Well, we have a clear example of a military force that would've shot the looters - the Soviet Army's excusion into Afghanistan.

I agree that an army must be feared but there also must be a balance between compassion and brutality because the mission is always a mixture of violence against the armed resistance and gaining the hearts and minds of the non-combatants.

Obviously, the Soviets did a piss poor job of the latter because, in addition to shooting the looters, they probably raped the corpses as well. In many ways, they paved the way for us in Afghanistan because we would never approach their storied brutality.

In much the same way, WWII was an ideal situation for our advancing armies. In spite of the power and destruction we had to employ to force the Germans out of occupied lands, our delayed entry gave the non-combatants a taste of a truly brutal occupying force first.

In Iraq, despite the nastiness of Saddam, the average citizen was unaccustomed to warfare until they saw the American flags. That first taste of bombs and bullets is alienating and confusing and it's difficult to detect the white hats when people are dying around you. Had they been largely exposed to years of warfare before our "liberation", things might have turned out very differently.

Our military and political leaders failed this psychological evaluation step and placed us into an untennable situation. Somehow I don't think shooting the looters would've made much difference in the end.

Art