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Originally Posted by
invictus0972
You are right to suggest that we are relying too much on "hard power" (bullets). The funny thing is that hard power is a COA that could work. Unfortunately, it would take a merciless application of "hard power" in order to achieve success. For example, we could completely destroy a village from which a bomb maker is from. If we razed three or four Iraqi villages, I submit that this would have an affect on the number of people volunteering to make bombs. We could say, "Bomb makers! If we catch you making bombs, we are not only going to kill you but we are going to kill your family, your friends, and your dog!" This is the tactic that Alexander and the Roman Legions used to pacify conquered populations, and it is effective to a degree.
Mike Scheuer has said before that this type of brutality is the only way to truly defeat the current threat. I also have a professor at JHU that likes to use the Roman example of not just burning the city to the ground and killing all the people, but poisoning the earth so no crops could ever grow there again -- hard power but with a brutally symbolic message to others who would contest the empire.
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The problem with this approach is that the American public, rightfully so, would not tolerate these tactics thereby dismissing them as legitimate COA. Public support for military action is a form of "soft power"; and in the 21st Century, "soft power" has become a much more critical component of military operations. A state can have the most advanced weaponry, the best trained military, and the most vibrant economy, all forms of "hard power", but still be rendered ineffective without the "soft power" of public support. Once policymakers grasp, which I believe they are, the reality of the importance of "soft power", we will be better able to develop and implement defense policies.
That's pretty perceptive. "Policymakers" is the key to that thought-- most of them are still conventional thinkers and conventional warriors and would not understand the value of, say, buying all the ad-space on a particular TV station in a particular region instead of the latest F-22 heads-up-display gadget.