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Just curious, do you think that military theory and discipline as it is being taught to our officers can cope with the 7th century barbarism coupled with 21st century weapons? You've heard about the two soldiers who had their throats cut while sitting in traffic in Iraq the other day.I meant no disrespect when I thought that the officer corps may not fully briefed on the psychology of islamic fascists. If they weren't before, they certainly are now. Shooting with guns and missiles are one thing....so is a fist fight to bring a man to submission. Throat cutting arises from an amazingly personal animus(I not talking about quiet special ops when you have to blow up something and you don't want the guards to alert anyone.)

On the one hand...you have me, a civilian, feeling as though we should applaud a colonel who employs the same types of tactics as these islamofascists are using with us, only with more devestating force and then there is this notion of duty and discipline that only those in the military would really fully know. I agree you just can't go out willy nilly and slaughter and maim everybody who looks at you funny. It's probably too bad, I the civilian will never know the full details of the trial facing Colonel West...It is hard to fully cut thru the spin of charges and counter charge.

The ones I want to see bashed are the terrorists who are laughing their asses off right now over this case or are washing the blood off their hands from those exsanguinated soldiers.

Just curious, do you think that military theory and discipline as it is being taught to our officers can cope with the 7th century barbarism coupled with 21st century weapons?

Certainly! Our officers (and NCOs) can cope with a much wider variety of circumstances today than they could in the past. The tactical, leadership, and technical training is far superior to anything taught before. True some of the funding for ongoing skills training lapsed during Clinton's administration, but the basic skills were there and many dedicated professionals ensured that training calendars were stuffed full of everything they could afford to train on. Even with the funding shortages our troops maintained the highest training standard in the world.

Just for comparisons sake I have gathered some numbers that are publicly available. Seems to me that no matter how PC and weak you and others might view our ROEs and Tactics they seem to work far better than the model from 1968 we all try very hard not to emulate. Looks to me like past officers had a harder time dealing with an Asian enemy than 7th century minded barbarians.

1968 Vietnam
US Forces KIA-14,594
Note 1: there were an additional 1,919 non-hostile deaths for a total of 16,511

Troop Levels As of 1 January 1968
Force Total Strength Support Combat Arms
US Forces 409,111

Operation Iraqi Freedom 2003
US Forces KIA- 416 (from 1 Apr-17 Nov and includes non-hostile deaths)

Troop Levels (between 120,000 and 150,000)

Do the math, enter in what you can find for current troop levels in OIF and you will see the death rate in 1968 Vietnam was about 1 in 28(409,111/14,594=28) and in OIF about 1 in 285 (120,000/420=285). The 1 in 285 number is for an 8 month period if you increase the KIAs at the current average rate the numbers for 1 year are about 1 in 226 (420/2=110+420=530 | 120,000/530=226).

So short answer to your question, hell yes.