Posted on 02/01/2016 11:31:37 AM PST by Nachum
Army Lt. Gen. Sean MacFarland, the US commander in charge of the coalition fighting Islamic State (ISIS) in Iraq and Syria, said Monday that carpet bombing the terrorists would be "inconsistent with our values."
The remark is seen as being aimed at Republican presidential candidate Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX).
In December, Cruz pledged to "utterly destroy ISIS," and vowed: "We will carpet-bomb them into oblivion." He even hinted at the use of nuclear weapons, saying: "I don't know if sand can glow in the dark, but we're going to find out."
After being asked to explain why carpet bombing would not be an effective strategy against ISIS, MacFarland told reporters the US was "bound by the laws of armed conflict."
"We're the United States of America. We have a set of guiding principles," he said. "Indiscriminate bombing, where we don't care if we're killing innocents or combatants, is just inconsistent with our values."
MacFarland said that carpet bombing is precisely what Russia is accused of doing in its own air campaign in Syria, in support of Bashar al-Assad.
He added: "Right now we have the moral high ground, and I think that's where we need to stay."
MacFarland claimed the anti-ISIS campaign is making progress in both Iraq and Syria, and that the jihadists had lost about 40% of the territory they had held.
(Excerpt) Read more at israelnationalnews.com ...
We did win Grenada.
Maybe it's because my dad was a 17 YO Navy enlistee, training for the invasion of Japan.
Carpet bombing wins wars, general.
But shielding pedophilic rape of children by ‘allies’ is hunky dory.
Does anyone remember after September 11th when somebody had Osama bin Laden in their sites and cold have vapprised him? Whoever he was, he refused to fire on OBL saying that it just didn’t feel right. I guess because it was going to take out some other people? Anyway I’m wondering if this is that same spineless, anti-American POS.
I’d rather see them all of them carpet-bombed to Hell than to see ONE American soldier get a paper-cut.
Vaporized other vapprised
anti-ISIS campaign may be making headway in Syria, BUT the PRO-ISIS campaign in Washington, D.C., seems to be going the wrong way.
Actually Cruz was not talking about carpet bombing like what happened in the 1940s. I think it was poor choice of words by Cruz’s team and it got him into trouble.
Carpet bombing IS against our values. But I will be the first to say that, when the situation warrants it, it won’t be.
Because it is a certainty that there do exist circumstances that will warrant it.
Payback’s a bitch.
You abandon the moral high ground when you refuse to fight for your own Culture against savages.
We carpet bombed both the retreating Iraqi army in Gulf War 1 in ‘91 and the Taliban in Afghanistan in late ‘01. And those are just two recent historical examples. Is McFarland saying that those actions were “inconsistent with our values?” I can only imagine what this perfumed prince thinks of what we did to Japan 70+ years ago.
Victory seems out of the question for so many of us. Better to let a fight drag on for years wasting trillions of dollars and thousands of beautiful young lives until the inevitable loss of popular support chalks up another defeat for the USA.
I think that we should not fight until we have to but then we kill the enemy not stopping for cease fires, or peace talks, or cheesy fake surrenders. We kill them until we have completely destroyed their will and ability to hurt us again and in the mean time scared the crap out of every other ambitious POS on the planet so that 100 years hence they will say to each other do not mess with the US it is not worth it.
I’m ok with saturation bombing.
There is no such thing as “innocents” in the arena of islam...
The reason terrorists survive is that they take refuge among the civilian population that harbors them. Make it clear they will become targets along with the terrorists, and the population will expel or expose them and let them be killed.
OK you got me, that wasn’t reaally much of a war, though.
We’ll take whatever we can get.
The Duke of Marlborough, John Churchill, accomplished that during the campaign known as the Battle of Blenheim (early 1700s). His victories drove the French back to France, destroyed their military aspirations for a century.
Ancestor of Winston Churchill. One of those victories was in the Mosel River town of Trarbach. During my four years of living there, I never saw any acknowledgement of that battle. Little wonder...German town...British victory.
Hopefully I can return there before I get too old and feeble. The Mosel from Trier to Koblenz is an historically rich area, with a strong Roman influence that lasted 700+ years.
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