They would walk out in company or perhaps battalion size on a sweep of an area. Then some insurgent would pop up over a berm and shoot a couple of shots. Then all hell would break loose as the Dutch would let loose with a magazine each or more. Then call in some artillery support at the place where the insurgent had fired from. Troop carriers came roaring up. And the Afghan dude was long gone.

So this whole deal cost them a couple of hours, the whole cost of keeping a company or a battalion in A-stan, shipping them there for their little adventure, a fire base, food, fuel, etc., all shipped in from elsewhere, all to walk around and stomp on some farmer’s field and not accomplish anything.

Even if a shell costs less, it still has to be shipped there, transported in special manners, guarded, held in depot, guarded. And also, in the end, they are probably shooting at where the guy was about half the time. And he isn’t there anymore.

All this documentary did was confirm what I had already thought back in 2003. All insurgents need to do is just jerk off US Forces, pop and run, and then our guys just light up anything and everything where they think the guys was. And for 40 cents in insurgent cost, we pop off 10,000 bucks in ammo, just in small arms fire. And call in air support and so the whole engagement is 50,000-100,000 for nothing. And then 10 years later or a few trillion spent, we start talking about some peace with honor nonsense.

My opinion is that is better that the US Marines spend their enlistment bored to death in barracks at Camp Lejeune, shining boots, telling lies about Suzy Rottencrotch, reading porn and going out to Court Street to get drunk. And the highlight of their tour is maybe getting out into Italy on a Med Cruise or into San Juan on a Caribe cruise.

They do not need to be squandered and ruined, walking around in some shithole over there for nothing to have to come home to a crazy adjustment period where they feel insane as shit, to a cheating wife who got bored while he was gone, and myriad other stateside issues.

Plus of course the very high cost in modern media covered wars of collateral damage. The ability to lower the odds of a school or hospital getting hit is worth a lot of money to any government that has a “free” press.

I think a big part of it is that people just don’t realize how incredibly inefficient an old-fashioned saturation artillery bombardment is; how many hundreds or thousands of artillery shells used to be wasted for every one that damaged or killed a target. As late as Vietnam, it often took literally hundreds of bomber-sorties to destroy a single bridge or building while now we can do it with a single missile or guided bomb.

As an example, the JDAM costs ten times as much as its unguided equivalent, but is statistically far more effective than a conventional bombing run that drops only 10 dumb-bombs.