POP-COIN reasons that killing the enemy means killing the population - which is essentially assuming folks are stupid and changing the means to account for it.
No Wilf, you have it all wrong on this statement.

If you spend all your time trying to kill the enemy, you stand to lose sight of many things concerning the population, like whether or not the enemy is slipping into his villages and towns at night to deliver mischief and mayhem.

We should do our best to avoid killing civilians...and that's about the gist of it. You talk a lot about concepts and ideas standing up to rigor. Please show the council where anyone advocating a effort that focuses on the population (or even just looks to pay attention to the population), actually said that killing the enemy mens kills the population.

That is not an equation I have seen anyone make.