"There's lots of bodies, but most of them had nothing to do with us..."
Really? I'll get back to that...
"You only have to look as far back as Japan in the 1930's and 1940's to know why it isn't a good idea to let the military run things."
The issue is not allowing the military to "run" things per se, but rather to allow them the ability to execute the policy civilian leadership has directed without ridiculous, and counter-productive, restraints.
perhaps a Congressional declaration of unrestricted warfare would've been the better option.
Absolutely.
This is the biggest hurdle we face as a nation, and the biggest asset used by our enemies. We, as a nation, have a misconception of what war truly is, based on our experiences in WWI and WWII. The American public, and it's elected leadership, is under the misguided impression that warfare involves ONLY the uniformed militaries of SOVEREIGN nations. Nothing could be further from the truth, and our enemies are taking full advantage of our ignorance. Americans need to understand that wars can, and must, be persecuted against a people, a religion, or even a culture REGARDLESS of whether the enemy is uniformed, or represented by a sovereign nation. Such is the case today.
This will to win exists within us as a nation, for it hasn't been that long since we applied it with success. This will to win was applied against the native Americans with resounding success. In that war, we fought as a nation against both a people, and a culture, and we won simply because we had the will to win. Today we face the same type of enemy, and in order to win, which we CAN, we must have the same will to win as we did in the past.
Now back to...
"There's lots of bodies, but most of them had nothing to do with us..."
The enemy we face uses those "bodies" to hide in, to recruit, to resupply, to communicate, and even to attack us. They are not innocent, or impartial, and they support the enemy war effort. In order to win a war, you must do EVERYTHING you can to defeat the enemy, which includes taking away his support base. Those civilians are a large part of his support base, and are legitimate targets. This same simple concept was used against the native Americans with much success, and it would work today.
While Americans fail to understand what war truly is, our enemy does not. Our enemy understands that there are NO off limit targets, NO off limit tactics, and NO rules other than win at any cost. They have proved this time and time again, and will continue to prove it until they either win, or die.
I don't want them to win, and I don't want US to die. I am willing to do ANYTHING necessary to prevent them from killing us, because I KNOW they WILL use anything they have to attack us as a nation. It is US vs. THEM. PERIOD.
We should have learned our lesson from the Viet Nam war about civilian policy influencing military strategic and tactical decisions, but we didn't. Today the enemy masses arms, and fighters in mosques that we KNOW they use for this purpose, but our military is not allowed to target them. Today our soldiers operate under a microscope of scrutiny and are subject to investigation almost any time they fire a round. Today our enemy sits back and laughs at how morally weak we are as a nation, and thanks allah that he fights an enemy that doesn't understand the concept of war.