Just once maybe learn something about one of the things you keep pontificating on instead of repeating the garbage you hear on talk radio:
We can’t yet know or predict the extent to which the Trump administration intends to depart from Obama’s directives and policies on civilian casualties. Based on the memorandum and his public comments, Trump seems to be betting that, given the choice, the military will return to some lower threshold of self-restraint if released from “political” concerns over civilian harm. The Pentagon should instead take the opportunity to keep existing protections in place, and call the president’s attention to the fact that policies intended to reduce civilian harm didn’t arise out of elite Washington think tanks or academia; they arose from the military’s long-held assessment of their strategic benefits—assessments based on hard-won battlefield experience, as many researchers, including Luke Hartig, former senior director for counterterrorism at the National Security Council under Obama, have pointed out.
Retired Gens. David Petraeus and Stanley McChrystal, as commanders of the Afghanistan War, set a higher standard for avoiding civilian harm than what the Geneva Conventions required. It wasn’t just because it was the right thing to do. Evidence showed that doing so could reduce local support for the Taliban, and over time they figured out ways to do it without compromising their effectiveness or exposing U.S. forces to greater risk of harm.
Consider just a few of the senior officials who have prioritized the prevention of civilian casualties. Retired Gen. Stanley McChrystal (Flynn’s former boss) knows more about targeting terrorists than just about any officer of his generation and yet he made prevention of civilian casualties a central focus of his time in command in Afghanistan. He warned, “The Taliban cannot militarily defeat us — but we can defeat ourselves.” Secretary of Defense nominee Gen. Jim Mattis is known for his relentless pursuit of insurgents and terrorists (How else do you get the nickname “Mad Dog”?), yet the counterinsurgency field manual that he co-wrote with Gen. David Petraeus places a premium on protecting civilian lives. In discussing the use of air power, the manual pointedly notes, “An air strike can cause collateral damage that turns people against the host-nation (HN) government and provides insurgents with a major propaganda victory. Even when justified under the law of war, bombings that result in civilian casualties can bring media coverage that works to the insurgents’ benefit.” And former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, who served under Presidents George W. Bush and Obama and reportedly advised Trump on his secretary of state selection, wrote in his most recent memoir about efforts to reduce civilian casualties in Afghanistan: “I was also concerned that we were not moving fast enough or decisively enough to deal with the problem of civilian casualties. I don’t believe any military force ever worked harder to avoid innocent victims, but it seemed like every incident was a strategic defeat, and we needed to take dramatic action.”
https://www.justsecurity.org/36013/t...mas-rules-war/
Did you even read all of the bit I just excerpted? That's probably more than you read in a week isn't it. That's why you're so fucking ignorant mate. You don't actually take in any information, you just take in stuff from bullshitters who tell you what you want to hear.
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