Women in Military Service & Combat (not just USA)

[slapout9]

Marc, I would agree about the weapons and as much as I like tasers that would have been the wrong way to go. Tranquilizing gas would even be better (no gun at all) and don't call it gas, call it a pharmaceutical agent.

Great idea about the posters and since the men were already in custody it could have been done easily. Break their will not their body.

I don't know where the quote came from but I once heard that a great general can convert any enemy to a friend. That is the transformation we need in the military. A broad array of weapons to subdue not kill, we already have that base covered.

[Ray Levesque]

This is but one example of a tactical evolution that uses what we in the west perceive as a moral strength, trying to avoid harming women and children, against us. Since the "enemy" cannot fight us on our terms, they develop other tactics to achieve their objectives. And they evolve these tactics within the context of "their" value system.

It creates a lose-lose situation for the west; if women and children, civilians in general, or civilian-use buildings are used as shields for "fighters", who themselves are often in civilian clothes, we put our own soldiers at risk of death if they do not respond. On the other hand, if our soldiers open fire and civilians are killed, then the enemy can exploit the situation to achieve their political goals via our open press and society.

Even if the killings of civilians are justified in a given situation, ambiguity is created in the minds of the public, at best, or the images and the event, interpreted in isolation, provides fodder for critics and an enemy's supporters.

In the end the development of non-leathal weapons appears to be the best way ahead. This would allow our own forces to protect themselves and perhaps still be able to capture the civilian-clad fighter without the "hot" medium of television galvanizing public perceptions with an image-of-the-moment that shows violence without context.