Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2019 June 9

= June 9 =

War on Terrorism kill ratio
Since 9/11/2001 (and including the 9/11 attacks), what is the overall kill ratio in the Great War on Terrorism (including our civilian losses, but not including civilian losses in terrorist nations)? 2601:646:8A00:A0B3:E143:3EF:8DB:B5B7 (talk) 04:12, 9 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Define terrorist nations (and also our). Cheers ✦  hugarheimur 15:06, 9 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Terrorism and Counter-terrorism are unsymmetrical warfare where casualty figures are weighed differently by the opposing parties: a fallen combatant is for one side a source of mourning, for the other is lauded as a "martyr"; one side seeks to minimize civilian deaths while the other seeks to maximize them. What "kill-ratio" calculation gives a meaningful figure of merit for comparison when the contest strategies differ from a simple war of attrition? DroneB (talk) 18:06, 9 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Terrorist nations? 173.228.123.207 (talk) 23:52, 9 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Clarification: "our" = all nations which are actively waging war against terrorists (primarily the USA and Israel but also other nations fighting the same enemy, whether or not actually allied with us Muricans); "terrorist nations" is defined by the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists and therefore needs no further explanation; and I have already explained what calculation to use, count combatant losses only for the terrorists (excluding civilians in terrorist nations, as I have already mentioned) but all losses (military and civilian) for our side, and divide the bigger number by the smaller one! 2601:646:8A00:A0B3:C5E:C820:3A44:3500 (talk) 00:05, 10 June 2019 (UTC)
 * That article doesn't use the term "terrorist nation". The closest I can see that it comes to a definition is "the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons." Which isn't really much of a definition - we'd need a list of which countries the president has determined are up to no good.  Also, why do you want to ignore civilians killed in those countries? Iapetus (talk) 09:35, 10 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Second question first: because for us what matters is killing terrorists, and while many of these so-called "civilians" are undoubtedly terrorists in hiding, there is no way to make more than a ballpark estimate how many, so it makes sense to not count them with the combatants until they actually reveal themselves as terrorists -- better to count too low than too high, because overestimating enemy attrition can lead to complacency which ultimately leads to defeat (as our experience in Vietnam showed)! Whereas what matters for the terrorists is killing all infidels, whether military or civilian, until the ones left surrender -- their strategy is essentially genocidal, and what's more, it is an effective strategy for them to use, given our low replacement rate and the fact that our military is recruited from civilian life and supplied by dual-use, mostly civilian industries!  And that is why we should count our civilian losses together with the military losses -- because losing civilians hurts us almost as bad as losing soldiers!  As for the list of terrorist countries, you (or I) will have to look at which countries have aided Al-Qaida and/or any of its allied groups (i.e. any of the groups on that big flow chart from the Holy Land Foundation trial), which I expect would be quite a list (although we are not actively at war with all these countries, which will cut the list down a bit)! 2601:646:8A00:A0B3:C5E:C820:3A44:3500 (talk) 10:06, 10 June 2019 (UTC)
 * You seem to be treating this as a case of whoever gets the best "score" wins (with "our" score being based on terrorists killed, and "their" score counting everyone of "us" that they kill. That's... not how war works.  Note also: 1) the numbers killed are no where near enough to achieve a genocide.  The terrorists are not going to be able to kill enough of us that they win through demographics.  That's absurd and paranoid. 2) The terrorists are typically not just waging war against "us" - they are waging war against the people or governments in their own countries, so the people they kill there should count for their "score" too.  3) And when our side kills civilians, that generally acts in the favour of the terrorists, because people are more likely to support them, or at least less likely to support us.  So really, you should count civilians we kill, as a penalty to our "score".  But again, wars aren't won by getting a better "kill score" than the enemy. Iapetus (talk) 12:28, 10 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Note regarding your "notes": (1) They CAN kill enough of us to achieve a genocide if they ever get nuclear or chemical weapons, and besides, they are also outbreeding us -- so our defeat through demographics IS a possibility, and NOT in any way "absurd" or "paranoid"! (2) Where and when the governments in the terrorists' own countries actually fight against terrorism in alliance with us (as in Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban), they DO count under the formula I specified above, so the military (and government) losses of these countries, if inflicted by terrorists, DO count toward our losses under this formula -- HOWEVER, "the people" of these countries by and large support the TERRORISTS (as consistently shown by the polls in those countries), so ordinary civilians in those countries SHOULD NOT count toward the terrorists' "score" for that reason (because when they kill civilians in their own countries, they are in fact killing their own)!  (3) Terrorist recruitment is NOT motivated by anything we do (as shown by our experience regarding the earthquake relief in Pakistan -- relief which I'm happy to say I opposed from the very beginning because much of it would end up materially aiding terrorists -- which showed NO significant long-term drop in anti-Americanism as a result of this relief), but by Islam itself and the promise of going to heaven for waging war on infidels, so our killing civilians does NOT significantly increase the (already high) support for terrorists among the population, and therefore should NOT count as a penalty to our score!  As for attrition not winning wars, it actually DID in several cases (World War 1 being maybe the best-known example, as was the Russian-Finnish war) -- and regarding the Great War on Terrorism, I want to ask YOU the question, how is this war to be won if not by attrition??? 2601:646:8A00:A0B3:C5E:C820:3A44:3500 (talk) 00:48, 11 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Yeah I get the feeling that you're pushing some kind of political agenda here, which is not what this reference desk is for. We deal in factual questions, and, as other posters have already tried to explain, your questions are not capable of factual answers. If, as I suspect, you're coming here to push some kind of fanatical pro-Trump agenda, you've come to the wrong place. --Viennese Waltz 08:44, 11 June 2019 (UTC)
 * WRONG -- all I did was ask about the loss-exchange ratio in the Great War on Terrorism (a COMPLETELY factual question PERFECTLY capable of a factual answer), it is Iapetus and Torana who came here looking for a fight and started asking me loaded questions (asking for the definition of terrorist nations, asking about my motives for not counting enemy civilians, calling me "paranoid", even posting a picture about the French Resistance even though the question was EXPLICITLY about TERRORISTS, etc.) in response to my legitimate query! So if you can give me a number (ballpark figure is fine), please do so -- but if your goal is to provoke a fight or make false accusations against me like you just did, then FUCK OFF! 2601:646:8A00:A0B3:C5E:C820:3A44:3500 (talk) 11:37, 11 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Actually, it's you who is asking the loaded questions, as others have pointed out. The very idea of "terrorist nations" is itself politically loaded. You're an idiot. --Viennese Waltz 11:56, 11 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Gentlemen, pray calm yourselves. I posted the image. Its source is Poland 1909-1910 which was a period of unsuccessful guerrilla actions by young Poles against conscription into the Russian Army following prolongued reprisals after the crushing of the January Uprising 1864. As far as I know, it is not an illustration of French resistance, as might have been supposed from the title. DroneB (talk) 14:26, 11 June 2019 (UTC)
 * To User:Viennese Waltz, PERSONALLY: Your latest comment is PREPOSTEROUS ON THE FACE OF IT -- terrorist nations are DEFINED BY LAW (Authorization for Use of Military Force, already referred to above) and their status as such is therefore ESTABLISHED FACT and is accepted as such by all who are not themselves terrorists! So YOU are the idiot here, and a terrorist as well!  And to DroneB: there can be NO equivalence whatsoever between the terrorists we are fighting right now (Al-Qaida et al.) on one hand and either the French Resistance or the Polish separatists on the other -- the latter two were fighting FOR THEIR OWN FREEDOM (and in the case of the French Resistance also for the freedom of THE ENTIRE WESTERN WORLD in the Allied cause, which was a self-evidently just cause and is accepted as such by all who are not Nazis), whereas the terrorists are fighting to ENSLAVE EVERYONE IN THE WORLD, which makes OUR cause against them self-evidently just (and this is accepted by all who are not terrorists!) 2601:646:8A00:A0B3:C5E:C820:3A44:3500 (talk) 01:33, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Except that most evidence suggests the Taliban for example, have no real interested in enslaving everyone in the world. The worst they did in terms of your line is give shelter to Al Qaeda but not because of any desire on the part of the Taliban to enslave the whole world, more for ideological reasons. The Taliban's only real interest seems to be in controlling Afghanistan, which includes killing Americans, as well as any Afghanis who disagree with them. Don't get me wrong, what the Taliban does and wants to do in Afghanistan is disgusting, but the fact remains, they don't fit into your simply definitions. Yet if a US soldier in Afghanistan kills someone working for the Taliban or uses a drone in Afghanistan to kill them or whatever, you can be sure they will say they are killing terrorists and I'm fairly sure you want to include them as such. Nil Einne (talk) 03:54, 13 June 2019 (UTC)


 * I think a problem here arose (or at least it certainly did for me) with the OP's use of the word "Great" in front of "War on Terrorism". Many of us see it as a not terribly great nor noble exercise. Its success can never be meaningfully quantified, as the OP seems to be hoping to achieve here, and it covers a massively diverse collection of activities. Then there is the fact the what the OP might see as Islamic terrorism has probably killed far more people of the Islamic faith than of any other background. It also looks far too closely at that source of terrorism. Other editors have already touched on the fact that what some people call terrorism comes from many sources, and has just as many different target groups. It's not all about Muslims. Googling "One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter" returns around a million hits, highlighting how pointless this exercise is. This question tries to massively simplify a very complex issue. It's not worth trying to answer. HiLo48 (talk) 04:40, 13 June 2019 (UTC)