Quote:
Originally Posted by Botnst
I would have preferred a kill ratio of 10M:1. Or better, not a single American lost in action and mountains of enemy dead. But that's just me.
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The neutron bomb would be a good way to achieve a kill ration of 10M:1. Or 10M:0. There would appear to be some serious objection to that weapon as it's never been used,
AFAIK. Perhaps if mass killing is too easy, can be done w/o any immediate downside to the them that issue the weapon, strange ambition can come into play.
Quote:
Originally Posted by cmac2012
Wars are won. Oh boy. And why do we want to win wars, boys and girls?
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This was a rather cryptic remark. What I meant was that the objective of some of our recent wars was not to utterly crush the enemy but to fine tune the policies and practices of the target nation so that they were more useful to us and less of a risk to various of our interests. To accomplish that, one needs to nurture allies on the scene.
In Vietnam, it appeared that our enemies were going to seriously outnumber those who could serve as our installed allies, and that our puppets would not long endure absent a regular infusion of blood and treasure on our part. And since we didn't want to settle the territory, wholesale slaughter really had no upside. Such slaughter does contain the potential for downside, in world opinion if nothing else. These factors are also present in Iraq and Afg one could argue.