You have Mullah Omar on the drone's downlink feed...

[jcustis]

...and a Hellfire hanging on a hardpoint.

Do you give the go signal or let the moment slip?

Why?

[BBBBill]

Pull the trigger!

[Entropy]

Situation dependent obviously, but I would err on the side of developing more intel.

[carl]

Taliban & Co. have been remarkable at remaining a more or less cohesive political entity over many years.

Mullah Omar has been the critical in maintaining that cohesiveness. He has a lot of respect and they all at least profess to defer to him.

At the same time, there have been over the years continuing indications that there are strong differences of opinion amongst these people, differences that if perhaps some restraints were loosened, might tend to loosen the cohesiveness.

Taliban & Co. breaking up into factions would be good for the current Afghan gov and for everybody else.

Taliban & Co breaking up into factions would be bad for the Pak Army/ISI and their madman fantasies of a Punjabi empire being the loci of a new caliphate.

Mullah Omar has been the Pak Army/ISI's man for a long, long time and there is no reason to think he won't stay their man.

He is a prime tool, perhaps the prime tool, they use to control Taliban & Co.

Taliban & Co seem to hate the Pak Army/ISI almost as much as they hate anybody and perhaps more. If they could just get loose of them... Of course different factions would differ on how loose they want to be.

We can't only infer what is going on. Our spies can't seem to do much to figure out what is actually going on.

With that in mind, the thought that whoever replaces MO may be worse is just a guess. He seems to be a critical person and as one who has wrapped himself in the cloak of the prophet, to not much objection, it is more probable to my mind that he cannot be replaced by somebody with similar stature.

Soooo...Kill him.

[ganulv]

Situation dependent obviously, but I would err on the side of developing more intel.

I concur. Unless the classified information regarding MO greatly exceeds the publicly available information, how would it be clear that he ends up dead?

[carl]

I concur. Unless the classified information regarding MO greatly exceeds the publicly available information, how would it be clear that he ends up dead?

Stipulate that he ends up dead. What do you do?

[ganulv]

Stipulate that he ends up dead. What do you do?

If there are active negotiations, I let the moment slip. As soon as his death is confirmed the Taliban are going to back away from the table for the forseeable future. The positives of having the Taliban at the table would seem to me to outweigh the positives of putting MO in the ground.

[carl]

If there are active negotiations, I let the moment slip. As soon as his death is confirmed the Taliban are going to back away from the table for the forseeable future. The positives of having the Taliban at the table would seem to me to outweigh the positives of putting MO in the ground.

It is today. There are no negotiations occurring today. What do you do today?

[carl]

Situation dependent obviously, but I would err on the side of developing more intel.

How? Why? There he is. Say you can't snatch him. What more intel could you get?

[Entropy]

How? Why? There he is. Say you can't snatch him. What more intel could you get?

Mullah Omar isn't the Queen Bee whose destruction will kill the hive. If you can add more fish to the frying pan...

But again, there are a lot of assumptions so I can't say anything definitively, only that I would prioritize intel development all else being equal.

[AmericanPride]

Let it loose. No hesitation.

Until there is a cease fire or peace, everyone is still a target. There are no meaningful negotiations and it's difficult to imagine the Taliban positioning hardening. It wouldn't deter future Taliban action but it could to some extent disrupt its strategy. And it would force internal movements to accommodate new power relationships that could reveal new opportunities for targeting or engagement.

[davidbfpo]

You have Mullah Omar on the drone's downlink feed......and a Hellfire hanging on a hardpoint. Do you give the go signal or let the moment slip? Why?

Hit him. Given the strategy pursued by the Taliban, under his apparent leadership and their continuing use of coercion to frustrate, if not defeat an internal peace compromise, do it.

Now the really difficult option, how do we explain the hit? To the primary audience, which remains the Afghans in Afghanistan. I'd suggest "He was our shared enemy leader, he'd been given chances and always chose violence. We had had enough".