„For the U.S. military, there are basically two approaches to fighting in cities. The first can in part be traced to the 1972 failed rescue of the Israeli Olympians taken hostage in Munich. After that, specialized hostage rescue and close-quarter battle tactics were perfected by counterterrorism units and special operations forces and then passed to general purpose military forces. These “enter and clear a room” tactics are practiced religiously and are heavily dependent on actionable intelligence—in other words, knowing what target to attack.

The second approach is outright destruction. With roots traced to tactics like ancient siege warfare, U.S. forces will isolate all or part of a city and either control access to exhaust the supplies, support, or morale of its opponents until they surrender or move to clear every structure, building and room with maximum firepower, until all enemy personnel are found and killed. Often, this includes attempting to remove civilians so even more destruction can be employed, as U.S. forces did when they routed over a thousand insurgents in the 2004 Second Battle of Fallujah.“

The complete article can be read on the National Interest website.