That’s like saying the US wouldn’t fight the confederacy because it would damage their land…
Reconstruction was mostly social, not infrastructure. It was reconstructing social order in place of what was removed (plantation farming a slave labor), not buildings/roads/railways really.
And things have changed quite a bit since the civil war. We have a very interconnected country and world. Airplanes exist now. Nuclear submarines and cruise missiles. The destructive power of our weapons has increased ten fold. And we have instant access to 24/7 new media. I don’t think we have the appetite for such a thing in this day and age. Not to mention how any number of hostile nations would be foaming at the mouth looking forward to us having our guard down.
So then the citizenry and army would be fighting on equal footing then and the “we have all the guns here in Texas” argument goes back to making sense. Either the US uses their overwhelming military power or not, you can’t choose both.
I’m saying that if you rely on having F-16 fighter jets and drones dropping bombs, you’re arguing for wholesale destruction. If you don’t rely on fighter jets and bombing raids, that means you’re fighting a ground war against insurgents that are more or less equally armed, assuming they have weapons like AR-15s.
My point is that cruise missiles don’t solve every problem; namely armed local insurgencies. What kind of third use-of-force scenario are you imagining?
