What if #11

What if the war in Iraq had never begun. Would we still be in the other countries fighting for something that doesn't truly effect us. I understand that the best defense is a strong offense, but we are loosing more men than is needed (even though our numbers are nowhere near any other conflict in respect to time/casualty ratio). We are policing a country that will fall apart the second we leave. The job should have been finished long ago. This same situation occurred in Somalia, Vietnam, and various other conflicts. The politics hold back the military so that they cannot finish the job. What if when we entered Iraq and instead of trying to avoid killing civilians, we just carpet bombed the entire area until all resistance stopped. That's what happened in World War II. We didn't bother to avoid bombing civilians in German cities, as a matter of fact, we purposefully attacked civilians in order to demoralize the enemy. Over 14 million Russian civilians died in the continuous bombings and horrible conditions that the Nazis put them through after capture. That number puts the Soviet Union's civilian casualties at around 48 times that of the United States MILITARY casualties (416,800). The Soviet Union's total casualties (24 million) were greater than all other countries' military casualties combined. To win wars, there has to be no mercy. Do you think that Truman thought about mercy when he dropped over 21 kilotons (21,000 tons) of TNT on Nagasaki and over 18 kilotons (18,000 tons) of TNT on Hiroshima? No, I don't think so, we deemed it necessary, and in the long run, it saved many American lives when the Japanese surrendered. We no longer had to invade the Japanese mainland. Admiral "Bull" Halsey was quoted saying, "Before we're done with them, the Japanese language will be spoken only in Hell!" I don't quite agree with his statement, but it shows the way we felt about our operations, it was no-nonsense. They got the job done and moved on. I wonder what happened to our way of thinking?