[qwytw]

> 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.