Until the U.S. DoD changes their Rules of Engagement we will never prevail.
We can NOT let terrorists hide behind women and children and execute our soldiers with impunity.
We can NOT let terrorists use mosques as ammo dumps and military headquarters.
Tell the folks at the State Dept. to sit down and shut up ANY TIME they oppose these views!
I heartily agree with your summary. I wonder if we can continue to fight wars officially with the US military. Fighting with both hands tied behind our backs doesn’t seem fair to those we ask to defend our country.
Privately funded mercenaries that don’t have to play by the rules? I know it’s kind of shocking, but it would even the playing field in fighting terrorists.
What are you advocating - bomb everything back to the stone age? We can do that and win territory, but it gets us no closer to the goal of a democratic Iraq.
I have a lot of respect for General Petraeus. As had been observed, he wrote the book on counter-insurgency. What it sounds like you're demanding is not in accord with his ideas. There is an excellent article by General Petraeus here.
A tiny excerpt: "In the main, however, we sought to carry out operations in a way that minimized the chances of creating more enemies than we captured or killed. The idea was to try to end each day with fewer enemies than we had when it started. Thus we preferred targeted operations rather than sweeps, and as soon as possible after completion of an operation, we explained to the citizens in the affected areas what we'd done and why we did it."