Throw away the rules and we're reduced to the level of all the other low life's in this world and I'm simply not for that. That'll make us as barbaric as they are. We still have a smigget of credibility and respect in the world. Nothing is worth sacrificing that and especially not over there.
That is exactly my point, there is no way to fight them and win unless we resort to other tactics. Right now they control where we fight them at. What exactly is the mission over there anyway? I haven't heard one, the only thing I've heard is we are fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them here. Which in my opinion is the biggest bunch of BS I've ever heard.
I'm not for becoming monsters either. But as it stands, we are just going to keep getting slaughtered over there because we are not fighting a conventional war and conventional war tactics are not going to work. We have two choices, do what it takes to "win", which I'm still trying to figure out where there is to win, or pull out and just not give the extremist the credibility, and just blow them off as that annoying gnat that keeps bugging you.
A decision has to be made. I would prefer not to pull out for the fact that it will demoralize the troops that have spent almost a decade over there and has shed blood and lost many brothers in Arms. But if that is going to happen you have to give them the authority to be able to do what is necessary to achieve the objective. If you aren't going to allow the military to do what it is designed to do it's doomed from the start.
And honestly I could really care less about what the rest of the world thinks of us. Especially Europe. They were the worlds top dog for 400+ years and then after fighting 2 World Wars they depleted their resources and America became the worlds sole super-power by default. The Europeans will always have a grudge with us because of it. The Europeans could settle this problem on their own if they wanted too but they would rather talk shit about us then when a situation pops up they want us to come in a handle the situation.
We can't be everything to all people. At the same time we have to do what we have to do protect our nation. Pandora's box has been opened and we now have to deal with the situation. So the question is what do you do? Keep trying to appease our soft allies that don't want to do anything for themselves that talk shit about us, but when they run into problems they want us to protect them when somebody is picking on them.
Something has to be done. My solution is right in line with yours, say screw them, you deal with the extremist were packing up and going home. We are trying to fight a war against people that blow up women and children and have no respect for human lives. So either we give the troops the tools and authority they need to get the job done or pull out. In a perfect world conventional warfare rules would work, but this isn't a conventional war and it's not a perfect world.
Unfortunately a choice has to be made. I'll repeat it again, it's either do what we have to in order to "win" or pull out and go home. What we have been doing hasn't been working and it will continue not to work. The US has been the superpower and has(had) the political clout to tell our allies to shit down shut up and let us handle the situation. Before the financial crisis all we had to do is threaten them with cutting the aid we give them.
I understand there are lots of back room talks that goes on that we don't know about, but it's politics and those talks are centered around what the US can do to expand it's empire. The talks have nothing to do with the war it self, it's all politics.
I respect and support our troops, but it pisses me off to no end to turn on the news and hear how 9, 10, 20 soldiers got killed today because they don't have the authority or resources to do the job. Something has to happen, if we can't get to a point to declare victory without sacrificing our moral integrity then it's time to bring them home. As it stands we are going to continue to get slaughtered because the Extremist are playing for a different rule book. It akin to playing high stakes poker and your opponent having a deck of Ace's up his sleeve and the players around the table saying oh you can't kick him out the game you might offend him.