dupes.

Terror attacks against food or food distribution, against water & power, to make the populous hungry—and convince them that the government can’t or won’t keep them from starving.

Then to have very public and very horrific acts of terror intended to get the government to react with great force. But since the insurgents have little if any center of mass to attack, the government’s response results in civilian casualties. The aim is make the government seem powerless to protect the people, and even better if the government is seen itself to be the treat to safety. The more brutal the government’s response, the better in the eyes of the insurgents. They have no problem sacrificing a lot of civilians—it just reinforces that the gov’t is incapable of providing safety.

So Peters’ wonderful insights do nothing but act as a foil and advance the goal of the insurgents/revolutionaries. Read the history in VN, in Afghanistan, in Cuba.

Peters is an idiot. And it is especially sad with his intel background. It seems he sure didn’t learn much. The first rule of an intel professional is to understand what information is vital to acquire. The second—almost equally important rule—is to understand how the enemy thinks.

If you want to advocate increased SURGICAL violence, you can make an argument for that. The hard part there is knowing where to inject it. But “making widows and orphans” indiscriminately is stupid machismo that gets ratings points from morons watching MSNBC or FOX, but does nothing successful.

We all are tired of the past numerous years. We screwed up going into Iraq, we have screwed up thinking everyone WANTS our form of democracy, we screwed up refusing to understand THEIR culture (oh my, I could list asinine grievous errors by DoD and DOS on this topic, but mostly by senior politicians who made policy based upon winning US votes, not winning the peace).

Sorry I sound like I know more than many on here about this, but maybe it’s because I do. I have worked with the IC and Spec Ops for the last 36 years on this and other issues, and listening to the “experts” here is part laughable, part disgusting.

You want to change things? Focus on what the terrorists are doing—understand how to turn the populous against THEM. And that doesn’t happen by our bombing villages.

The Christian right is a far greater threat to individual freedom in this country than any of those groups named.

Those mutherfuckers will have us sipping Tea with no alcohol in site. They are the ISIS, the Taliban, Al Qaeda of this country. Far right wing radical group that in their peaceful way (I'll give that to'em) want to take our choice of individual rights away. Originally Posted by WTF

You're an idiot if you actually believe the Christian right is a greater threat than any those Islamic groups.

The ragheads killed 3,000 Americans on 9-11 alone. And they have tried other attacks, but we have managed to stop most of them.

So, how many people have Pat Robertson and his ilk killed since that time? Zero?

About the only individual "right" they are a threat to is abortion and, let's be honest, on the scale of rights, that one is pretty awful.

It may be a necessary evil, but it isn't exactly the same as free speech.

And alcohol? Really? Do you think there is ANY serious movement to ban alcohol in this country? Except maybe by Muslims, ironically enough?

Even the temperance assholes learned the hard lessons of Prohibition. You can control the sale of it somewhat, but you can't prohibit it. It is too easy to make (even in your home) and only organized crime benefits from Prohibition.

So, no, your alcohol example is dopey. Any more examples?

And BTW, the left is just as guilty as any faction on the right for prohibitions on drugs and alcohol, albeit for more secular reasons.

The War On Drugs is a bi-partisan fuck up. Only the Libertarians are correct on that issue.

I'll give you the basic, short version. I have no reason to believe you actually care to learn--plus Che said it better than I can. Or read Ho Chi Min. Yep, they were commies, but guess who WON in VN and Cuba? Learning from the winners is typically more useful than repeating what the losers did. You don't have to like them to understand that they may know something.

Unconventional warfare, terrorism, insurgency, whatever you care to call it, is not about killing tanks or airplanes. It is about the hearts and minds of the local populous.

The populous responds to Maslow's hierarchy just as any other people do--though Che did not use those words. The citizenry will have no patience for philosophical niceties of democracy if they are hungry, or fear for their safety. Even then, freedoms are relative.

The essence of Che’s plan for revolution—essentially the same as the Taliban and the Viet Cong—is to avoid conflict with the regime’s military until the end game. They want to make the real fight between the government and the mass populous. And by having the RWWs and LWWs in the US more worried about winning elections at home than making true progress against the Islamic militants we play along with them like dupes.

Terror attacks against food or food distribution, against water & power, to make the populous hungry—and convince them that the government can’t or won’t keep them from starving.

Then to have very public and very horrific acts of terror intended to get the government to react with great force. But since the insurgents have little if any center of mass to attack, the government’s response results in civilian casualties. The aim is make the government seem powerless to protect the people, and even better if the government is seen itself to be the treat to safety. The more brutal the government’s response, the better in the eyes of the insurgents. They have no problem sacrificing a lot of civilians—it just reinforces that the gov’t is incapable of providing safety.

So Peters’ wonderful insights do nothing but act as a foil and advance the goal of the insurgents/revolutionaries. Read the history in VN, in Afghanistan, in Cuba.

Peters is an idiot. And it is especially sad with his intel background. It seems he sure didn’t learn much. The first rule of an intel professional is to understand what information is vital to acquire. The second—almost equally important rule—is to understand how the enemy thinks.

If you want to advocate increased SURGICAL violence, you can make an argument for that. The hard part there is knowing where to inject it. But “making widows and orphans” indiscriminately is stupid machismo that gets ratings points from morons watching MSNBC or FOX, but does nothing successful.

We all are tired of the past numerous years. We screwed up going into Iraq, we have screwed up thinking everyone WANTS our form of democracy, we screwed up refusing to understand THEIR culture (oh my, I could list asinine grievous errors by DoD and DOS on this topic, but mostly by senior politicians who made policy based upon winning US votes, not winning the peace).

Sorry I sound like I know more than many on here about this, but maybe it’s because I do. I have worked with the IC and Spec Ops for the last 36 years on this and other issues, and listening to the “experts” here is part laughable, part disgusting.

You want to change things? Focus on what the terrorists are doing—understand how to turn the populous against THEM. And that doesn’t happen by our bombing villages. Originally Posted by Old-T

On the other hand...

Despite Che's strategy of avoiding head on fights with the military, the Bolivian Arny did track him down and pumped him full of bullets.

But, getting back to the hearts and minds argument, what do you do when the populace is ALREADY aligned against you?

If the Afghan population is willing to look the other way when AQ or the Taliban train in their country and then launch attacks outside their country, then their hearts and minds have already been lost. At that point, might it be the case that the only way to get them to change their behavior is "smoking ruins and crying widows"?

Giving someone a taste of their own medicine is often the best way to change their minds about things.

It certainly worked against the Germans and the Japanese. There was nothing surgical about WW2, especially the last year of it. It was wholesale slaughter until the fascists got exhausted.

Hard to compare the two wars.

Rules are different now. So are the ordinance and workforce requirements.

I'll give you the basic, short version. I have no reason to believe you actually care to learn--plus Che said it better than I can. Or read Ho Chi Min. Yep, they were commies, but guess who WON in VN and Cuba? Learning from the winners is typically more useful than repeating what the losers did. You don't have to like them to understand that they may know something.

Unconventional warfare, terrorism, insurgency, whatever you care to call it, is not about killing tanks or airplanes. It is about the hearts and minds of the local populous.

The populous responds to Maslow's hierarchy just as any other people do--though Che did not use those words. The citizenry will have no patience for philosophical niceties of democracy if they are hungry, or fear for their safety. Even then, freedoms are relative.

The essence of Che’s plan for revolution—essentially the same as the Taliban and the Viet Cong—is to avoid conflict with the regime’s military until the end game. They want to make the real fight between the government and the mass populous. And by having the RWWs and LWWs in the US more worried about winning elections at home than making true progress against the Islamic militants we play along with them like dupes.

Terror attacks against food or food distribution, against water & power, to make the populous hungry—and convince them that the government can’t or won’t keep them from starving.

Then to have very public and very horrific acts of terror intended to get the government to react with great force. But since the insurgents have little if any center of mass to attack, the government’s response results in civilian casualties. The aim is make the government seem powerless to protect the people, and even better if the government is seen itself to be the treat to safety. The more brutal the government’s response, the better in the eyes of the insurgents. They have no problem sacrificing a lot of civilians—it just reinforces that the gov’t is incapable of providing safety.

So Peters’ wonderful insights do nothing but act as a foil and advance the goal of the insurgents/revolutionaries. Read the history in VN, in Afghanistan, in Cuba.

Peters is an idiot. And it is especially sad with his intel background. It seems he sure didn’t learn much. The first rule of an intel professional is to understand what information is vital to acquire. The second—almost equally important rule—is to understand how the enemy thinks.

If you want to advocate increased SURGICAL violence, you can make an argument for that. The hard part there is knowing where to inject it. But “making widows and orphans” indiscriminately is stupid machismo that gets ratings points from morons watching MSNBC or FOX, but does nothing successful.

We all are tired of the past numerous years. We screwed up going into Iraq, we have screwed up thinking everyone WANTS our form of democracy, we screwed up refusing to understand THEIR culture (oh my, I could list asinine grievous errors by DoD and DOS on this topic, but mostly by senior politicians who made policy based upon winning US votes, not winning the peace).

Sorry I sound like I know more than many on here about this, but maybe it’s because I do. I have worked with the IC and Spec Ops for the last 36 years on this and other issues, and listening to the “experts” here is part laughable, part disgusting.

You want to change things? Focus on what the terrorists are doing—understand how to turn the populous against THEM. And that doesn’t happen by our bombing villages. Originally Posted by Old-T

Old-T, you mean “populace” (noun) not “populous” (adjective).

I have no problem with trying to learn from Che Guevara or Ho Chi Minh and understand how they thought. I do have a problem with calling Che a “winner”. His efforts during the 1960s to export the Cuban revolutionary model to the rest of Latin America were an abject failure. He badly misjudged the societies of many Latin countries as being ripe for Marxist upheaval. He was a megalomaniac who died an inglorious death in the jungles of Bolivia. The only “hearts and minds” he won were posthumously in US academia and leftist mythology.

Regarding ISIS, I question how much of its success was a result of driving a wedge between the government and the populace. I think it was a simple case of expanding into vacuums where the governing authority was already weak or absent. Assad abandoned large swaths of Syria. Malaki never controlled Anbar. In places like Raqqa and Mosul, ISIS now is the government. The insurgents are in charge. Should we therefore act as insurgents – bombing and disrupting food, water and power to convince people that ISIS can't protect them or keep them from starving? Winning hearts and minds is tricky and fleeting in a culture where everyone practices deceit. I'm not sure how to win but I know ISIS is vulnerable because most Sunnis in Syria and Iraq don't want to live under its strict and brutal Sharia rules. We must figure it out fast before ISIS entrenches itself. I agree we need to understand the culture - that's a cliché. It didn't help our learning curve when we stupidly pulled out of Iraq in 2011 and abandoned the relationships we had so carefully cultivated with the Anwar tribes who expelled al queda during the 2006 Awakening. Why did we throw all that away? Oh yeah – domestic politics.

I am not overly concerned about Col. Peters. I certainly don't regard him as a “very dangerous man” who advocates “mass killing of civilians”. That's a complete distortion. He is right when he scorns Obama's handling of the situation. Even you said we need to make (unspecified) changes in our approach. The POTUS should not be poring over surgical strike options. He should be working on the politics of rebuilding our ties to Iraqi Sunnis, leveraging the Kurds, and pressuring the Turks to do the right thing. It is a delicate task and one that Obama is clearly not up to.

Thanks for responding, although I still don't see how the teachings of Che Guevara are of much use in defeating ISIS. Perhaps I need the long version.

.

I'll more on this later but we should be living in a world where we get weekly updates of this terrorist camp being wiped out or this terrorist leader being killed. The war should be prosecuted heavily across the globe until the terrorist know that they can't stand out in the open and cut off heads of journalists or aid workers. And budding wanna be mass murderers will have to watch their backs as a unified and armed populace go postal on their asses.

No, I'll say something now about WTF's stupid comments. When someone says we need to take action it is a typical liberal response to demand that you put on a uniform and go fight. That is just stupidity plain and simple. The tip of the spear is small but the supporting shaft is large and long. Support means for most of us lighting a fire under the asses of our leaders to keep them on the beam. Support for most of us means helping out returning veterans to get back into society. Support for most of us means to give of ourselves and our wallets to the various groups helping veterans and surviving families of fallen heroes. Support means paying attention to our surroundings and be prepared to take some form of action in the event of an attack. That action can be as small as just phoning the police if you see something that is not right. From what I read about WTF, he has done none of these things but he thinks he can sit in his own shit and throw turds.

I'll more on this later but we should be living in a world where we get weekly updates of this terrorist camp being wiped out or this terrorist leader being killed. The war should be prosecuted heavily across the globe until the terrorist know that they can't stand out in the open and cut off heads of journalists or aid workers. And budding wanna be mass murderers will have to watch their backs as a unified and armed populace go postal on their asses.

No, I'll say something now about WTF's stupid comments. When someone says we need to take action it is a typical liberal response to demand that you put on a uniform and go fight. That is just stupidity plain and simple. The tip of the spear is small but the supporting shaft is large and long. Support means for most of us lighting a fire under the asses of our leaders to keep them on the beam. Support for most of us means helping out returning veterans to get back into society. Support for most of us means to give of ourselves and our wallets to the various groups helping veterans and surviving families of fallen heroes. Support means paying attention to our surroundings and be prepared to take some form of action in the event of an attack. That action can be as small as just phoning the police if you see something that is not right. From what I read about WTF, he has done none of these things but he thinks he can sit in his own shit and throw turds. Originally Posted by JD Barleycorn

How did the "war on drugs" work out for you?

Leave it to JDIdiot to author a thread about Peters.

I've been saying this for years: JDIdiot is obsessed with other guys' JUNK!

The ragheads killed 3,000 Americans on 9-11 alone. And they have tried other attacks, but we have managed to stop most of them.

So, how many people have Pat Robertson and his ilk killed since that time? Zero?


Originally Posted by ExNYer

Well I seem to recall Roberson being for the Iraq War in which 4500 plus Americans lost their lives.

we're I not on my phone I would properly address your other points.

How did the "war on drugs" work out for you? Originally Posted by i'va biggen

And how did the War on Poverty work out for you $17 trillion later?

And how did the War on Poverty work out for you $17 trillion later? Originally Posted by JD Barleycorn

You make his point JD. The war on drugs has not worked. The war on poverty has not worked and the War on a Terror will fall to the same fate.

All those three so called wars have done is shift taxpayers dollars from the pockets of many to the pockets of a few but then you are a college teacher and should have already known that.

And how did the War on Poverty work out for you $17 trillion later? Originally Posted by JD Barleycorn

Not being a poverty case it had little effect, how much did you collect? All three wars are very ineffective.

...we're I not on my phone I would properly address your other points. Originally Posted by WTF

You really need to upgrade with an app for that. Geeezzz.