[quote=@KnightShade] I agree to some extent with that. I'm not going to pretend to understand fully the distinction between the strategies used, however the repetitive use of drone strikes didn't appear to be accomplishing anything to me. I don't necessarily favour a stronger approach than previously but I do favour a more purposeful one. I know that here in the UK for awhile our government only bothered to bomb ISIS before press releases, it was absurdly passe. But globalised communications bring the fight home too. No matter how much spending you put into the military they can't fight a war in your own country. If we want to stop terrorism, which is supposedly what this is about, we have to engage in the ideological war at home too. Trump is vastly outgunned in that department. He's a caricature of an American who repeatedly seems incapable of seeing other viewpoints or stringing an argument together. He's done nothing but stir up divisions at home so far. [/quote] "He's done nothing but stir up divisions at home so far" -- well, ah, um.... would you argue if I pointed out that the divisions are stirring themselves up? The [i]stated objective[/i] of the Democrat party right now, right this very minute, is "[url=http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-politics-georgia-idUSKBN17K0CW]make Trump furious[/url]." AntiFa is literally throwing bombs at pro-Trump rallies. "Impeach Trump" started before [i]day one[/i] of the presidency. And I could go on and on, but the point is this: Trump isn't the one sowing discord here. If you're seeing a caricature you might wanna think about where you're getting your info. [url=http://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-100-days.html]He's actually done quite a bit.[/url] Anyway, moving back to the start of the post: drones honestly did accomplish quite a bit. The reason we're dealing with ISIS, and not Al Qaeda, is that we basically took AQ apart with drone strikes, bit by bit, piece by piece. It was very effective -- against the organization. What it failed to do was address the core ideology, because drones are the [i]pinnacle[/i] of non-commitment. Drones are what you send when you don't care enough to put boots on the ground [b]or even remotely near the ground.[/b] Like I said, still plenty effective in the short term. We killed a lot of terrorists with drones, and lots of them were senior leadership -- awesome, right? The MOAB was just one strike, so you can't exactly call it a strategy just yet, but it does a lot more than just kill a few guys. We destroyed an entire cave system -- that's a force-multiplier, it's what makes 100 or so terrorists seem like 500 because it enables them to do more damage. .....and I'm getting a little into the weeds, so let's just slow it down and simplify. Obama's drone policy was under executive control -- basically he was running it. He controlled the rules of engagement. Trump has left all of that to [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Mattis]one of the greatest military minds America has ever produced[/url], and that's not an exaggeration, Mattis is a real-life anime war genius wunderkind. With one bomb, [url=http://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-iraq-islamic-state-idUSKBN17J1DT]he's got these guys so rattled that they're already scrambling to make friends.[/url] (I know we hate them both, but [url=http://observer.com/2015/11/the-uncivil-war-the-bloody-battle-between-isis-and-al-qaeda/]they have not been friends[/url]). TL:DR it's working, and we're not invading anybody. Hell we even got China to turn on the DPRK. Jesus it's all going so well.