In WWII, when we had an atom bomb, we used it. The alternative was sending another million GI's to their deaths fighting for the Japanese homeland.
If you're going to tell the military to fight a war with one or both hands tied behind it's back, then you had damn well better hope that you have enough troops enlisted to do the job.
I know I'm bucking the trend here, but the Rats have found a winning issue on this. They've made the political question into concern for the troops, rather than making President Bush look good. His slap-and-tickle rules of engagement have let him paint himself into this corner. If we had wiped out just a few major Iraqi towns that showed early resistance, we could have nipped this thing in the bud. That was the strategy behind A-bombing two Japanese cities.
Yes, we had soldiers deployed for long time periods in WWII, but when they came across enemy villages, they were allowed to win. They weren't stuck playing kindergarten cop to a bunch of facist thugs trying to settle old scores.
The US can't just wipe out towns. We have signed the Fourth Geneva Convention in 1949. "The Fourth Geneva Convention relates to the protection of civilians during times of war "in the hands" of an enemy and under any occupation by a foreign power. "
Bush can’t win. If he does something effective like this, they’ll be calling for his impeachment over “war crimes.”
We didn’t pacify post-WWII Germany by being nice. Germany did have snipers and others killing our occupation troops after the war. It ended real quick when we started shooting everyone even remotely close to those killing our troops.