And you think abandoning said RoE is a good way to win friends and influence people? Lobbing artillery rounds at mosques will certainly get rid of the RPG, but it will also produce a lot of unhappy locals - who will probably express their unhappiness with more RPG/AKs/whatever else they can get their hands on. Ditto with brassing up half the neighbourhood if a sniper takes a potshot.
Yes the same locals that are being massecred by the guys in the mosques, i'm sure they'd be so upset. and that's the point, this isn't just a straight up conventional war; this is completely different from the situation with Taiwan and China. in a Conventional War, your objective paticuarlly as the defender is to repel, not invade, you use massive airstrikes and such to cripple economy, and production; so that you destroy their ability to wage war on you. capturing and conquering the nation isn't required.
And if you have to fight street-by-street through Taipai or Bejing this won't happen? Yes, if the Iraqi insurgents had decided to play to the US Army's strengths they would have been flattened. That's why they didn't. First rule of war - select abattlefield that plays to your strengths, not your opponent's. You would, however, have needed the army - air power, artillery, armour, etc, can't hold ground - only infantry can do that.
Again, read above; regarding china. As for Iraq? Despite the horrible strategy going on there; we are still proceeding, in over 4 years of unconvetional warfare, TOTAL COLLITION LOSSES, are under 4000. Despite all the scheming, and guerrilla warfare, we're still not "losing". on top of killing scores upon scores of insurgants, we've also captured and detained/killed Many high ranking members of Al-Queda.
So I can get this out of the way, I do not agree with the Iraq war, nor do I like war in general. But I do study it, and I do believe in human rights. So are we doing the right thing? Morally yes, strategically, no.
Does that mean my country is perfect? No, is yours? No. But it seems the rest of the world falls in to the media's anti american propaganda, painting is all as war mongers; This is not america's war, this is Bush's war. and unfortunetely he's taking us all for the ride.
I can - NATO's having enough problems adapting to Afghanistan, let alone the Far East. It's entire command structure is based around a major conventional war on the central front with forces already in place, not expeditonary out-of-area operations.
NATO's force in Afganistan, is like a peacekeeping force, rather then what would be mobilized for a full scale war..
Also both of our countries respectively are deploying weapons that are space age. some of the things in devolopment are straight out of sci-fi books.