That's ridiculous. By that standard, you could say "we don't really try to stop murders; if we did, we'd go around videotaping the entire population, fingerpri

That's ridiculous. By that standard, you could say "we don't really try to stop murders; if we did, we'd go around videotaping the entire population, fingerprinting everything, etc". For that matter, you could even say that most wars aren't real wars - in how many wars was a nuclear weapon used? Was the Vietnam war not at "real war" because the US wasn't dropping atomic bombs and poisoning Vietnam's population? Was it just using the equivalent of "paintball guns"? Everybody understands that "war on drugs" does not literally mean a war, and that there are some lines which no one would agree to cross, including pretty much everything you wrote above. Everybody understands this is true in most situations, including in war. The object isn't to win at any cost, nor is it to entirely kill off the enemy population. It's to achieve strategic goals using an acceptable amount of force.