[actionfromafar]

If the war is prolonged, you can't go around treating people like eggshells to be crushed, or morale will suffer.

Unless your target image is how Russia conducts war. Beats (their own) soldiers, puts them in cages, ties them to trees for days, and so on. In Ukraine we see the difference in practice. If the cause is just, you don't have push your soldiers at gunpoint into the fray, like Russia does.

And if the war is not prolonged, what's even the excuse to do that in the first place?

[_heimdall]

I'm not arguing that it is a "good" or "right" way to approach war, only that the mindset is common among the military when fighting a war they believe to be an existential fight.