Originally posted by: Lemon law
Originally posted by: Exterous
Originally posted by: The Green Bean
3. NATO has shown no respect for civilian casualties.
3 is blatently false. If we had no repsect for civilian casualties then we would just use our 'heavy weapons air power' and carpet bomb the f*ck outa any place that pisses NATO off.
If you want to know what no respect for civilian casualties looks like I would suggest you investigate the firebombing techniques used during WWII.
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Somewhat of a good point Exterous, as both sides used it against enemy civilian populations
during a conventional war now called WW2. The reasoning was to break the enemy will to fight and also to destroy the factories that provided the war materials that allowed enemy armies to fight on. And to hasten the day when your army occupy the enemy capital at which points the madness of a conventional war ends.
The problem with your argument is that this is anything but a conventional war. And while there are combatants of all stripes, insurgents and counter insurgents, they are the minority and temporary, and the arbiters of end outcome is the hearts and minds of the very civilian populations whose lives this endless combat makes miserable. And if both Nato and the Pakistani army are seen by these very civilians as the author of their miseries, the Taliban by default wins. Death and hatreds can be forever, human beings are very stubborn animals.
We lost in Vietnam with the same tactics, against a much smaller population and with far more troops.