Let me share a thought about the targeted killing stuff - drone or not. And this includes permanent arrest of 'leaders':

Isn't it quite the same as throwing the dice (with dozens of dice at once) again and again?


Shouldn't we know which dice numbers we want to have, in order to have some desired outcome?

Throwing the dice again and again sounds like a suppression of a problem, or like delaying a conclusion, to me.

After all, we know(!?) that taking out leaders of extremists leads more often to a more extreme and more courageous successor than not.


I mean - do we wait till a local leader replacement turns out to be ineffective or at most mildly problematic and then end the targeted killing in that region or do we go after him as well, simply because he's 'leadership'?


How could we know enough about the person if we cannot hit him better than with an unmanned drone flying thousands of metres high?

What's about the old multiple rings/levels of guerilla organisations thing again? Don't the Taliban resemble a mobile forces - local forces - local support base structure in which taking out leaders means little?