As an outsider, in the last decade it's been really weird to watch the US public demand war while at the same time demanding that soldiers don't die. It just reinforces how distant people are from the idea of war.
Hell, the entire Vietnam War had less US dead than there were Allied dead in one day of the bloodiest battle in WWI. And after a decade of fighting, the US efforts in Iraq have less than 10% of the US deaths in Vietnam. Afghanistan less than 4%. And still the rhetoric is one of siege and difficult fighting. How soft and spoiled are the commentators who think war should involve no sacrifice at all; that effectively it should be like a video game?
How soft and spoiled are the commentators who think war should involve no sacrifice
It's horrible to waste soldiers for nothing, which is what's been going on over there for quite some time. The problem is, it is a total sacrifice - people losing their lives for nothing.
Sad that so many people get so worked up over the loss of 5k soldiers, and not the unnecessary destruction of a state, involving hundreds of thousands of deaths of foreigners.
If it really is 'waste' that people are worried about, why not that?
You mean Saddam Hussein (Iraq) and the Taliban (Afghanistan)?
But yeah, I definitely think we should have acted much more forcefully to end the wars much more quickly and with far fewer casualties on both sides.
I think we probably could do this without resorting to nukes, but applying the same "kind" of intense pressure. Hiroshima/Nagasaki were huge successes compared to a minimum decade-long ground invasion and occupation of Japan resulting in possibly millions of deaths.
Hell, the entire Vietnam War had less US dead than there were Allied dead in one day of the bloodiest battle in WWI. And after a decade of fighting, the US efforts in Iraq have less than 10% of the US deaths in Vietnam. Afghanistan less than 4%. And still the rhetoric is one of siege and difficult fighting. How soft and spoiled are the commentators who think war should involve no sacrifice at all; that effectively it should be like a video game?