Quote Originally Posted by William F. Owen View Post
That means creating a reality of defeat that the enemy understands and fears.
The problem is that no one likes to be defeated, and they're not defeated unless they quit, so if you don't offer an opportunity to save face, they don't quit.

The Sunnis in Iraq are a good example. They never surrendered. They forced us to offer them a deal. Which goes back to my original point. Unless you start killing women and children in retaliation for not surrendering, ""legitimate, discriminate, poportional force doesn't produce unambigious results.

(As before, I'm open to counter examples that prove I'm wrong.) Actually, I guess I should add "without the support of the population." If you accept that the objective of the first gulf war was to remove the Iraqis from Kuwait, we had Kuwaiti support and a definitive victory. If you had broader objectives, the results were more ambiguous.