This is what kills me about people playing spreadsheet about the monetary value of what the US expends and what it kills. Historically, at least since WWII, the US Military has always been fine with exchanging money and equipment for lives. The Germans were kinda shocked by it in WWII. But it also paid off, in WWII we rotated successful plates back to the states to teach new pilots and pass on their experience, so our pilots rare got the crazy kill numbers the Germans or Russians did, but ours also survived while many of their didn't. And then they lost all that experience. We're perfectly willing, when stupid Bush/Obama era ROE didn't prevent it, to just dump mortars and arty on targets instead of sending men. Even if it's expensive.
Ammo and equipment can be replace, men can't. And we'll do everything to bring everyone home. We have to as that fucker McCain demonstrated that even former POW/MIA are sometimes willing to stab their own in the back. For those who don't know, back in the 80s there was still a push to get the US Government to follow up with Vietnam and look into credible sighting of still missing POW/MIA soldiers. The sister of one of them was testifying before congress and McCain flew back from a vacation to make it to the committee meeting and absolutely shit on the woman, had her breaking down in tears, and torpedoed the whole thing. Some kind of ego thing, I think, something about not getting released until the people taken earlier than him got out. Narcissistic piece of shit cared more about how it would make him look.
