Believe me, nothing except a battle lost can be half so melancholy as a battle won. – Arthur Wellesley
My Take – Ask the Americans who fought at Iwo Jima and Hue how they felt when the fighting finally petered out. Then find the Japanese and Vietnamese veterans of those battles and get their impressions. I’ll bet that their memories of the feelings they had when the battles ended aren’t that different. All military victory comes at a cost, and it’s a ticket that’s pre-paid. The losing side pays the cost of winning at the same time the winning side does, but is then forced to cough up even more when they don’t come out on top. Both sides pay in blood, and both sides have to deal with what that does to them. Before we send our young men and women into battle, we have to recognize what that decision is going to cost us. Failure to do this, or even denying that there is a cost, makes war not only more likely, but also more shocking when the butcher’s bill finally comes due.
DaddyBear’s Den 
Old NFO
/ November 27, 2012Yep, witness the first Gulf War, predictions were up to 20,000 dead. We lost less than 500. “THAT” became the new ‘norm’ go to war don’t get folks killed…The reality is that it doesn’t work that way!
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daddybear71
/ November 27, 2012We had been prepped for mass casualties at our base in Texas. I helped clean out an old World War II hangar that was going to be used as a spillover morgue for Fort Hood.
I think the military oversold the “surgical” and “low casualty” aspect of war in the aftermath of Kuwait. It’s made our leadership quick to see the military as a quick and easy solution to a lot of problems, and made the military averse to doing anything that’s necessary, but less than a sure thing. So far in my adult lifetime, we have never fought a well-trained and well-equipped opponent, and when we do, the casualty rate is going to shock a lot of folks. I think its going to be close to how the British people must have felt following the first few battles of World War I after the British Army had spent decades fighting small bush wars against foes that were completely outmatched with rather low casualty rates.
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