onegoodmove

The One True b!x in responding to this bit of "wisdom" from Ben Shapiro,

I am getting really sick of people who whine about "civilian casualties." Maybe I'm a hard-hearted guy, but when I see in the newspapers that civilians in Afghanistan or the West Bank were killed by American or Israeli troops, I don't really care. In fact, I would rather that the good guys use the Air Force to kill the bad guys, even if that means some civilians get killed along the way. One American soldier is worth far more than an Afghan civilian.
For the past decade, the United States and Israel have been attempting to prove their moral superiority by attempting to minimize civilian casualties. That's all well and good. Unfortunately, this policy also means that politicians put our soldiers in harm's way in order to save "non-combatants."

Soldiers are fodder

said among other things that:

Soldiers are dispensable. One American soldier -- whose mission it is to go out and deprive other people of their lives -- is not worth more than an Afghan civilian.

Blunt for sure, but basically I think he is right, that is not to say soldiers are worth less. All human life is valuable, but risking one's life on the field of battle is after all the soldiers job.

For expressing his opinion he has been getting nasty email and early morning phone calls from neanderthals that think that speech they disagree with should be punished, and now Brendan O'Neill in a post related to what the Bix has been discussing has chimed in :

No casualties please, we're American

Recent reports suggest that fear of taking risks and suffering casualties caused the US military to 'hold back' in Afghanistan - to avoid going in for the kill (literally) and instead acting cautiously in the war on terror.

According to the Washington Times, 'US commanders have turned down as too risky plans for special operations missions to attack Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan.

'Military sources said that on several occasions, Army Green Beret A-Teams received good intelligence on the whereabouts of former Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar, one of the United States' most sought after fugitives. In each case, soldiers said, commanders turned down the missions as too dangerous or because they believed the intelligence was shaky.'

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