During the days of the Iraq War when many war supporters urged that we "take off the gloves" and kill our way to victory, I argued against that practice as immoral, ineffective, and damaging to our troops. Not that I agreed that fighting just made more enemies. Yes, we needed to kill the enemy fighters. But we had to do it in a way that helped protect our civilian friends without alienating them, give neutral civilians a reason to stay neutral or come to our side as a better alternative to the enemy, and isolate enemy civilians to prevent them from aiding the enemy fighters and nudge those enemies to drift into neutrality or friendship. That's an effective use of force and doesn't require our troops to lose their humanity.
We're out of Iraq, and despite tensions, Iraq is still our friend that doesn't need the presence of US troops to enforce that relationship; and Iraqis continue to fight the enemies we helped knock down:
Militants killed 164 Iraqis in August, half the number killed in July, as security forces wrestled with a stubborn insurgency, figures from government ministries showed.
According to the data, 90 civilians, 39 soldiers and 35 policemen were killed last month and 260 Iraqis were injured.
Russia is showing us that despite the carnage that quieted down their Caucasus region, their level of brutality was an ineffective use of force:
Strongarm tactics such as these were put on hold during the Dmitri Medvedev presidency, which saw the beginnings of a more constructive, if slower, response to the situation, in the eyes of some. But with Vladimir Putin’s reelection, what critics call the “Chechnya model” has returned to Dagestan: hardline repression and no-holds-barred counterinsurgency. Whether this will bring the conflict to a head or draw out the battle lines even farther remains to be seen. But in the Caucasus and beyond, the specter of radical Islam will haunt Russia for years to come.
Strongarm tactics invites anger and recruit more enemies. Mind you, sheer bloody "no holds barred" brutality is capable of subduing rebels if carried out long enough. Is Russia willing to simply keep killing civilians in large numbers until the surviving people there are simply stunned into submission?
But that only works for a generation or two, of course. Our way is better if sometimes frustrating in the short run.
