America: why don't you just carpet-bomb Syria?

I'm always surprised when I hear people say that the war against ISIS can be won, if only it is fought with more vigor.  Expanded.  Prolonged.  Intensified.

It won't happen.

Friends, I'm here to tell you ... an enormous amount of resources (and time ... 15 years so far) have been devoted to America's wars.  And the US is far further now, from victory, than they were when they launched this series of wars.  A series of wars that (it is hoped) will last forever.  There is no light at the end of this tunnel.  There was never intended to be.  There's no bottom to this pit. 

Consider that more than eighty nations are now at war with ISIS, and there are virtually no restrictions on who they target or what weapons they choose to use.   In Syria, as in Iraq and Afghanistan, there's a "kill on sight" policy. No matter who is killed; no matter what is destroyed; it is simply called "the target," and no one is ever supposed to question the reason for the death or the destruction.  Kill them all; let God sort out the corpses.

But the ability to kill on sight is not "victory."  Victory in this war is simply impossible. No amount of bombs will defeat this enemy. Remember that the US had complete air and ground superiority of force in Vietnam. That did not guarantee an American victory in that war ... it totally failed to demoralize the enemy, or destroy his willingness to fight.  And the unconquerable American military proved absolutely no match for a bunch of guerrilla warriors fighting with grenades and small arms.

Most people have no idea how hard the US tried to defeat the Viet Mihn ... the US dropped an absolutely insane amount of bombs on Cambodia and Vietnam, triple the tonnage dropped in all theaters in World War II.  (source)

Americans pursued mass murder with a psychopathic intensity in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos.  They sent two millions soldiers over there.  They carpet-bombed the countryside, sparing no old man, woman or child.  They killed over a million people. Yet, the more they bombed, the more they lost.  With every bomb dropped; with every village burned, the US was steadily losing ground in that war for years.  For years.

As in this one.

The leading candidate for the GOP nomination for the US Presidential election to be held this November makes appeals to American isolationists by promising to refrain from foreign adventurism and then announces that another 20,000 to 30,000 troops will be needed to "knock out ISIS ... knock them out fast and then we have to get back home."

What American really believes the myth of the quick and easy war?  America's current wars have lasted, now, for almost 15 years.  They'll last at least another 15.

And, one day, the US defeat will be unarguable. Just like Vietnam.

Saigon, 1966