If we're at war...

[Pushrod]

...I'm sorry, but I can't just lay this on the whipping boys. They could do and did do NOTHING to stop us from getting on with it four years ago. This has been like surgery with a spoon; we just keep niggling and niggling instead of getting on with it, like digging out a splinter with a spoon. I've said this before; You (we), W, could NOT let this drag on. That had to be made clear long before the decision was made to go. What happens if it drags on? Viet Nam. So, it has drug on.

Opposition was, is a given and, sometimes, even with fair reason. If you know it's raining and you walk to the mailbox, whose fault is it you got soaked?

There ain't a whole lot to this war business, never was; Get on with it or it's gonna be miserable...until you get on with it.

We need to kill 100 of them for every one of ours killed. If they attack and blow up a patrol, we attack and blow up a village where they hide, if they assault a convoy or headquarters, we level a town where they hide, and so on. Make it way too costly for the citizens to harbor the insurgents and let the insurgents know that wherever they hide they will be decimated!
Trying to fight a war by letting the 'Politically Correct' dictate the terms is like trying to fight a forest fire with a squirt gun.

 

[High EGT]

...to you not knowing me. Let's just say I've read my history and we can discuss bloodshed and it's role in war fighting in a different thread.

At the end of the day, in every US involved conflict, the people wanted reason, the soldiers wanted reason, something noble, something bigger than themselves in order to sanctify and accept the losses. A 120 degree #### hole where the people devoutly kill each other over whether a nephew or some other dude is the proper person to think of as succesor to their prophet ain't getting it done.

Korea, Vietnam, same thing. Bad wars. Nothing to hold onto accept the mission, duty, itself. We can blame the media, each other or even the CIC all day, every day or we can accept things for what they are. There is no slavery to kill to ennoble the loss. There is no global threat, certainly not now from Iraq, if there ever was and it certainly rings hollow with Iran and North Korea at issue.

This was a noble idea, liberation, that could NOT drag on because there simply isn't enough 'there' there to sustain a free peoples willingness to sacrifice one son or 100,000 sons. We find ourselves in a netherworld of fighting/not fighting between people who rather clearly need to sort this out for themselves. Because we can't do that for them.

I thought this thread was exactly that, a discussion on bloodshed and how the US conducts military action. My anology was simply a point of view of how we as a country have evolved ethically when it comes to WAR. The consiquence is people die and bad things happen and we as a people are in conflict with that hard fact as opposed to our conscious during (as example) WW II

 

[Larry Gude]

Ok...

I thought this thread was exactly that, a discussion on bloodshed and how the US conducts military action. My anology was simply a point of view of how we as a country have evolved ethically when it comes to WAR. The consiquence is people die and bad things happen and we as a people are in conflict with that hard fact as opposed to our conscious during (as example) WW II

...my bad then. Where I thought you were going was that we, the people, were going all wobbly BECAUSE of the loss of our people. I just want to reiterate it is not loss; it's what the loss is for.

 

[forestal]

Hey, we're there to help the Iraqi people, and kill them all too.

What part of this impossible mission don't you understand?

Face it, the only way to 'win' is to kill half the population, old old old school style, so that the survivers are so happy that we didn't kill them yet, that they will comply with our orders for peace.

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20070514/D8P3UTV80.html



...wouldn't that be a good place to destroy?

 

[Larry Gude]

You're a genius!

Hey, we're there to help the Iraqi people, and kill them all too.

What part of this impossible mission don't you understand?

Face it, the only way to 'win' is to kill half the population, old old old school style, so that the survivers are so happy that we didn't kill them yet, that they will comply with our orders for peace.

...and just imagine; once people were impressed we were serious, the killing would stop, just like it did in Japan and Germany and all would be flowers and light, just as we intended it to be.

Or, we can keep up with this and have us some more not so good.