[CapricornNoble]

Overall this is a pretty balanced take. I still think we have different interpretations of what is "normal" for a war but I don't expect we'll close the gap on that.

Now to introduce some levity into the conversation:

> It's war. It's complicated. There are no easy answers.

When I was a Senior Watch Officer at the Operations Center of a 3-star command, our Operations Chief was lifelong infantryman and Fallujah veteran. I haven't been in combat. But I used to frequently rant "Why do we always make this stuff so complicated?!?! It can't be this hard to kill people!" For those lacking context I'm complaining about how I felt that our approach to command & control was needlessly diffusing our core Marine Corps function of efficiently killing our enemies.

...and one time the Chief just looked at me and responded plainly: "Trust me, it's not."