SO now an Australian cameraman has been killed by people most Australian commentators and many politicians said did not exist – members of Iraq’s al-Qa’ida connection. . . .
The revelation of the war is the extent to which the US-led coalition forces will go to avoid Iraqi civilian and even military casualties. Instead of relentlessly pounding a position with air power before they approach it, US-led forces, emphasising mobility and the psychological dimension of what they are doing, go near to a town and then try their hardest to convince the Iraqi forces to surrender, which spares their lives and their futures.
On the road to Baghdad the allies simply swept past many towns, leaving relatively small forces behind to isolate the town and negotiate the Iraqi surrender.
This is unlike any previous war and involves the coalition forces putting themselves at extra risk to try to avoid killing Iraqi soldiers unnecessarily, or destroying infrastructure that will later be needed for reconstruction.
It shows how different this is from total war and even from the first Gulf War.
There are real dangers in this approach, but no one can now doubt the real efforts of coalition forces to avoid civilian and military casualties.
(Via Tim Blair).