The Iraqis damn well knew what war was before we got there. Even if you discount the Gulf War, with over 25,000 Iraqi casualties, the war with Iran killed almost 400,000 Iraqis.
The "hearts and minds" approach is the sort of thing that has good long-range results, but costs a lot of lives on our side since we are reluctant to take the kind of actions that would reliably destroy our enemies and make our troops safer, but at the cost of many more civilian casualties and collateral damages. Carpet bombing, artillery barrages, scorched earth tactics, and other WWII-style approaches.
This is a trade-off, and unfortunately, too many people don't understand that trade-off.
Maybe we would have been better off with more conventional tactics. I have been ambivalent about it, I suppose depending on my mood at the time.
Off Topic » in reply to "We were probably in trouble the day we decided nobody was going to shoot the looters. "
A small point:
The whole thread (31 posts)
- "War of the World"
- What obvious parallels?
- Holy catfish.
- "aw jeez"
- Talking points.
- Remarkable.
- The best use of military forces is to have them and not use them...
- "aw jeez"
- Holy catfish.
- What obvious parallels? (n/t)
- What obvious parallels?