Does anyone else have a feeling that the idea that it is unacceptable to suffer soldier casualties during war is ultimately emasculating for the US army?
This is not the first time this happens in history, either. The golden age fearsome Roman Legions used the Glatius, a short, broad, and extremely lethal sword as their main service weapon. By the 3rd century A.D. the population had grown so unmanly that some young men would chop off one of their fingers just to avoid being recruited, and the Legions were increasingly composed of long conquered barbarians, who were pitted against new waves of far away barbarians.
These new Legions brought longer, thinner swords into battle. Those were great from a personal safety point of view (you could hold your foe at a longer range), but were harder to use in closed formation and ultimately less effective in the offensive. We all know how that ended for them....
We just spent a decade trying to make people live like we want them to without actually living with them - Lesson #1 of any Counter-Insurgency.
And all that concern about pilots getting captured is why drones will take over everything but strategic bombing. Can't have people getting captured and showing up on the nightly news.
Your analogy is such a long way from modern consequences that I wonder if it really applies. But we have made modern war so expensive, nobody can afford another one. If there is a reason we are not at war with Iran, I'd say that's it.
This is not the first time this happens in history, either. The golden age fearsome Roman Legions used the Glatius, a short, broad, and extremely lethal sword as their main service weapon. By the 3rd century A.D. the population had grown so unmanly that some young men would chop off one of their fingers just to avoid being recruited, and the Legions were increasingly composed of long conquered barbarians, who were pitted against new waves of far away barbarians.
These new Legions brought longer, thinner swords into battle. Those were great from a personal safety point of view (you could hold your foe at a longer range), but were harder to use in closed formation and ultimately less effective in the offensive. We all know how that ended for them....