Quote:
Originally Posted by BlueHair
This is dead on. I can't remember exactly where I read the following but it goes something like this: You have to do whatever it takes in war to take away your opponents will to fight. A "proportionate response" never works. A disproportionate response does. If you want to blow up one of our military vehicles, we'll blow up a square mile around it. You shoot from a Mosque, we'll level it. Fire shots out of a house, we'll firebomb the neighborhood. Civilians are not innocent. They are the very people that allow the terrorist to operate in their neighborhoods. They allowed their government to put them in this awful situation. Why was there law and order when Saddam was in power? Because the citizens were scared to death he would kill them all. They don't have that fear of us.
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This idea reminds me a bit of the famous quote about a village in Vietnam, "It became necessary for us to destroy it, in order to save it." It also misses the point of the "war" we are fighting, which is to create a country that respects the rule of law. Killing indiscriminately is not within the rule of law as established by the Geneva convention to which we are a signatory. Perhaps most importantly it would not win us any friends or any trust in fulfilling the ultimate mission in Iraq.
We can kick anybody in the world's ass that we want to in a conventional war, and consequently we will probably never fight one again. Like it or not these are the rules of engagement for the forseeable future.