ISIS is losing territory consistently, it's bleeding money and fighters, and its top military figures are getting blown to goeey bits one by one. Their self proclaimed capital is being encircled by the Syrian army and YPG, and the Peshmerga and Iraqi military are starting a major offensive in Iraq that will probably end up dislodging them from Fallujah and Mosul.
We're winning the war against ISIS. And we're doing it with little commit of American lives. It might not seem like this if you watch the news, but the attacks they pull off in other countries are a sign of desperation on their part.
This isn't a Hollywood movie. Being a brutal maniac who slaughters everything in sight didn't work in Vietnam, it didn't work for the Turks in their war against the PKK (30 years and counting that's been going on), hasn't worked for us in Afghanistan (watch Taxi To The Dark Side if you've never seen it), didn't work in Iraq, hasn't worked for Israel, didn't work for France in Algeria etc etc etc. Never mind morally, strategically being violent for its own sake is a total failure.
You forget that the after russians razed grozny the large scale insurgence was defeated.
or that after we exterminated the germans out of czechoslovakia there was no more ethnic unrest that destabilized that country.
Or heck stalin starved the ukranians and their oposition crumbled,unless you count some ukranian nationalists in ww2 as a large scale oposition to stalin.
Look, I am more on your side than you think. There are going to be civilian casualties, we are going to have to execute some people. We need tighter border controls and generals willing to risk lives. But the kinds of things that are being advocated go beyond that. They don't help you "win" and they only stain the souls of the men performing them. Even if the average Leatherneck could carry out those kinds of orders, the damage it would do to him is irreparable. The damage it does to America is irreparable. And no, no matter how badly you want it to America can't exist inside a vacuum. It needs allies and trading partners. It needs people who are willing to trust it. Most people don't trust genocidal maniacs who advocate mass torture to destroy a force not 1/100th of its size. And if that doesn't matter to you, you're a terrible American and certainly no patriot. Certainly the opposite of the pragmatist you claim to be.
And also remember this isn't a video game.
Someone has to carry out the things you're suggesting. Someone has to be ordered. The average soldier can't even bring himself to shoot to kill, and admits this. It's why so many bullets are wasted. In Vietnam, it was 50,000 bullets per kill. Think about that, and get back to me about you pragmatism.
And if course, it wouldn't be you, would it, missy? You don't have to get dirty, so why should you care?
This is true, and was actually a large part of my point.
You are extremely optimistic about a soldier not killing someone.
North vietnamese had no quarrel about massacring their capitalist citizens of the south.
in Rwanda neighbors for decades killed each other with rocks just by their different racial and cultural identities.
In yugoslavia there was massive killings on a scale never seen since ww2 in europe.
Most of those were caused by soldiers or armed militia.
You can easily kill someone,you just need some PSYOPS to do it.
About america couldnt escape getting dirty
Who would opose you?
you flattened cities in ww2, pulverized most of the japanese cities to a crisp, bombed berlin so much that 70% of all constructions were at least damaged.
you used chemical and incendiary weapons in Vietnam,used them again in iraq and despite the moans of some left leaning pacifist,no sanctions were enacted.
Russia cleansed chechnya and arguably that has not affect US-Russia relations in a large way.
