Legendary Apophis wrote:Avenger's comment about TV atrocities reminds me about the chapter regarding the "glorious wars" in Voltaire's Candid and how the "glorious fighters" have "heroic needs" (read: rape women then murder them; pillage civilians to collect tributes). Which is exactly what happens in third world's wars, while the weapons manufacturers/sellers make tons of profits out of these merciless clans fighting each others causing great side damages to civilians.
Civilians are targets of war.

In my opinion, you should not make a distinction between military and civilian people. A civilian can become military if you give them a weapon.

Take a look at Iraq or Afghanistan. Had the civilian population been properly terrorised, they would not have risen up against the invaders. Rather than take into consideration that civilian casualties need be avoided, I would recommend terror bombing as a means of pacification.
The Reaper and Predator drones are the absolute pinnacle of terrorism. Is that a bad thing? No, not when applied to further your war effort. It becomes a bad thing when a nation states their intent not to harm the civilian population, and then uses imprecise weaponry to cause mayhem and death. First off, a nation should never claim to aim to keep the civilian population out of a conflict. This whole 'Let's ignore the obvious mass of potential freedom fighters' embodies a very bad 'mojo'. No wonder wars take ages these days. The separation between civilians and military in the Fatherland is the root cause of wars taking longer and longer to be finished. If the full force of a nation would rise up against an enemy state, there would be nothing left of it before the end.
The reforms of the Roman military back in the day were the starting point of the separation tradition. Once separated, the civilians felt less and less ties to the military, and started to lean upon their governments, because they were their representation. We are talking about a separation process that takes millennia to reach the state we are in today. The military became more and more detached, and with that, the civilian perception of the military became separated from the national interest. In sports terms, the military became boxing gloves, instead of the bare fists of the nation. No longer part of the population (civilians as the torso, heart, mind, and locomotion, government as the head, and the military as the arms and fists), but a separate entity. The best example is in the extinction of the Warrior Monks. Purposeful violence, and in fact any violence became something to be shunned, and as the separated society developed a 'conscience', or rather a weakness to power, the head of the nation (government) decided to play a deception ploy on civilians. You yourself have expressed this countless times, G.

The government screws us. The interesting thing, is that while the military serves the national interest, civilians are increasingly separated from that same interest. Individual interest becomes superior to the national interest, and in
that environment, war becomes an evil, and the military the embodiment of that evil. Various nations are in different stages of this separation process, but I would like to draw the Vietnam War into memory. Civilian support was lost, and thus failed the war effort. When a nation does not fight a war with
all that it is, it will inevitably fail to reach their objectives. I do not count rewriting your objectives as reaching them, as the Obama administration does.

Israel will lose when it fights Iran, for the simple reason that the (majority of the) Iranian population supports a war on Israel, whereas the Israeli civilian population is heavily divided on the subject. So, unless Israel can muster its population to act as
one in the national interest of eliminating a potential threat to their lives (like they did in their previous wars for survival), they should not start a war.

If you, as a nation, want to conquer or subdue another nation, you will need to terrorise its civilian population to the point of mental capitulation, at which point a physical war is no longer necessary. Should you be unable to put terror into the population, you should use military force to batter them to the point where you can use terror to finish the job.
But that is controversial theory of war. Something most people will consider immoral and uncivilised, even though it is exactly the opposite.

It requires a reverse paradigm shift on the concept of war and society though. I will admit that.
