Frustrations with tactical blinders on the Inner Circle

phillies wrote:The discussion here of unintended consequences seems to omit one key issue. Unintended consequences can work both ways. If you assassinate the other side's brilliant general, his successor might be better, be he might also be much worse. Furthermore, if you are targeting the uniquely good enemy, well, as a statistical matter the outcome will be regression to the mean.

Yes, but this only works if you consider assassination as a standard tool and are willing to settle for the statistical outcome. If you regard it as outside the norm and are only willing to use it rarely, then instead of a statistical outcome, you are introducing chaos in which case the results are unpredictable.

Don

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Thinking strategically there is also the fact that the most effective church commanders are those that are most willing to evade if not openly defy church orders. In the big picture generals who do thier own thinking rather than just follow orders from Zion are critical to promoting critical thinking and undermining the writt so you have to balance thier effectiveness at a tactical level with thier value at the strategic one.

phillies wrote:The discussion here of unintended consequences seems to omit one key issue. Unintended consequences can work both ways. If you assassinate the other side's brilliant general, his successor might be better, be he might also be much worse. Furthermore, if you are targeting the uniquely good enemy, well, as a statistical matter the outcome will be regression to the mean.

Not only that, but thanks to the SNARK network, Merlin could know pretty damn certain who would be the replacement before he ever attempts to kill someone, even if there's no official chain of command.

Still, Im pretty happy that Merlin doesnt go around assassinating every competent Temple Boy. The books are one sided enough as it is, no need to make them entirely boring. Yes, Im aware that this has nothing to do with in-story logic, but sometimes internal consistency is just plain less important than a good tale.

People all of you continue to threat this as the law of unintended consequences, when its simply people using assassination the wrong way, they killed sharleyan father, did they investigate his daughter, did they made sure she was incompetent? NO they did not investigate the daughter and they did not ensure she was incompetent, they rushed to assassinate the father and HOPED the daughter was worse, same thing in the Honorverse, they Killed Roger, did they investigate how competent or incompetent was princess Elizabeth? Sort of is the answer, they knew she was going to be competent but they decided to move and strike roger while elizabeth still needed a "supervisor" (i don't remember the exact word) and they thought that with what they could do they could manipulate manticoran policies in the 3 years while elizabeth was not yet in charge so they could make elizabeth useless for at least 20 or 30 years, this calculation thanks to a lot of things that happened was also made on flawed information, specially since no one in the honorverse really understand Treecats.

In other words every example that you have put forward have been examples where the person who decide to use assassination either does not investigate the target and his subordinates, or after investigating they decide to take a gamble.

Anyways, just wanted to put my 2 cents, yes assassination is a good tactic but without good info is like sending a horse to do battle without sending a rider along, see how that works for you?

Charles83 wrote:People all of you continue to threat this as the law of unintended consequences, when its simply people using assassination the wrong way, they killed sharleyan father, did they investigate his daughter, did they made sure she was incompetent? NO they did not investigate the daughter and they did not ensure she was incompetent, they rushed to assassinate the father and HOPED the daughter was worse, same thing in the Honorverse, they Killed Roger, did they investigate how competent or incompetent was princess Elizabeth? Sort of is the answer, they knew she was going to be competent but they decided to move and strike roger while elizabeth still needed a "supervisor" (i don't remember the exact word) and they thought that with what they could do they could manipulate manticoran policies in the 3 years while elizabeth was not yet in charge so they could make elizabeth useless for at least 20 or 30 years, this calculation thanks to a lot of things that happened was also made on flawed information, specially since no one in the honorverse really understand Treecats.

In other words every example that you have put forward have been examples where the person who decide to use assassination either does not investigate the target and his subordinates, or after investigating they decide to take a gamble.

Anyways, just wanted to put my 2 cents, yes assassination is a good tactic but without good info is like sending a horse to do battle without sending a rider along, see how that works for you?

Not all of the info needed is necessarily knowable in advance. For example how would the Peeps evaluate the competence of an untried teen aged girl? Or think of people on whom there is good Intel who display unsuspected competence as they rise to the occasion.

I won't say that assassination is never called for. But more often than not, it fails to have the desired impact on the situation and further inflames the situation.

Don

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n7axw wrote:Not all of the info needed is necessarily knowable in advance. For example how would the Peeps evaluate the competence of an untried teen aged girl? Or think of people on whom there is good Intel who display unsuspected competence as they rise to the occasion.

I won't say that assassination is never called for. But more often than not, it fails to have the desired impact on the situation and further inflames the situation.

Don

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Do you have any kind of actual numbers to back that claim? because IMHO the real world doesnt agree with you. Most assassinations seem to have no negative repercussions, just look at all the dead journalists in Mexico.

Or are you talking purely fictional assassinations?

I would like to point out that the Allies decided not to attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler because they feared that a competent person might take his place. The German High Command attempted to assassinate Hitler so that a competent person might take command. Unfortunately for them, Hitler was lucky and/or the assassin was incompetent.

Here's a tactical idea that is in the deep black range of being unethical even by wartime standards.

It's to create Sarkyn situations deliberately.

If church operations in loyal areas of Harchong were sabotaged by OWL remotes with faked evidence pointing to nearby Harchongese, the resulting atrocities would drive a wedge between the Church of Clyntahn and everyone who knew the victims, or everyone who realized they might be next. They would undermine Church credibility.

The more Clyntahn suspects Harchong, the more he will meddle, and the worse they will perform in the field.

It's an evil idea, but is it a bad one? Probably. After the war, historians will be going through OWL's logs.

Keith_w wrote:I would like to point out that the Allies decided not to attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler because they feared that a competent person might take his place. The German High Command attempted to assassinate Hitler so that a competent person might take command. Unfortunately for them, Hitler was lucky and/or the assassin was incompetent.

Quite true. As I noted before, Israel took out semi-competent Hezbollah commander only to see him replaced with a far more competent commander who was also sufficiently paranoid to stay out of Israel's cross-hairs. Clyntahn is just as fanatical as Hassan Nasrallah and just as well protected. Yet, as has been stated by the Inner Circle, Clyntahn is also their best weapon against the Church. Not only are his atrocities turning public opinion against the Church, but his intransigence and refusal to compromise will likely allow the war to continue until the bitter end (for the Church). And as someone has mentioned here, his approval of innovations as a wartime dispensation grants those dispensation the Church's own seal of approval and, despite what he might think is possible when he is victorious, it will be impossible for him to rescind all of those attestations afterwards. Even if the Church could win the war, they would be recovering for years afterwards and demanding that foundries go back to the far less efficient methods of production at a time when every bit of steel is needed for construction and arms (for the occupation forces) would be sheer lunacy (and that's just one example). So the Inner Circle wants Clyntahn to stay exactly where he is and continue to drive the Church into a ditch.

HamsterDesTodes wrote:

n7axw wrote:Not all of the info needed is necessarily knowable in advance. For example how would the Peeps evaluate the competence of an untried teen aged girl? Or think of people on whom there is good Intel who display unsuspected competence as they rise to the occasion.

I won't say that assassination is never called for. But more often than not, it fails to have the desired impact on the situation and further inflames the situation.

Don

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Do you have any kind of actual numbers to back that claim? because IMHO the real world doesnt agree with you. Most assassinations seem to have no negative repercussions, just look at all the dead journalists in Mexico.

Or are you talking purely fictional assassinations?

Your confusing your assinations types here.

Mexico is a case of semi failed state warlordism killing random folks that irritate them as a terror measure to keep the general populace under control. It is closer to what Clynthan is doing than the proposed targeted removal of enemy commanders.

The posited assassinations on Safehold are removing a senior figure when there is a well established chain of command. I also don't buy that you can tell how a subordinate will act once in the big chair based on some snarc recon of thier behavior in meetings. People change when they get power, some get paralysed others discover a well of strength. Lets say your a southerner in the american civil war and you dislike how Halleck is running the western theater so decide to off him. After all the 3 in district candidates to replace him are in order:

1)Alcoholic who has failed at everything he has tried.
2)A hysteric who has already been relieved of command because of percieved mental instability.
3)A martinett who drills his troops well and has a solid reputation in the old army.

Who are you hoping succeeds Halleck?

As it turns out your really really hope you get the martinett as Buell turned out to be a bad top commander. They hysteric is William Techumsa (War is Hell) Sherman and the alchololic failure is US Grant.

In this case you have as close to SNARC level of knowledge of the probable successors to your assination victim. You have this from the close ties inevitable in a civil war where both sides senior officers come from the same small pool of regular officers and your still going to hurt you side because of hidden depths you didn't see comming.