Yeah, sometimes permissions get weird and the only way to delete something is from the command line. I've had to clean up Windows installations by pulling the drive and docking it on a Linux PC.
Those recursive delete commands can get you in a lot of trouble, though. Got to make sure you know what you're asking for. (With great power comes great responsibility.)
If the folder has elevated privilege then it can be deleted with sudo. Sometimes folders copied over from foreign USB sticks or installed folders as backups have root locks on them, so if these need to be deleted then
sudo
access is needed.The recursive delete only works inside that folder, and it deletes everything inside it, so if you dont want all deleted, then just delete them manually 1 by one.