"The US is terrible at Asymetrical warfare, and will continue to be because we are not ruthless enough to combat it properly. This is a good thing, imo, as that level of brutality rapidly turns one into the badguys."

You could argue that the US has been, or is too humane with its enemies, but in the light of the atrocities at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp or Abu Ghraib, I would argue that the problem probably lies elsewhere.

Toppling a regime in Afghanistan, Lybia or Iraq is relatively easy if you have a much larger, better trained, better equipped army. But by doing that and thinking that the 'job is done, now let's go home' you score an own goal, since the power vacuum that you leave will either be filled with the kinds of ISIL, Al-Queda or warring tribal factions.

I'd say that the current instability in these countries makes them more of a threat to world peace and US interests than they were a decade ago. You can't just "bring instant democracy" to a country where a lot of people still think like Europeans in the middle ages. Even military administration or a mostly benevolent dictator is better than corrupt, incompetent politicians like Nuri al-Maliki or Hamid Karzai. But you just trust democracy too much...

I agree with you 100% on how we misunderstood the region and how it works. You literally cannot force a democratic system on people with no frame of reference, who have lived in tribal feudalism their entire lives, or under a dictatorship. It doesn't work.

And I will say this about Gitmo and Abu Ghirab... yes, some of the things done at those locations are distasteful. Even wrong. The difference is, we stopped torture at Gitmo. Our government is still trying to nail down enough specifics to possibly charge someone with crimes for doing it in the first place. And the idiots at Abu Ghirab were literally arrested and charged for the crimes they have done.

That's what makes us different than the badguys. They do that sort of thing as a policy. Rape, torture, mass killings, terrorism... all part and parcel of the day to day life in unfortunate parts of that region. When it happens in the US, we try to find out why, and punish those responsible.

We punished the guys who did Mai Lai too.

And I'm not saying we're too humane. The nature of our system in the US makes it very very difficult to fight against extremism with the same ferocity.

For example: I will see if I can dig up a source for the tale, but allegedly in the 70's, some Islamic terrorist organization kidnapped a Soviet Embassy person demanding a ransom. The KGB contacted the leader of the group, told him that if they didn't release their hostage that his family would be executed, along with pictures of his family showing they could get close.

If the US did that, for example, the leader would just forward the information to Rolling Stone and the New York times, and a good segment of our population would flip out that we would threaten innocent women and children. And rightly so.

When the US does something bad, it is front page news, even in the US. Drone stike his a wedding by mistake? Lead article on CNN, ABC, NBC, and of course ignored by Fox. lol

Because of the nature of our systems here, our leaders have historically been very accountable for what we do. This, sadly, is gradually fading away as the leadership gets more and more insulated from the consequences of their actions.

the next 20 years are going to be very grim, i think.

That story about the KGB is interesting.

I'd say that there's nothing wrong with intimidating a terrorist through threatening to kill their family, if that really helps the hostages. Heck, I'd even make a fake execution video to make that threat credible.

But the biggest problem with such a solution is not the media. If the terrorist in question is an islamist nutcase, like most of these guys you see recently, he/she would probably think that it benefits them to get killed as martyrs, and good things await them in the afterlife. Or just flip out and kill the hostages in a fit of rage. Too risky...

See, that's the issue though. The Islamist backed down because there was no doubt in his mind that he would get his wife back in progressively messier boxes if he didn't do what they said. After all, he's dealing with the KGB.

The US, in theory, wouldn't do such a thing. And thus, we get hostages taken in Iran, and Journlists beheaded in Iraq, and all other manner of nasty things, because we aren't as nasty as they are.

It's a mess. we just pull up stakes, and GTFO, and get our asses out of the oil business as much as we can.

won't happen, but it sure would be nice.