i agree with this. a unique perspective perhaps, i believe strongly in the idea that invaders have a moral obligation to execute the fastest and most effective invasion possible in order to limit loss of civilian and military life.
the strength and finality of a first strike largely determines how many people will die in the future of the conflict. i like to look at the iraq invasion as one of the strongest shows of force followed by the weakest outreach and de-escalation efforts possible. a cohesive modern military force can execute a strong strike that knocks out most of a country's comms and air support, but the large size of an army leads to logistics and communication errors. these errors stack up leading to underequipped, outnumbered squads of soldiers prone to perpetrating war crimes. coalition soldiers quickly lost the support and positive perception of the local population, and most/all attempts to outreach and establish infrastructure with local tribes ended in civilian deaths as well as ambushes against coalition soldiers. not unlike them, russia will also be faced with a population of people who hate them and reject their presence if they do succeed at their invasion.
all invaders should have a strong and determined strike plan followed by a stronger, kinder humanitarian effort. however, most armies lack the latter and end up leaving countries in failed state status. failed states are exceptionally prone to insurgencies and terror, and fighting against these forces is arguably more complicated and resource and time consuming than planning an invasion. insult to injury, guerilla/asymmetrical warfare has never been studied well and we (the world) have very few examples from which to study. most written documents on asymmetrical warfare and counterinsurgency were written during and after the 1930s, as the gap in combat effectiveness between armies began to increase drastically with new weaponry. ironically, i live in a country founded on independence, militia and insurgency that actively tries to prevent other countries from reaching the same goal. you think with a history so embedded in asymmetrical warfare, the government would plan counterinsurgencies that were more effective and less detrimental to civilian life. instead, Americans are generally remembered in most parts of the middle east and south america as imperialistic invaders and not freedom fighters.
in the coming years, invasions around the pacific are highly likely. hoping for permanent peace is unrealistic and naive, instead i hope for competent invaders that bring not just armor and soldiers, but doctors, translators, humanitarian corridors ready to salvage and preserve whatever human life, property and society survives combat.
this has nothing to do with what I told you. not only is it wrong to “hope for competent invaders” when there are maybe 10 countries in the world who have put armies into foreign countries since 1993, but the US is not a “competent invader”. the fact that you quoted the drone program as some sort of tactical success for minimizing civilian casualties (see daniel hale’s drone papers) demonstrates your lack of understanding of american warfare and, more importantly, diplomacy. you said that the drone strikes are good but there’s not enough intelligence around it to confirm the target is an “unlawful enemy combatant” (lol) beforehand and afterwards, my answer is that this is by design because there is zero incentive for them to actually do this when terrorism (unlawful attacks on civilians) creates more people to spend money to kill. it’s like when an IT guy unplugs the server and plugs it back in so that he can make sure his boss doesn’t fire him because there aren’t any IT problems going on at the time he can actually fix.
US intelligence released a story the other day that russia might start striking more civilian infrastructure, which is hilarious because striking civilian infrastructure and utilities is the first thing that the US does in a war. in yugoslavia, close to 8 thousand serbs died from the bombings— most of them because there wasn’t running water, power, gas, or food supply chains in lieu of the embargo.
you said that, in iraq, the US’s problem was that they didn’t ‘follow through’ to create a stable country after the war (officially) ended. this is of course true, iraq is a stuffhole now and never recovered from what the US did; however, I’m telling you this is intentional. iraq is something of a cliche for criticism of American foreign policy, but that’s only because it is the perfect example. saddam hussein would not exist without the US backing he had; Kurdish uprisings which led to the anfal genocide were a direct result of the US lying to them; 1 million iraqis and kurds and syrians in iraq, mostly children, starved because of oil for food, most of them dying before they even knew they were iraqi, but the only reason cited being that they were iraqis. saddam’s domestic intelligence network wouldn’t exist without the US sanctions. al qaeda, backed by iraqi islamists, wouldn’t exist without the US. the poverty in iraq now, and subsequently CIA, wouldn’t exist without the US’s approval of it.
my point here is as follows: the US lies about the circumstances of a country to manufacture public disapproval. then, the US makes these circumstances a reality through sanctions, impoverishment. then, the US backs local separatist groups to create fear and report it as “tensions” or “civil war”. then, the US enters the conflict directly, using expensive bombs and some expensive troops to unstrategically inflate the conflict. then, the US enacts regime change in the country, backing a weak, corrupt, controllable administration who operates as a US puppet-state. finally, the US abandons the country while maintaining their hold on many of their possessions, such as oil or food or bank holdings. if you’re lucky like iraq you get to be invaded 2 more times due to other circumstances the US created
it has been like this since korea and the philippines at least, it has never changed, and it never will unless diplomacy is taken seriously by the public, and media and government are held accountable by the public. the US is THE MOST destructive and powerful country in the history of the world, it is not ‘strange’ to criticize it in the ukraine conflict, it is strange to NOT criticize it. US foreign policy exists to create ‘shocks’ to justify upward transfer of wealth, that is the simple reality, the group of people in power exist to serve themselves and not the public and not any moral higher power who saves foreigners
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