Regarding Ken's reply in post #30 to one of my posts; I never knew what it was like to be deconstructed, but now I do. I will try to pick up some of my pieces from the floor.

War is cruel, nightmarish thing. There is no one on this forum who would dispute that. None of the advocates of the approach that COIN is shorthand for have ever suggested that people are not going to die and horror won't exist. However, what concerns me about "war is war" is something that MarcT stated in a post: that this meme will be taken by people less sophisticated than the people who populate this forum and be used to justify the application of total war in a place where it shouldn't be used.

That was the point of the whole first paragraph to which you responded. Marc just stated it much better than I. Of course body count ratios are a stupid metric. I had hoped that was obvious within the context of the paragraph, but it wasn't so I didn't write it well enough.

You are right that I misread what you said and my reply was nonsense because of it. However, even if there were no insurgencies defeated that resulted in a net benefit to the big power involved 20 years post (I think there have been), that ignores what benefits may have accrued to the big power at the 5, 10 and 15 year point. Those may have been substantial.

I don't understand why COIN oriented training leads to the belief that an opponent is deserving of better treatment than any other opponent. If they are fighting you, you destroy them and if they have surrendered, you treat them decently as in any other conflict. Why would there be hesitation to act against the opponent? If there was, wouldn't that be a result of improper training and leadership?

In Afghan, we need to do what will work, be it called, war, COIN, FID, anti-partisan ops, pacification or whatever. Sometimes I think this fussing about what it is exactly gets in the way. In any event, people will suffer and die and souls will be broken.

I'll see your Sherman and raise you a Forrest: "War is fighting and fighting is killing."