The answer, of course, to the question you posed, about ethics in war… is that they are using these tactics because they work. War is, as you stated, a brutish, barbaric enterprise. It is, quite simply, the goal of, for purposes either noble or vile, crushing an enemy to the point where they no longer have the capacity and the will to fight.

War has always been that way- from the first moment a caveman picked up a stick. And the moment that one’s opponent gets a whiff of a limit one will restrain oneself to… that opponent will use that avenue at every opportunity to gain an advantage. We didn’t win “hearts and minds” in World War II, as you so aptly described. By the time it was over, Germany was literally a smoldering pile of rubble and Japan had succumbed to the chaos of two nuclear bombs. In every instance where a soldier has defined his limits- from the redcoats in their formal lines during the Revolutionary War to the jungles of Vietnam and now to the conflicts we are in… those who allowed their opponent to draw where their line lay lost the war. Nations have throughout history tried to “civilize” war, and the reality always has come back to bite them.

The more we emphasize that we will not engage in barbaric tactics of war- laying waste to towns, allowing citizens to be harmed, and so on- the more that we will discover that limit being taken advantage of. Innocent civilians will be placed in every militant shelter and their bodies broadcast to the world. IEDs will be present at schools, shopping malls, and every local road.

It’s a terrible, terrible reality to have to face… but it is reality… and that reality is that war is life-or-death, a struggle for victory that, at least for those we are fighting against, transcends morality.

Is the fight we are waging important enough that morality must take a back seat?
That is the question we must ask ourselves. Because our enemies have already asked themselves that, and the answer is an unequivocal yes.