i.e. the policy of cutting off snake head.
Such policy seems to have become prevalent almost everywhere - real world operations, books and movies, not just in US but across the world. It's intriguing that every time there is an operation, success is about getting the key figures, but why and how did this become so that people automatically believe things should be done that way?
Its failure is well known: decades after drug war started it's still going on, same for Taliban. Neither has it disrupted any gangster groups such as Triad. The reason for failure is even more obvious and self-explanatory: those enemies are whole ecosystems or mini nations. Killing the queen would never destroy England, for example.
Take the naturally evolved attack pattern of wolves for instance, they pick off victims one by one, starting from the weakest. Or the Mongolian way of besieging by terrorizing surrounding villages and forcing them to run into the city, spreading fear and increasing their burden of supplies. To translate this to modern attacks, it would mean the success rate to be re-defined as total count of neutralized enemies and the primary means would be to create fear rather than martyrs: burn the homes of soldiers, terrorize their families to force cooperation and so on (similar to cartel's method?).
Perhaps too bloody to the public? But drone strikes aren't exactly bloodless and prolonged conflicts have created more problems. Are there better alternatives?
Sources:
- https://gritsforbreakfast.blogspot.c...s-failing.html
- https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full...36.2013.845383 (very long)