Quote Originally Posted by Hooahguy View Post
I guess that explains the Somme then.

If you, and as you seem to claim a large section of the British public, really think that a soldiers life is the same as a bullet or tank then I really do not understand your sense of morals at all.
As Is aid, this has nothing to do with morals.

Morally, one does not make war. If we are making war then we need to do so with the greatest intelligence and proportionality, and that means that we need to consider soldiers' lives as a resource, we need to consider how many lives to spend to achieve an objective and what level of civilian casualties we should accept in the protection of our own forces. In the last part of the calculation we should consider friendly and enemy civilians as having different values, in strategic terms.

The idea is to win the war as quickly as possible, which means much more than just defeating the enemy in battle.

Potential? Read any first hand account of the Second Battle of Fallujah, where the use of the mine-clearing line charge (which is what you are referring to as "missiles") was prevalent, and you would know that the roads in Fallujah were covered in IEDs. Now then, considering the destructive power of IEDs, I think tearing up a road is much more preferable to losing human lives. And considering that most of the civilian population evacuated (if government estimates can be trusted, anywhere between 70-90% of the civilians cleared out before the fighting), it sucks that the remaining civilians had to deal with no water or electricity but sometimes its unavoidable. Its the harsh reality of war that innocents suffer. We can do what we can to alleviate their suffering but the end goal must be to destroy the enemy. Deploying the line charges might have messed up the roads (which were fixed after the battle anyways) but you cannot deny that it also saved lives.
*Shrug*

I attended a lecture by General Sir Rupert Smith, as I understand it the "line charge" is essentially a missile fired down the road - that's how he described it. His opinion was that using the line charge caused long-term resentment in the city in addition to the immediate crisis - the point being that the tactic that saved American lives on the day, by not having to re-mine the road, cost more in the long run because it turned the residents on the city against the Americans, even those who came back after the battle would have seen a city with no electricity and no sanitation.

You keep neglecting to say that at the moment it is not an allied city. Yes, coalition forces arent trying to wipe out the town but to say that just because coalition forces are trying to take it back that we shouldnt launch airstrikes against reported Taliban positions is tactical stupidity.
So the people all support the Taliban now? I hear they don't, and they all came out of their houses to cheer when the Afghan army retook parts of the city (and promptly ducked back inside when it all kicked off again).

Intellectual exercise - imagine an American city occupied by the Russians/Chinese/baddy of the week. Has it ceased to be a "friendly" city or is it just "occupied"?

If it resulted in the capture of the city, then I would guess that the main response would be "well that really sucks that the town is now half rubble, but Im sure glad that we took the city and now we can rebuild."
I rather doubt it - I expect your Congress would be demanding to know why your military destroyed one of your own cities to retake it.