Quote Originally Posted by Hooahguy View Post
We are in agreement here. But short of not doing any sort of fighting whatsoever, there are going to be civilian casualties. There is no way to completely prevent it. If there was, then I would wager that the Israelis would have developed it already because god knows the world rides them hard when civilians die by their hands (and rightly so).
Ah, but where to draw the line. Americans are notorious for blowing stuff up first and worrying about whether it was appropriate after.

Well that sounds a bit like an an ad hominem to me. Say he had poor judgement all you want when it comes to his personal life and whatnot, the fact is that he had more success in the counter-insurgency than any other US (or British- remember Basra?) commander had.
Petraeus didn't just have an affair, he had an affair that compromised him professionally.

When it comes to counterinsurgency I say yes, most western commanders have trouble dealing with it. Hardly an American phenomenon. But when it comes to conventional warfare, western commanders have been more often than not apt at their craft.
Initially the British did well in Basra, then they drew down the number of troops to support the campaign in Afghanistan and it all went to shit - the British actually do have a doctrine for counter insurgency that worked in Ireland and the Balkans but it requires more troops then we used in Iraq or Afghanistan.

British commanders were overconfident, they believed they could do more with less.

And why should they know this? Does the British Army know every traditional aspect of its allied armies? Its such an insignificant thing Im not sure why you brought it up.
An American General should probably know this, hell, I know that "Six" is the corresponding callsign for the commander of an American formation. It's called inter-operational knowledge or something.

Thats why we dont carpet bomb cities anymore. Yes, simply "owning" a city doesnt mean anything anymore but rebuilding effectively takes an element of safety and security, which you cant do when insurgents are launching daily attacks on rebuilding efforts. Destroying a few buildings in the process of securing a city is hardly the same as carpet bombing it.
It's more the number of buildings Americans tend to blwo up - they wouldn't do this in an American city with such carelessness.

Well thats very debatable. Look at Caen or Falaise. The Allies bombed a large number of French cities and towns in WW2. If Wikipedia is correct, over 1,500 French towns were bombed during the occupation. And a mostly intact Paris is most likely because the Germans withdrew from the city (ignoring Hitlers orders to burn it down as they left) before any serious fighting began.
Compare Dresden or Berlin.

Here we are in almost complete agreement. Though I dont think Iraq and Afghanistan are totally comparable in the sense that there was never any hope for a stable (relatively) westernized nation in Afghanistan like there was in Iraq.
As far as I'm aware Iraq has no history of democratic government or strong secular or civil institutions, Afghanistan does. How unstable is Afghanistan, really? They formed a "National Unity" government after the election rather than descending into Civil War or perennial deadlock which is better than Libya or Iraq have managed.

You need to read a bit more history on the Afghans, they're more like the Iranians than the Iraqis - for one thing Afghanistan is not a country manufactured after WWI.