More great on-the-ground reportage from BG's old 'hood, this time by Elliott D. Woods, who went to UVA about the same time BG did...
The SKT creeps into position on the designated rooftop, codenamed Objective Celtics, and begins scanning the mist-covered village through night-vision optics. I recall Aebischer's chilling warning to his men: "I don't want to see one of your buddies lying wounded next to you because you decided to have a moment of morality. If you see a threat, take him out." Battalion intelligence said this part of the village would be deserted - anyone sleeping here would have to be Taliban, they said. The men are surging on adrenaline and fear, alone in what they're sure is a hornet's nest of Taliban fighters.
But the sleeping village looks more lived in than a Taliban bed-down spot. There's a cow hunkered in the courtyard below and fresh-picked grapes spread on this very rooftop. Bales of hay are stacked against the compound walls, and the qalats are in good repair. Patterns of normal agrarian life abound.
We walk to and fro, indecisive, and young men wake up and risk their lives and morality while we try and figure it out.
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Your point I think is rooted in the essence of discretionary 'wars'. Not a war based (a least not now) on a sense of kill or be killed, fight or be annihilated; but some less urgent notion such as bringing democracy to some distant land. So the merits and hence the prosecution of the war is - 'debatable'; not the unified, self-evident necessity, that wars of survival would present. It reminds us again that war should always be an option of last resort; not a matter to be undertaken in a fit of jingoistic fervor.