"Hawke" wrote in message
...

The second problem is that a formal declaration of war, under law,
amounts
to a war against all of the people of that political entity. In Iraq,
it
would mean we were at war with the Iraqi people. We didn't want to do
that.

The problem is that we are killing Iraqi civilians wholesale. There is
insufficient differentiation between Saddam Hussein's troops and
civilians. For every innocent civilian we kill, we make 2 enemies -
just like Vietnam.

Yup, war is hell.

--
Ed Huntress

Yes it is, but that's what we say when we really mean tough **** for the
innocent people we kill as we go after the ones we want.

Or tough **** for us when the killing is on the other side.

We offed a whole
lot of them in Panama when we went after one guy, Manuel Noriega. Our view
is if innocents get killed by us that's just the cost of doing business.
You'll notice that our attitude is quite different when our people get
killed as collateral damage.

You have a short-sighted view of civilian casualties, Hawke. There use to be
many, many more, in nearly every war.

We make lots of enemies killing by so many
civilians. By now it's to the point where we're just about out of friends.
Talk about isolationists, we've isolated ourselves about as much as a
country can. Not by choice but by our actions. It's just more of the stuff
we've been pulling for years now.

War is reaching a critical stage. In attempting to minimize civilian
casualties we've created a hyper-sensitivity to them. This is a political
complication that suggests war is going to go through another evolution, and
probably fairly soon. I have no idea how it will evolve.

Meantime, the "asymmetrical warfare" metaphor has become an apology for the
fact that insurgents can hide among and behind civilians, forcing their
adversaries to kill some civilians or capitulate. This, of course, is a
serious war crime, a capital offense, under international law. But
insurgents know that war crimes tribunals have become a farce and they have
virtually no chance of being prosecuted.

Stay tuned. Something will happen. Don't bet the farm on what it will be.

--
Ed Huntress