by John Spencer

"When I attend conferences on urban combat I am frequently asked questions about protecting civilians in urban warfare and why urban combat is so uniquely destructive. I have also been asked why the military’s specific weapons are employed in certain tactical scenarios (e.g., “Did it really take a hellfire missile to eliminate one sniper?”). But, in all these events, I have never been asked the more straightforward question: Why must the military destroy a city to save it?"

John Spencer serves as the Chair of Urban Warfare Studies as the Modern War Institute and Co-Director of the Urban Warfare Project. He is a retired Army major who served twenty-five years as an infantryman, including two combat deployments to Iraq.

https://mwi.usma.edu/militaries-must-destroy-cities-save/