The modern way of fighting the war against terrorism has been with precision air strikes, usually with un-manned drones. ID'ing terrorist targets requires sharing intel with trusted local friends. This method began near the end of the GWB War on Terror and was embraced and expanded under Obama. Trump has continued this fight.

Air-strikes reduce the exposure of American soldiers and is also touted as a way to prevent civilian casualties. This article exposes the under-counting of civilian casualties and the risk of relying upon potentially suspect intelligence sources in this phase of the war on terror.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/11/16/magazine/uncounted-civilian-casualties-iraq-airstrikes.html

Are we creating more terrorists when we kill civilians while trying to take out terrorists?

Can we trust the intel provided by local "friends" who may be using the US to settle old scores instead of ratting out ISIS or Al Queda?

Even though the numbers of civilian casualties is 31 times more than the number claimed by coalition forces? That's a lot of innocent people who are now pizzed at the US...

I'm sure if all presidents are doing it, then there's probably a good reason for it.

Ultimately the presidents job is to make military decisions, so I'm sure they know more than any of us, and certainly more than any sane person would want to know.

So ya, I say keep up the good work.

What's your solution..??

This is our land. A land of peace and of plenty. A land of harmony and hope. This is our land. Oceania. These are our people. The workers, the strivers, the builders. These are our people. The builders of our world, struggling, fighting, bleeding, dying. On the streets of our cities and on the far-flung battlefields. Fighting against the mutilation of our hopes and dreams. Who are they?

I would argue that we have seen very little actual success in waging this war (from any of the presidents... bush/obama/orange moron)...

there is no evidence it is "working" ... just that we are doing something.
Killing off a terrorist is counterproductive if the act of killing them off creates another.
Given the amount of time we have spent in this region, and the number of terrorists we have killed, it would suggest that our activities are somehow increasing their recruiting... otherwise they would have run out by now.

But heck... if we want to waste a bunch of money killing people, I'm not too upset. I just find it laughable when people are surprised that they are trying to kill us back.

Without even starting in on what sort of a dumb statement that is...

Unless we are planning to keep the land and make it a territory of the USA taking land is literally an exercise in futility.

The war on terrorism is almost stupid as the war on drugs. Is winning the war really the objective here? The money is in treating cancer, not curing cancer.

The Pentagon "LOST" somewhere around 10 TRILLION dollars last year. I didn't hear the budget hawks say one word about this when they tacked another 80 BILLION onto the already bloated military budget this year.

I think we did cut meals on wheels though...

Thanks largely in part to the U.S., the Middle East will be the largest global purchaser of weapons for at least the next couple of decades. This is good news for the worlds largest weapons manufacturer, which just so happens to be; guess who?

Oil is just the tip of the iceberg. Similar to the war on drugs, the war on terrorism has many tentacles and the money flows bidirectionally. MAYBE "winning" this war was once an objective, but I fear that is no longer the case.

I would argue that it's been very successful if the plan was to keep the middle east in a perpetual state of instability and to produce a constant stream of radical islamists to blow up.

There is no way to measure the success of a war on terror.
Had our intel intercepted the hijackers on the morning of 9/11 we would have just seen it as another arrest. Some would even have defended those scumbags.
We don't know how bad their intent is until it's obvious. Then it's too late.

With that said, where do we draw the line?
Freedom and safety at what cost?
It's a fair discussion.

But don't ever think that our efforts have been for naught. Because every day you don't see an attack means we are winning.

Huh?? How are you measuring success?
How is it you know that the successor terrorist is as bad or worse than the one killed?
What's your recruiting data? Particularly as to numbers and quality?


I don't have suggestions about how to defend against terror any better than we are...though, I'm sure there's probably some simple, cheap improvements that can be made that would alienate the military industrial machine.

But, on the whole, I feel pretty safe. We probably have more people murdered in Chicago this week than killed by terrorists in the entire country over the last several years. I was opposed to US troops fighting in Syria and Iraq....and a lot of other places; but I won't argue that we're less safe because of it