The following is from "THIS KIND OF WAR: The classic Korean War History," by T.R. Fehrenbach, page 151-152:
"The American war of street and town fighting did not resemble that of other armies. To Americans, flesh and blood and lives have always been more precious than sticks and stones, however assembled. An American commander, faced with taking the Louvre from a defending enemy, unquestionably would blow it apart or burn it down without hesitation if such would save the life of one of his men. And he would be acting in complete accord with American ideals and ethics in doing so. already, in the Korean War, American units were proceeding to destroy utterly enemy-held towns and villages rather than engage in the costly business of reducing them block by block with men and bayonets as did European armies. If bombing and artillery would save lives, even though they destroyed sites of beauty and history, saving lives obviously has preference. And already foreign observers with the United States Army -- not ROK's -- were beginning to criticize such tactics.
Observers from France and Britain, realizing that war was also highly possible in their own part of the world, were disturbed at the thought of a ground defense of their homelands. For the United states Army, according to its history and doctrine, would choose the lives of its men over continued existance of storied cathedrals. These observers wrote news releases --"