[DesScorp]

"Much better to kill the enemy wholesale rather than retail."

You're missing his point. You can't kill the enemy wholesale when they're hiding among women and children in urban areas, as Al Qaeda does in Iraq and Afghanistan. Hezbollah learned this successfully against Israel last year.

We simply do not have the national will, for good or ill, to indiscriminately slaughter entire cities full of civilians just to get to some insurgents.

[El Gato]

You're missing his point. You can't kill the enemy wholesale when they're hiding among women and children in urban areas, as Al Qaeda does in Iraq and Afghanistan. Hezbollah learned this successfully against Israel last year.
...
We simply do not have the national will, for good or ill, to indiscriminately slaughter entire cities full of civilians just to get to some insurgents.

You don't have to slaughter whole cities. It's what systems like Excaliber, small diameter bomb, and other precision guided weapons are for. You isolate the enemy fighters, and then blow up the building they are in. Yes, you'll probably a get few of their own women and children, but whose fault is that. It's most likely more effective in terms of sorties per insurgent killed. And a lot more effective in terms of insurgents killed per infantryman killed or maimed.