Quote:
Originally Posted by Nippelspanner
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Indentifying how their organisations are structured and targetting key figures, remaining vigilant but working with rather than against local Muslim communities, and remembering that in this war we still have the upper hand, our casualty rates are far
far lower than theirs. For every western civilian killed by extremists there have to be at least twenty Daesh fighters killed in Syria. Unfortunately there are going to be western casualties, I think even if you stopped every refugee from entering Europe and put every Muslim citizen under surveillance there would be ones who would slip through the cracks and attack, and I think the fact that it's been seventy years since the west has had such casualties has made our acceptance of such deaths much lower, but allowing this to affect our strategic and tactical war plan would be a mistake.
To take another example, and apologies in advance for the Godwin but it's the only one I can think of to hand since it's an area I have studied fairly in depth. During the Battle of Britain the Luftwaffe had the RAF on the back foot after Adlertag, whilst it wasn't the knock-out blow that was wanted and indeed you can argue that Adlertag failed in its objectives, the rate of attriction on the RAF was high and a lot of 11 Group airfields were badly damaged, forcing squadrons to fall back closer to London and use dispersed fields. Then came the Croydon error, which lead to Berlin being visited by Bomber Command and the Luftwaffe switched from focusing on 11 Group airfields and attritioning the RAF in the air to hitting targets in London which achieved little of strategic value. Likewise the focus on the 'V' weapons later in the war which consumed precious materials and resources for little to no return all because of a desire for Vengence for losses suffered by the German people to Allied bombing raids.
I get that fear and vengence are powerful emotions, I felt them too after July 7th, when I went to London the first time after the bombings I felt uneasy whilst on the tube and every person carrying a rucksack received a second glance, particularly if they looked 'a bit foreign', but we have to try to rise above that and act with care and thought in order to inflict as much damage on our enemy as we can without making the job harder for ourselves whilst doing so.