Quote...caused by the destabilizing influence of the US presence itself.
No shit.
Most civilians killed in Iraq have actually been killed by Sunni/Shia infighting. Still America's fault since we set the stage for that to happen. Don't know that makes us some type of night time boogeyman rapist murderer.
But truthfully the war could've been over along time ago if the US did target the civilian populations like they did in that just war, WWII. With that end of the war firebombing campaign to crush the civilian support and infrastructure of the Nazi and Japanese regimes.
But instead we leave artillery at home, deploy those batteries as military policemen at their own hazard and hope they can maintain order in chaotic regions with no training on actually being military policemen.
The only place we haven't denied enemy freedom of movement is the civilian population. And we have the capacity to flatten all of Iraq and all of Afghanistan.
But we are such bloodthirsty killers we don't. Instead we take a roundabout way of doing things to try and minimalize civilian casualties to the point where it becomes a major doctrine of the war. Counterinsurgency. Winning hearts and minds.
Unfortunately it would have taken decades to work in both countries.
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Not really. It just sort of wound down after a day. "Over the next day, both companies were involved in additional burning and destruction of dwellings, as well as mistreatment of Vietnamese detainees. While some soldiers of Charlie Company did not participate in the crimes, they neither openly protested nor complained later to their superiors." <---soldierbro code!
The soldiers in Charlie Company weren't the ones I was talking about. Also there is a difference between soldiers not reporting because of the soldierbro code and being afraid of a hundred other guys capable of slaughter.
Quit trying to use Vietnam as a point against troops today anyways. It isn't the same war. And we aren't drafted soldiers.
We've fought week long engagements in both wars without killing a single civilian. You are specifically taught NOT to kill civilians nowadays because of all the shit you step in legally.
In Vietnam if they saw anything mildly suspicious they suppressed right away. If you fire without proper PID in today's engagement its the stockade and our weapons can't even go full auto to suppress like they could in Vietnam unless you are a SAW or 240 gunner. And there are only two of those out of every 9 guys.
But go ahead and tell me what the military is really like Cvalda. Since you appear to be more experienced within it than I am.
