Time-Cost Analysis

"Yours is a society which cannot accept 10,000 dead in one battle."
Saddam Hussein was speaking to U.S. Ambassador April Glaspie in Baghdad on Jul. 25, 1990, just a week before his invasion of Kuwait .
The Americans have great skill and capability at shedding blood and yet their lack of stomach to do so is central to the American character. ‘We are reluctant to shed not only American blood, but also enemy blood.’ Mr. William M. Arkin thinks it adds up to an advance in humanity, to a higher regard for the "laws" of war, to moral superiority.( Yahoo! News) Unfortunately their history doesn’t in my eyes do not bear it out. Superiority is subjective and it only suits to round off any argument from what position you may take either for or against it. Making some particular class in the society believe ‘war as a patriotic duty’ and send them off to the thick of fire is armstwisting; who benefits from these wars but some plutocrats? Is there any moral superiority to a nation that allows some crooks to make a cat’s paw from material that constitute the nation’s future?
Or what importance we attach to moral superiority we may deduce from the case of the final phase of the Cold War. CIA was active then arming Jihadists in Afghanistan to beat the Soviets but the fact that they didn’t disarm the ragtag band Muslim warriors after the USA had achieved the objectives shall ever remain the Achilles heel to its ‘moral superiority’. Similar to what we saw in Iraq. War on terror as it was called, would not have cost this much had the nation taken time to study the consequences or the course thoroughly. Why so many American deaths in a war that was touted to be a cakewalk?
Somebody had,- this much is certain, goofed. In consonance with the point at hand I might point to those planners. Who but some ‘thinktanks' who do not have a clue on the real world outside their narrow sphere of specialization? (Cheyny and Rumsfeldt had their own ideas to cut the flab off the Army and make it fighting fit. ) If the nation thought of saving the lives of the soldiers just as important as sparing these ('chicken hawks’) there must have a different strategy come in place.
There might be some truth in the late tyrant’s observation that America just might be the nation that cannot accept 10,000 deaths in one battle. In fact they do not want a war to drag on either. Is it because time-cost analyis of their enterprise any war that cost in time must also lose money?
Tailpiece: The USA had already started losing money in winning the Cold War as we now from hindsight see.

benny