Countries do and have won wars by brutally pounding the enemy until they can't stand it, without the results you've mentioned, which have few examples. Meanwhile, all throughout history what I've said proves correct.

I recall reading in Herodotus about a mideast general who after destroying whatever city he attacked would erect vagina statues around the area if the enemy didn't fight hard enough. In the modern era you have Dresden and then Japan. When you want to win you demoralize the enemy, when you want to lose you demoralize your population by not being impressive.

Pound who? Pound what? Iraq has degenerated into urban guerilla warfare. There are no hard targets. There's no barracks, no bunkers, no command centers. When the guerillas aren't fighting they hide their weapons and blend into the population. Do you kill a thousand civilians to get a dozen insurgents?

Remember Arafat's PLO and the Siege of Beirut? How did that go again?

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I addressed this in a previous post.

The key in any war is the make the people hate themselves and their leaders, or whatever, and see you as the frightening potential savior. A guy's wife should want to tell on him, or have sex with you, which you would refuse, thus making her feel worse, for a potato.

That's what's all about.

Your insanity has no bounds. You would make a great supervillain. You should PM the mods and have them change your name to Skeletor or Megatron.

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Dresden and Japan were about forcing strong centrally organized millitaristic nation state's to finally collapse.We did that in a week in Iraq.

The problem is that for the last 5 years in Iraq that part has been well over and there is no coherent "nation" to organize only a constantly rotating cast of competing ethnic miltias, more than half of which oppose the occupation if they are not directly recieving graft from the US reconstruction effort, but not quite as much as the want to destroy eachother. The two competing powers in the region Saudi Arabia and Iran both see our position as ridicualous and untenable and are both supporting not one but a multitude of competing militias (why bet on only one horse) to prevail in the civil war. The Shia militias around Basra are all recieving aid from Iran but still kill each other's leaders, ditto for the competing Sunni factions supported by Saudi Arabia. Its a freakin' mess.

There is no level of civilian misery we can impose that will make Iraqui's believe in a single national idenity above and beyond their ethnic / sectarian one's at this point. And obviously the whole idea is completely counterproductive towards the project of convincing the rest of the Muslim world that we aren't just out to wipe their religion of the face of the planet, which is key to the "War on Terror".

I can't believe you are still aguing for terrifying the Iraqui people into a sense of nationhood that never existed in the first place. Beating people into feeling a sense of national identity is really hard to do with the business end of a B2 bomber.

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Barack Obama on security, Iraq and Afghanistan. We need a Commander in Chief who knows the differences between Shii'a and Sunni.

So those actions had nothing to do with demoralizing the people? Of course they did, and that's how you get the government to fall. When the people see a town vaporized suddenly they lose their confidence intheir own people to protect them.

I've previously said that I don't think that America has the guts to fight in wars any longer, and that we should know ourselves. You should not do what runs counter to your nature, because you'll likely fail.

It's clear from my mini-survey here that I'm on to something. Many people seem to mix this kind of perfectionistic legalism with what boils down to subjugation through the use of mass murder and intimidation, as if the legalism will somehow make the latter better. It's weird, but that's where we're at, and we'll never win another war again, trust me.

Meanwhile, the supervillian model which you've mentioned has been promoted as being evil, but really the all or nothing attitude of these characters is how to approach a life or death situation. I guess we can count the people who make cartoons as subverting the country. There's always Conan I guess.

Again the nation-state of Iraq collapsed in about a week and a half. WWII was not a nationalist war of insurgency. Iraq is several different nationalist insurgencies ove lapped with a multi-sided civil war. Iraquis today mock and make fun of their national government. They don't believe it is viable. They only trust their local ethnic militias. Thats the whole problem there. There is no cohesive "them" to leave in charge.

Apples and oranges.

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Barack Obama on security, Iraq and Afghanistan. We need a Commander in Chief who knows the differences between Shii'a and Sunni.

You're stuck on the concept of "Iraq" and there is no such thing. Countries are just collections of people who share certain behaviors. If you go to London it's not radically different from a US city, although it's in a very different location. That's a major reason why we're close allies.

Both WWII and and the current situation are culture wars and the majority of people living in whichever areas were and are in league with the negative activities. If a group started a communist or Hindu militia in the US and began revolutionary activities they'd find themselves in a sea of enemies and informants. That's because 99% of the population isn't interested in communism or Hinduism, and those are, aren't to that extent. So, the Hindu revolutionaries would find it impossible to move or get support without five old ladies calling the cops on them.

Meanwhile, the fighters in Iraq have massive financial support and tacit support from millions who would never tell infidels about the activities of fellow muslims even if they don't agree with all of their activities. At one point they were beheading cooperators on the street corner, and no one calls anybody to do anything about it. In the US a group decided to do that would be shot dead by the police in a matter of minutes.

So, the entire population of the country is suspect and in order to win we'd have to totally break them down and then introduce a kind of Stockholm Syndrome in them. Again, like the Japanese, they'd have to be made to feel ridiculous.

In light of that, it's hilarious that people on TV and political figures can't even make fun of the enemy, which was always a tactic, by calling them names and deriding their culture. So, the approach is to be respectful of people you plan to kill, not bother civilians who may be in league with the enemy, and not blow too much stuff up, just the right stuff.

Who planned the war, Martha Stewart?

Theoretically the pointof the war was not to kill Iraqui civilians though not apprently to you. Again thats not a definition of "winning" most Americans besides yourself are willing to accept.

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Barack Obama on security, Iraq and Afghanistan. We need a Commander in Chief who knows the differences between Shii'a and Sunni.