The Media
I thought the same thing
Actually, this is from the U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, the professional journal of the Navy and Marine Corps.
It raises valid points regarding the conflict between victory, restricted rules of warfare and the desire to keep both American and Iraqi civilian casualties to a minimum.
The answer may be that the American Art of War is not yet at the point where you can achieve victory with the unrealistically low casualty rates that are now strived for.
In World War II, the answer to the tactical problem of securing a strongly defended town was to pound it into rubble and let the civilian blood and guts fly and fall where they may.
Ultimate victory in Iraq may require that the dirty work be left to the Shiites and Kurds who will have a choice of wiping out the Sunni thugs by whatever means gets the job done or face a return to their former state of slavery.
Yes. Note the mention of Hue in the article; thank you Walter and the MSM.
When do we take the gloves off? The last adversaries we seriously did this with, are arguably Germany and Japan. The *people* of those countries were beaten, not just the soldiers in the military. I do not think we will have success against the Sunnis, until we have that same attitude and approach.