Speak Loudly While Holding Your Little Stick

But it's not really guerrilla warfare. It's terrorism for profit. Similar but not exactly the same. Or, maybe some of it is guerrilla warfare. Doesn't really matter. The AFP finds and surrounds them then there is a bunch of shooting in the air and then the AFP lets them go. That needs to stop. You don't let them go so they can do the same thing somewhere else. You don't put a bunch of them in a jail close to their friends who will come and break them out because the guards are all karaoke singing. If they take Zamboanga city, you empty it out sifting everyone who leaves and anyone trying to take off cross country your AC 130 Spectres kill them. You also put a large price on the head of all known terrorists. You need to develop some good accurate intelligence but the most important thing is you Do Not Let Them Go. Even if it costs 2-3 of yours for each of theirs, you do not let them go. Playing for keeps. Right now I'm sure it's easy to recruit because even if you are caught and mostly surrounded the AFP is going to leave you an escape path. You are as likely to be hit by a trike as you are by a bullet.

 

I don't see the *overwhelming force* as the losing side but the policies that go with it. If one side is playing by a different set of rules and a set of rules that ties their hands at that they end up weaker. They need to be allowed to use whatever means necassary to squash the enemy fighters. If that means bombing the crap out of the homes, neighborhoods, and towns that support such enemy force or that the enemy force uses as cover then so be it. The way they work is they go out and do attacks and then they run back home hiding behind their children, wives, and families expecting that no one will kill the *innocent* as they think. Show them otherwise that a terrorist has their entire family bombed to oblivion if they hide behind them.

Here in the Philippines they KNOW many towns that are supporters of the terrorist *freedom fighters* and where their home bases are. Go in and wipe them out and the next group will think twice when they think their entire families lives are at real risk. But until that is allowed their hands will be tied with a playbook that ties their hands.

 

How many times in history has this "bomb them all" approach actually worked against people fighting on their own grounds?

 

Worked for Hiroshima....
But how often in history have we actually just *bombed them all* to even test it. Every time we go sending in troops and trying to play as if we are the good guys while killing the bad guys. Now you can't just *bomb them all* just like that but if its a retaliation that comes off different. If X group blew up a cafe or shopping mall and we find out where they are from then a retaliation strike of *bomb them all* will sure make the next group have second thoughts.

 

I believe you are wrong here. There was no surrender message before the first atomic bomb. There was no surrender message after the first atomic bomb. There was no surrender message until after the second atomic bomb. Some people forget that it took two atomic bombs. Japan's ability to project force beyond the home islands may have ended but their ability and desire to resist invasion was far from over. Surrender after the second bomb wasn't even unconditional. Japan was working on biological weapons and the atomic bomb. If we just blockaded and waited a year or two, they would have come up with something.