We have a "holier than thou" attitude when we engage an ever evolving enemy who has no rules and many faces

Do we need to change our rules of engagement?

Kytro wrote on Nov 17^th, 2015 at 11:48am:


So if we can't tell who is innocent and who is not innocent - then what?!

And what level of innocence are we talking about?

Kytro wrote on Nov 17^th, 2015 at 1:32pm:



Nice words, but a complete fantasy. It is in fact the recipe for never ever winning another war ever again. Wars are not clinical little events where only those with guns and pointed at you and over 18 and representing a threat get attacked. If you want to play like that you will get beaten everytime. The enemy just needs to make sure there are civilians around and voila! victory is assured.

The rules of engagement against ISIS need to be simply that if you are in ISIS territory you are a potential target.

It all depends on whether you want to win the war or not. The fact of civilian casualties is not in question. The only question is which side they come from.

Well, there was a thread somewhere about what we learned from Vietnam...

I will be honest, I did not bother going there because, well, the general way discussions here go, I was not optimistic of it being any value...Read into that what you will.

A couple of things I think we as a people learned though...

1) We (the public) should NEVER take our anger, angst and disproval of how our Government chooses to enforce our will by military use on individual soldiers - for the main part, they're ordinary people who do an extraordinary job, part of which is to (generally) follow their orders... Attacking our own military for doing what they are told is useless, hurtful and cowardly - take it up with Government...

2) We have (or perhaps had) some of the best counter insurgence practices on the planet, which, particularly in Vietnam probably saved more Australian soldiers lives than any other factor (well as well as being none too shabby as far as soldiering goes too apparently). Our practices to win hearts and minds made Australian forces very distinct from US forces.

Now, if you did not learn that lesson about our inappropriate escapades into Vietnam, then by all means you need to keep talking about "Rules of Engagment" because you clearly do not understand the hearts and minds concept. Fighting is just easier I suppose.

If you did learn the lesson then is there really more to debate?

Indiscriminately mass murdering will just assist recruiting more people to shoot back.

mariacostel wrote on Nov 17^th, 2015 at 4:42pm:


My point was more that if you start shooting at everything, then significantly more people will flee which will of course lead to more refugees.

Regardless of what the long term plans may be, people are not going to sit there and wait to be killed. You will have massive number of people fleeing, probably including parts of ISIS, so how will you handle that. Regardless of how gung-ho you are, society will not put up with it's government killing innocent people wholesale.

Maqqa wrote on Nov 17^th, 2015 at 12:55pm:


The failure of the invasion of Iraq shows that shock and awe tactics do not work. All we created was a power vaccuum for Isis to move into and the motivation that created a whole generation of terrorists.

Maqqa wrote on Nov 17^th, 2015 at 11:45am:


I am not sure that “holier than thou,” is applicable anymore than “rules of engagement.”

We need to recognise that Islam declared war on the West at least as far back as the Iran Hostage Crisis.

We are at war, and to win a war you have to go for the jugular. Our military in the West cannot police foreign countries. That type of foreign policy is doomed to failure.

When the military is engaged by people in civilian clothes, their assailants must not be allowed to throw up their hands and claim protection under the Geneva Convention. Finish them off on the field.

War is nasty. You cannot win a war by being nice. Do not ask soldiers to beat your enemy, and then burden them with media coverage which is essentially anti-war.

Tactically we need to return to methods of Total War that brought the Axis Powers to their knees in WW2.

Growing Muslim populations in the West will fight ever increasing 3rd Column actions as we have seen. They need to be offered one final chance to accept Western Pluralism and reject religious fanatic doctrines, or be treated as Foreign Combatants out of uniform by sending them to the wall.

I have pointed out our philosophical deficiency concerning the winning of wars in another thread.