But innocent civilians, including children and the elderly, would've.
And that's unacceptable.
With a son who is about to stand on the safe end of the M16, you may want to learn a bit more about what is going on with your military. The problem is that non-military types continue to force their ideas of what war is upon those who actively engage in war.
It is horribly laughable when people complain about how civilian deaths are unnaceptable as if the military should be doing something better than what they already do. Our government has spent billions perfecting precision guided missiles for the expressed goal of landing explosives with pin point accuracy upon our enemy while minimizing colllateral damage. We have placed our own troops in harms way to minimize collateral damage when we could simply pull back and bring in the steel rain effectively destroying everyone. But this isn't good enough for some.
For some, the preach is more important than any civilian they pretend to care about. In the end, their whining and complaining only further endangers the civilians.....
- It's these type people that the Bush administration was afraid of when it came to deciding on whether or not to impliment martial law after our military reached Baghdad in 2003. "Such a thing is inhumane." "Who are we to force a certian behavior upon people even on temporary terms?" But what would have been more humane in the end? In the mean time, these false humanitarians would have simply rejoiced in their "moral" victory no matter that it set the stage for whole sale slaughter later.
- Some aren't satisfied with their military on the verge of victory in a battle like Fallujah so they rally behind the media and shed crocodile tears for any civilians caught in the way. And while they are celebrating their "moral" victory because the military pulls out, they remain too stupid to realize that all they did was create a more intense situation and set the stage for more civilian deaths when it is time for Fallujah II.
These are merely two examples on how our civilians set stages for more difficult missions, worse environments, and place out troops in harms way. The media's mission to bring drama to the lives of mundane civilians who can't fathom what war is merely ensures that our struggles will be far more deadlier than they have to be. As a civilization, we have forgotten what it takes to win wars. I have mentioned this before. Since World War II, we have not had a single end game unconditional victory. We have divided nations in half, abandoned people to slaughter, allowed dictators to live, and made the amature's mistake of trying to win wars on the cheap. Some of this is because non-military types believe they can define what victory is. Worse still are the non-military types who have never served, but find themselves dictating the conduct of seasoned veterans who have spent their lives studying war.
Our military knows how to fight and how to fight well. It can deliver a victory in just about any venture just as long our definitions of "victory" remain practical in today's world. And it can do so by limiting the amount of collateral damage while understanding that the idea of "winning hearts and minds" only goes so far because some hearts and minds are simply not winnable. But what it can't do is compete with the media and the couch commandos who haven't the ability to determine when their perfect idea on how to
wage war meets the practical reality of how to
win wars.