Then you should know better. Brutality does not lead to success over the long term, and there is no evidence to suggest that it would. Not even as a pure hypothetical that you did not at all mean to endorse. I'm sure you really do believe that you only want to engage in nice, friendly military escalations, not mean ones.
You know YOU are the one who decided on brutality, right? Not me. That leap is 100% on you.
Perhaps you could clarify your own point, then.
Perhaps you could ask before you jump to the assumption that I want to brutally scalp people with no morals to speak of
Our actions in Afghanistan were actually very mild-mannered. We took a largely defensive position with the objective of preventing terrorist infiltration in strategic areas. With some exceptions, our direct actions were implemented only after the enemy engaged in clearly aggressive undertakings.
But we have the technology and the skill to be much more directly aggressive. That doesn't mean "more brutal" which seems to be the only thing you're capable of imagining. We definitely could have taken the initiative in pursuing terrorist cells and locations, and taking the fight to them. We could have been significantly more direct in hunting down and eradicating terrorist activities.
But we didn't. There are reasons for it, and one of those reasons is that we, as a country, don't want to be perceived as the aggressor. It's a political and a PR position, wherein we placed more emphasis on defensive actions, including infrastructure and support for the local citizens of the areas in which we acted.
Another of the reasons is very likely to be that we don't want to show our hand. The terrorists we were fighting were pretty low-tech, at least in comparison to our capabilities. We only used the level of technology needed to keep them at bay - ultimately they're not the biggest threat to either the US or to our allies. It's in our strategic interests to not expose the extent of our technological capabilities in action against what is ultimately a lesser opponent.
And you feel that if we'd gone in with all of our politely non-brutal modern technology blazing to kill every "terrorist" we could find, we would have "won" Afghanistan? How? What would that win condition even look like?
Eradication of all terrorist so completely that no others would even think about forming new cells.
Setting aside your no doubt fascinating definition of a "terrorist", that is just not correct. Either that we ever had the capacity to "eradicate all terrorists" even if we wanted to,
or that mass killings are an effective deterrent to recruitment into militias. History shows us that quite the opposite is true, which is exactly why after the first four years of war in Afghanistan, even our top generals were trying to scale back the way we were conducting that war: they'd seen the atrocity-to-terrorist pipeline play out right in front of their eyes in, by that point, two wars in four countries.
Note that most of the atrocities on our side were committed by soldiers enraged at the death and despoilation of their fellow soldiers. You don't get human psychology at all if you think the average person who
would have been recruited into a militant group would decide not to after all because the invading troops killed, say, their father and their brother and the kid down the street instead of "just" their father.
I don't think you think you want to scalp people, I just think you have no idea what war is or what it is like. There were several incidents of scalping and other forms of bodily mutilation in Afghanistan, the very war you're criticizing as relatively
mild-mannered. If scalpings are already occurring at the level of mobilization you find too weak, stepping it up could only have increased their frequency and severity. Your storybook fantasy of a good and kindly war where only bad guys get hurt and everyone else is gaily cheering on the troops does not match anyone's reality.
Egads. You act like I claimed that defensive troops were paragons of virtue who never did any wrong. Compared to past conflicts, the US employed a very low-aggression approach in Afghanistan. Low-aggression is not No-aggression.
Then why are you so offended by the mention of the scalpings, infanticides, rapes, and so forth? These inevitably went along with the invasion, and would just as inevitably have been more severe in any scenario where the US had attempted to purposefully escalate the conflict. There is no plausible scenario in which more troops are sent or more bombs are dropped, and the occurence of such atrocities would not correspondingly increase. That just isn't the world we live in. You don't get to play tough guy when it's time to decide what policies work and which ones don't, then cry because someone pointed out that, like, wars are violent. Duh. Every goddamn child in this country who has ever turned on a tv knows that wars are violent.
Advocating for war or an escalation of war is advocating for the killing, permanent disablement, death from epidemic disease, sexual violation, and bodily dispoilation, of a great many men, women, and children, some of whom will have no real knowledge of let alone complicity with forces on either side of the conflict. Yes, scalpings. Yes, dismembered children. Yes, old men shot for sport from the ramparts as they take a desperate to go for medicine and supplies. Welcome to the reality of any battlefield across place and time. There has never, in fifteen thousand years of history, been a peaceful war. If you're going to be a military jingoist, you need to grow up about it, and get a grasp on what it is you're endorsing.
I'm tired of Americans who are bloodthirsty in the voting booth, but blanch at the thought of taking even the most basic of responsibilities for our collective actions overseas. Whatever game you're playing, the rest of the world isn't buying it.
