Strange how numb we've become to civilian casualties and equally how dishonest it has been to revert to the 'body count' method of military progress. The great American soldier David Hackworth wrote about it in his experiences in Vietnam, where a traffic accident would be turned into a major combat victory because the Pentagon demanded numbers. I've got no doubt that the same level of dishonesty is attached to the reporting of militant deaths in actions against ISIS. The recent action in Yemen, despite being marked by critical intelligence failures, they were still able to come up with a "pristine" number of militants killed. How the hell can we trust what comes out of the Pentagon?

There is within a certain cadre of warhawks an awesome amount of immaturity when it comes to warfare. That it's somehow clean and noble, they trivialize civilian deaths with that's war. Not that America doesn't know the true horror of war which can be found in any reasonable study of the Civil War, but somehow the Audie Murphy narrative has much more purchase. Always it's draft dodgers, the armchair generals - the cowards crying loudest for war.