The Rules - Engaging HVTs & OBL

[Levi]

by their stubborn resistance have shown what the general arming of a nation and insurgent measures on a great scale can effect, in spite of weakness and porousness of individual parts

secondly, that the probability of final success does not in all cases diminish in the same measure as battles, capitals, and provinces are lost (which was formerly an incontrovertible principle with all diplomatists, and therefore made them always ready to enter at once into some bad temporary peace), but that a nation is often strongest in the heart of its country, if the enemy's offensive power has exhausted itself, and with what enormous force the defensive then springs over to the offensive.

Standing armies once resembled fleets, the land force the sea force in their relations to the remainder of the State, and from that the art of war on shore had in it something of naval tactics, which it has now quite lost.

I have always liked this guy. I always took the summation of what he was saying to mean "total war" as a war without mercy until it was won.

We must, therefore, decide to construe war as it is to be, and not from pure conception, but by allowing room for everything of a foreign nature which mixes up with it and fastens itself upon it—all the natural inertia and friction of its parts, the whole of the inconsistency, the vagueness and hesitation (or timidity) of the human mind.

So if THIS "war" means we have to target people who would not normally be considered combatants, because they are not on a large open space with a weapon pointed in some direction or other, thats what we do. Don't we have to?