The moral challenge of overwhelming force

Phil makes an excellent point:

The asymmetry between the risk to our military and its lethality serves to delegitimize any military undertaking on our part in the eyes of the rest of the world, and to legitimize terrorist activity against us. Every time we destroy another country's military with little risk to our soldiers, we underscore to everyone in the world that terrorism is the only viable oppositional tactic. We didn't lose many soldiers in WWII compared with Germany, Russia, or Japan, but clearly it was a conventional war for all sides in addition to a terror war against civilians.