> In my army it does. We take all precautions to shield civilians where practical. In Afghtanistan, the Taliban represented well under 1% of the population(1).

> In my army it does. We take all precautions to shield civilians where practical. In Afghtanistan, the Taliban represented well under 1% of the population(1). In WWII 31% of the German population, and 9% of the American population, were in military service. Those are just two very different wars, fought at very different scales. A good example of this is in WWII it seems that it was fairly common for planes to strafe farmers and their equipment when they got an opportunity(3). In Afghanistan this would be incredibly counter productive, as so few Afghans were actually fighting. But in WWII? When a full 1/3rd of the population is in the military - and much of the rest is working in the industries necessary to keep the military running - ethics aside, it's easy to see how anything that reduced food supplies would have a direct effect on the effectiveness of the military. 1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taliban https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taliban - reports 60k Taliban / 37 million Afghtanistan population = 0.16% 2) http://historynet.com/what-percentage-of-the-population-served-in-ww2.htm http://historynet.com/what-percentage-of-the-population-serv... 3) https://www.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/comments/3nla50/allied_gun_camera_of_strafing_attacks_on_horse/ https://www.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/comments/3nla50/allie...