TimW wrote
The Natural Philosopher wrote

Wars are a natural way to eliminate young males of breeding age when the
population exceeds the ability of the land to sustain them in the style
to which they wish to become accustomed.

Even sillier than he usually manages.

The trick is to ensure the right young males get killed. Without too much
destruction of property

Not even possible.

Nuclear weapons are not very good at that.

Even sillier with neutron bombs alone.

Utter ****.

Yes.

There are figures. I can't be bothered to look up the actual estimates but
something like this:

Napoleonic Wars, casualties:
95% soldiers/combatants 5% civilians, women, children
WW1
85% combatants 15% civilians

And the right males to keep the population
under control certainly didnt get killed.

WW2 60% combatants 40% civilians

And the boomers that turned up after that
proves that the turnips line is just plain silly.

Late 20th Century Wars
20% combatants 80% civilians

Thats not true of some of them like the Gulf War that was
in fact much more like 90% combatants, 10% civilians.

Now, Iraq, Syria: casualties
5% combatants 95% civilians, women,children.

So modern warfare has become the high tech slaughter of innocent people.

The Gulf War wasnt and its the only real modern full scale war.

That isn't just what ISIS do, it's what the British Army do too, and the
USA are very good at it. Civilian killing.

Thats a lie with the Gulf War and Iraq alone,
and now Syria. And previous in Bosnia etc too.

So the trick is to kill everybody foreign,

Britain and the US dont do that.

keep your own military safely out of harms way so casualties are way down
in small numbers,

Yes, because the voters will no longer accept the
sort of casualtys that were seen in WW2 or even
what was seen with the colonisation of India etc.

and still claim your brave lads are doing a fine thing for their country.

In some cases they did, most obviously with Bosnia.

Drones, Cruise missiles etc are very good for that.

Yes, but they dont deliberately kill civilians
and are a hell of a lot more effective than
the sort of firestorm bombing used in WW2.

Corse its very arguable that the west should have
ever got involved in Iraq or even attempted to
have a military presence in Afghanistan, but it
is pretty clear that Bosnia would have been a
hell of a lot worse outcome for them if the west
hadn't eventually decided that enough was enough.

And Syria may well be turning into
that now with the use of Sarin by Assad.

Are you seriously claiming that he should be
allowed to do anything he likes in that regard ?