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by throwaway0a5e 1520 days ago
The air force really isn't interested in wasting multi thousand (or more) dollar bombs on people that don't deserve them and in a manner that just makes more people hate them and makes their job harder. They also aren't interested in burning out their teams of expensive professionals. Just because you're hearing about them address the latter doesn't mean they stopped caring about the former.
1 comments
pmoriarty 1520 days ago
"The air force really isn't interested in wasting multi thousand (or more) dollar bombs on people that don't deserve them and in a manner that just makes more people hate them and makes their job harder."

If only that were true, they wouldn't wage all of the senseless wars that the US has fought since WW2.

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throwaway0a5e 1520 days ago
>If only that were true, they wouldn't wage all of the senseless wars that the US has fought since WW2.

Take your low effort trope and shove it somewhere unpleasant.

Of course the war machine is gonna war. That's what they do. You don't see Newport making their cigs kill their customers faster unless there's something in it for them. The air force is the same way. They might be in the death business but they're not gonna go around wasting bombs on people who are no threat to anyone unless they think that's how they're gonna accomplish their goal, which you can pretty much guarantee they don't after 'nam.

Are you really so blinded by ideology that you can't see that no military wants to spend resources in a manner that does not help them achieve their goal? Spending the fewest resources to get the most done while forcing your enemy to waste his is one of the most basic concepts in military strategy.

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qwytw 1520 days ago
> Spending the fewest resources to get the most done while forcing your enemy to waste his is one of the most basic concepts in military strategy.

Not in modern asymmetric warfare. US could and did spend several magnitudes more resources than the insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan. I suppose the idea was to 'convince' the opponents to surrender by using overwhelming force. This mostly worked fine against conventional forces but not against less rational opponents who don't seem to value their lives that much (due to various reasons). Similar thing happened in Vietnam (of course there was a geopolitical component which dettered US from directly invading the north) US spent way more and did disportionately much more damage but still managed to lose the war in the end.

> not gonna go around wasting bombs on people who are no threat to anyone unless they think that's how they're gonna accomplish their goal

Well they might not had intentionally went after civilians, but a case might still be made that they weren't really as concerned about collataerel damage as they should have been.

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