SpyMoose:
Except that if this little truism were really true there would be no more human civilization, all of it having been blown up by nuclear weapons sometime between their invention more than 50 years ago and their proliferation and the innumerable conflicts between then and now. If the goal of war was always to fight as dirty as possible with as little regard to the fate of your enemy as possible, then we would all be living on a field of black glass and nuclear fallout. Please stop trying to sound intelligent about war, it disgusts me. Certainly if war is what gets you off then indulge vicariously in it all you like, clearly you aren’t man enough to fight it yourself or you would be there yourself. But leave intelligence to the people who are willing to think before they speak.
I am sorely disappointed with the sheer amount of ad hominem attacking contained in this post. For the purpose of debate, I shall ignore it and reply to your valid points, but if you wish to simply be an ass, I suggest you go somewhere else.
Now. You seem to equate "human interest" with "binding rule", which in turn, confuses why MAD is a valid military principle against a relatively sane-regime such as the Soviet Union or Communist China. Why was MAD, MAD? Because we humans, specifically our rulers, follow the principle that if there is no way to survive, it is better to take out as much of the enemy as possible in retaliation, so that the victory does not end with them coming away unscathed. To put it cruelly: If fucked, fuck back. Yet at the same time, the knowledge that this is almost one hundred precent certain to occur if one were to launch the first-strike in a nuclear confrontation, prevents such a nuclear war from breaking out as neither side would desire a total end to their respective nations. It does not serve their interest. With terrorism, however, terrorists have everything to gain and nothing to lose, specifically when they deal with the West which prides itself on civilization, and thus would not do something such as sterilize the entire Moslem world to cull the threat. Terrorists also have no State, generally have few bases, and can blend in with populations which they have nothing to do with, thus making them extremely hard targets to fight back with, even if they use "WMDs". Since these policies, apparently, -work-, they are justified in war due to the fact that they are practical. All considerations in warfare are rooted in whether or not the tactic works and it furthers one's side's interests. These interests can be extremely practical, idealistic, or really anything that side wants. We have determined idealistically, for instance, that we don't want to destroy Baghdad, even if we could in a moment. We value the notion of human rights and liberties too much to do as such. We also have some practical consideration, seeing how that might turn the entire world against us, and we'd likely give the terrorists so many new recruits it would be nuts, but even so, this only goes to illustrate that it is due to self-interest the the action is made. Like all things in life, warfare then is a matter of getting away with what one can and still ending up with what one wants. The notion of "rules of war" is just a silly notion that obscures the reality of combat.
