# Why do terror groups keep making the same mistake? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [September 16, 2014, 8:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-terror-groups-keep-making-the-same-mistake/698685 "2014-09-16T20:14:50Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![even\_sven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dfb087/32.png) [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2014, 11:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-terror-groups-keep-making-the-same-mistake/698685/41 "2014-09-17T23:46:26Z")
[http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/11/01/binladen.tape/](http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/11/01/binladen.tape/) Here is a 2004 transcript of Bin Laden saying he would like to bankrupt us by drawing us in to war, citing the role of the Afghanistan war in the collapse of the Soviet Union. He gives the ROI on 9/11, and gloats that we’ve been really easy to taunt. None of this stuff is secret mastermind stuff. Bin Laden tried for years to get his little startup going before he refined it enough to make it work in Afghanistan. It’s now a proven model.m ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2014, 1:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-terror-groups-keep-making-the-same-mistake/698685/42 "2014-09-18T01:00:46Z")
> [@even\_sven](#): > > [http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/11/01/binladen.tape/](http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/11/01/binladen.tape/) > > Here is a 2004 transcript of Bin Laden saying he would like to bankrupt us by drawing us in to war, citing the role of the Afghanistan war in the collapse of the Soviet Union. He gives the ROI on 9/11, and gloats that we’ve been really easy to taunt. > > None of this stuff is secret mastermind stuff. Bin Laden tried for years to get his little startup going before he refined it enough to make it work in Afghanistan. It’s now a proven model.m Well you are right…this isn’t mastermind stuff. So, to break this down, Bin Laden is feeding the fishes, AQ is increasingly irrelevant, and the US? Still solvent at this point with a recovering economy. Bin Laden would have been better served pushing for a Bush third term than his master plan there. AQ which used to have a major base in Afghanistan, and in fact were part of the Taliban government structure (to some extent anyway) now is on the run, the Taliban are out of power in Afghanistan and while the fight goes on they have sustained staggering loses and it’s doubtful they will ever regain their former power, regardless of whether the government we installed survives or not. Even if they do, they will be essentially back to where they were post-Soviet invasion…with a long, hard and bloody slog to put down enough of the other factions to even have a modicum of control of the ‘country’. If these guys are following that playbook then it all comes back to…why do these idiots keep making the same mistakes, over and over again? They aren’t going to break the US. And they didn’t break the Soviet Union either…we had as much to do with the money pit that the Soviets ran up against in Afghanistan as ObL ever did, probably more since we bankrolled them all covertly. ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2014, 1:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-terror-groups-keep-making-the-same-mistake/698685/43 "2014-09-18T01:08:49Z")
> [@Critical1](#): > > Why do we keep responding in the same exact way every time? > > Serious Question is there a good reason we don’t send troops to secure an area and build schools/hospitals/infrastructure in that area and just stay there and let anyone who wants those things help us secure more areas for the same treatment? I mean if you are going to spend trillions of dollars killing people it seems like you could at least spend billions making their lives better instead. Shades of White Man’s Burden and colonialism, there. Or down that road, anyway. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2014, 1:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-terror-groups-keep-making-the-same-mistake/698685/44 "2014-09-18T01:12:39Z")
> [@Kobal2](#): > > Shades of White Man’s Burden and colonialism, there. Or down that road, anyway. Excluded middle too, since in fact we DID try and build schools and infrastructure and such as well as killing folks. That we weren’t successful at either is more a statement of how badly the war was run (and how ill advised it was regardless) than that we could or would only do one or the other. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2014, 1:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-terror-groups-keep-making-the-same-mistake/698685/45 "2014-09-18T01:21:02Z")
> [@XT](#): > > But I can’t see any way that it’s rational to WANT to bring the US into a conflict where you actually want to win. Oh, sure, the North Vietnamese ended up winning in the end…at the cost, literally of millions dead and a decade or so of mess and cost. But again, I don’t think they do want to bring in the US, really. They want the US to stay away. The beheading of American journalists and the threats to attack the US are retaliatory. They beheaded American hostages because we bombed them because they were killing the Yazidi and enslaving them and all. But they aren’t massacring the Yazidi to piss off the US. They’re doing it because they think the Yazidi are evil devil worshipers, and if anything, I think they’re confused that what they’re doing bothers the United States so much. If anything, their miscalculation is that they don’t understand the US and what motivates us. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2014, 1:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-terror-groups-keep-making-the-same-mistake/698685/46 "2014-09-18T01:33:26Z")
> [@Captain\_Amazing](#): > > But again, I don’t think they do want to bring in the US, really. They want the US to stay away. The beheading of American journalists and the threats to attack the US are retaliatory. They beheaded American hostages because we bombed them because they were killing the Yazidi and enslaving them and all. But they aren’t massacring the Yazidi to piss off the US. They’re doing it because they think the Yazidi are evil devil worshipers, and if anything, I think they’re confused that what they’re doing bothers the United States so much. If anything, their miscalculation is that they don’t understand the US and what motivates us. Yes, I agree and this is my own feeling as well. I don’t think they want us involved, which is what I was responding too in the quote you used here. I think they (constantly) miscalculate what our response will be to any given situation, and we puzzle them. I don’t think ObL thought we’d do what we did, and don’t think he wanted us to destroy his organization and ultimately send him into hiding for years and eventually kill him after pretty much rendering his organization moot. Oh, he said he wanted to suck us into a war to drain our treasury, but realistically he couldn’t have thought that would actually happen. I mean, the dude was a lot of things, but I think he could do math. ---
**Author:** ![rock\_party](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e19b73/32.png) [@rock\_party](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rock_party)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2014, 2:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-terror-groups-keep-making-the-same-mistake/698685/47 "2014-09-18T02:45:55Z")
They want to bring us in. Why else make the youtube vids? Retaliation? We’re going to watch our citizens being beheaded and say, “oh you were RETALIATING. OK, then we’re even.” No, they’re goading into this. Fighting the US is the ultimate cause for so many reasons. ---
**Author:** ![even\_sven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dfb087/32.png) [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2014, 3:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-terror-groups-keep-making-the-same-mistake/698685/48 "2014-09-18T03:05:40Z")
> [@XT](#): > > Well you are right…this isn’t mastermind stuff. So, to break this down, Bin Laden is feeding the fishes, AQ is increasingly irrelevant, and the US? Still solvent at this point with a recovering economy. Bin Laden would have been better served pushing for a Bush third term than his master plan there. AQ which used to have a major base in Afghanistan, and in fact were part of the Taliban government structure (to some extent anyway) now is on the run, the Taliban are out of power in Afghanistan and while the fight goes on they have sustained staggering loses and it’s doubtful they will ever regain their former power, regardless of whether the government we installed survives or not. Even if they do, they will be essentially back to where they were post-Soviet invasion…with a long, hard and bloody slog to put down enough of the other factions to even have a modicum of control of the ‘country’. > > If these guys are following that playbook then it all comes back to…why do these idiots keep making the same mistakes, over and over again? They aren’t going to break the US. And they didn’t break the Soviet Union either…we had as much to do with the money pit that the Soviets ran up against in Afghanistan as ObL ever did, probably more since we bankrolled them all covertly. AQ is now one of the world’a most recognizable brand names, and the US now faces a whole new constellation of threatening organizations all over with no resolution in sight. Radical Islam went from a fringe movement in obscure parts of the world to the main consideration in much of the West’s national security strategies. The Taliban are screwed, but they were always nothing more than hapless yokels who were willing to entertain Bin Laden’s ideas after the failed to get any traction in Sudan. And of course the strategy of incentivizing major powers to funnel money in to proxy wars continues and is used by clever politicians everywhere. I’m not saying that the strategy will work. But it’s no secret that that’s the strategy. ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2014, 3:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-terror-groups-keep-making-the-same-mistake/698685/49 "2014-09-18T03:09:01Z")
> [@Knorf](#): > > [This is what happens](http://oglaf.com/assorted-fruits/) when people think they have God on their side and are invincible. Apparently, Charles Fort was a prophet, tying together rains of stones and toads as part of the Big Picture. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2014, 3:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-terror-groups-keep-making-the-same-mistake/698685/50 "2014-09-18T03:39:12Z")
> [@rock\_party](#): > > They want to bring us in. Why else make the youtube vids? Retaliation? We’re going to watch our citizens being beheaded and say, “oh you were RETALIATING. OK, then we’re even.” > No, they’re goading into this. Fighting the US is the ultimate cause for so many reasons. I think the idea they’re going for is, we bomb them, they cut off heads and say, “Stop bombing us or we’ll keep on cutting off heads”, and we say, “Oh, no! We’ll stop!” Besides, its an honor thing, really. If somebody does something to you, you have to hit back, show them that you’re not going to be bullied. ---
**Author:** ![Steken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e274bd/32.png) [@Steken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steken)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2014, 7:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-terror-groups-keep-making-the-same-mistake/698685/51 "2014-09-18T07:51:18Z")
> [@XT](#): > > I look at these clowns, at AQ/AQI, at Hamas and Hezbollah, etc and I just shake my head at the waste and seeming, from my perspective (and from the perspective of actually accomplishing something, even something evil) and just don’t get it. Hezbollah? Hezbollah has repeatedly held its own against both Israel and the U.S, i.e. the two greatest militaries on the planet. And the _mujahideen_ - who begat the Taleban, who sheltered Al-Qaeda - managed to kick the Soviet Union out of Afghanistan. No mean feat, that. Armed resistance (of which terrorism is often but a subset) doesn’t _always_ fail. Going up against numerically and technologically superior armies doesn’t _always_ fail. The Muslims know their history: They fucked up the Sassanid empire, the Byzantines, etc., etc., etc.; hell, you can go all the way back to [the Battle of Badr](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Badr), when the Prophet’s forces were outnumbered three-to-one. In going up against the U.S., they’re basically hoping for a repeat. Now, as for whether or not they intentionally set out to “goad” the U.S. into returning to Iraq, I don’t really know. My impression - I could be wrong - was that while _al-Qaeda_ intentionally set out to draw the U.S. into the region, _ISIS_ would have have preferred to concentrate on destroying / subjugating the apostates in their midst - the Shi’ites, the Alawites, the Christians, the Yezidi, etc. From [here](http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/isiss-savage-strategy-in-iraq): > [@](#): > > Bin Laden and Zawahiri were certainly familiar with the use of violence against civilians, but what they failed to grasp was that, for Zarqawi and his network, savagery—particularly when directed at other Muslims—was the whole point. The ideal of this movement, as its theorists saw it, was the establishment of a caliphate that would lead to the purification of the Muslim world. The Islamist strategist Abu Bakr Naji offered a revealing outline of Zarqawi’s method in his 2004 book, “The Management of Savagery.” > > Naji proposed a campaign of constant harassment of Muslim states that exhausted the states’ will to resist. He suggested concentrating on tourist sites and economic centers. Violent attacks would create a network of “regions of savagery,” which would multiply as the forces of the state wither away, and cause people to submit to the will of the invading Islamist force. Naji believed that a broad civil war within Islam would lead to a fundamentalist Sunni caliphate. So, if establishing the germinal Caliphate (in Iraq and the Levant) was step 1, and step 3 would be its future rule over the entire Dar al-Islam, step 2 would, in the eyes of ISIS, be the expansion of its rule through the eradication or subjugation of the “apostates” in their midst. “Anybody got a problem with that? Oh, _those_ guys? The Americans? Fine - we’ll take 'em out, too.” ---
**Author:** ![Measure\_for\_Measure](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/measure_for_measure/32/557_2.png) [@Measure\_for\_Measure](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Measure_for_Measure)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2014, 6:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-terror-groups-keep-making-the-same-mistake/698685/52 "2014-09-24T18:12:26Z")
> [@XT](#): > > Well, of course I wouldn’t be part of such a sect in the first place. But with that caveat in place, I’d try and make the ‘extreme punishments’ as plausibly deniable as possible. I’d throw enough confusion in the mix that a percentage of the population of The West™ would be arguing in my favor that there isn’t enough evidence, or it’s conflicting, or it’s The Evil Government(arr), Republicans™ or whatever who are pushing their evil agendas, blah blah blah. Review Rune’s post, subtracting out claims of their stupidity. Then consider Sadaam Hussein’s mistakes. Why did he make a show of having WMDs when it just got the US pissed off? A: Hussein saw things through the prism of internal security more than external security. Like us, the bad guys tend to over-weigh considerations that are in front of their noses. Sadaam’s alleged nuclear program propped his rep at home, which was his chief consideration. Similarly, ISIS wants to capture territory and form a government across Iraq and Syria. Their videos spread fear, keeping their populace pacified: they also encouraged the Iraqi army to flee in terror. Their videos also aid in recruiting. So their production staff is hitting their benchmarks. Most organizations and most people aren’t good at weighing multiple objectives, especially the ones with remote consequences. Remote consequences: ISIS has resilience and an Achilles heel. Five thousand extra trained “moderate” troops won’t defeat them in Syria, even under best case circumstances. US ground troops in Syria/Iraq are also pretty ineffective: as always counter-insurgency tactics don’t work without a viable political solution in the works. That’s a challenge in both countries. So ISIS has ample reason to be sanguine. Their Achilles heel is that they’ve invested a lot in the concept of the caliphate. And apparently the grand caliph has a number of theological qualifications: they need to be sound in body (so they can’t be eg missing an eye or body part) and there are genealogical considerations. So ISIS is somewhat more vulnerable than AQ to decapitation strikes. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-terror-groups-keep-making-the-same-mistake/698685.md?page=2)