Quote:
Originally Posted by Botnst
I missed something. Where did I define courage in this discussion?
From the perspective of the grunt, any war one is in, is a hard war.
I know talkative WWII vets and I know reticent ones. May have as much to do with personality differences as anything. Go hang out in a VFW Hall.
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OK, you didn't mention courage. And in most wars, I would agree that wiping out the enemy is going to be more likely to assure one's survival.
But this is more likely to be true in cases where one side or the other is trying to take over territory for their own use.
But in some of our recent wars, it was unlikely that them we were fighting were going to cause us grief unless we went to their shores and started shooting. Iraq, Panama, Vietnam. Crushing the enemy is often portrayed as an act that required courage.
Changing the ROE so that we could more efficiently bring about mass death of a population doesn't strike me as an automatic gain.