Hey, if we liberate a few countries, we eliminate the radicals. It's easy to get a downtrodden, poor, starving, practically enslaved whelp to kill himself for a cause. He doesn't have much to live for. However, if he's got good food and clothing, a place to live, a chance at a good education, and a bright and hopeful future, then how easy is it to get him to blow himself up for a cause?
As to your family analogy, lemme hand you the other side, if the war was being fought under the liberal guidlines.
Joe, an American reserve soldier with a wife and family, along with a good job back in the states, is in Iraq. He's eating lunch one day when he hears that 5 U.S. soldiers, 2 of whom he knew, were killed in an ambush in Fallujah. What's worse is that they also got 4 civilians, 1 of whom he met and really liked. Not only that, but the civilian bodies were mutilated, dragged through the streets, burned, and hung from bridge along with anti-American signs. Right about now, Joe is seething with anger and has his thoughts bent on showing those guys exactly where they can shove those signs of theirs. Well, Joe is deployed to Fallujah to root out the resistance. Well, he gets there with all his Army buddies and they set up shop. Well, they can't impose a nighttime curfew, because that would impose on the freedoms of others, so the first night on patrol, 2 of Joe's buddies are picked off by guys hiding in the shadows. They can't can't barricade the city, because that would also impose on people's freedoms, so several of the guys they're looking for get out, and Joe begins to wonder why he's still there. Two more of Joe's buddies get picked offby people hiding guns in grocery bags, because searching people imposes on their rights. One day, Joe is in a firefight downtown when the bad guys are about to run out of ammo. "Good," Joe's thinking," If they run out of ammo, we can just go over there and grab them all without even a fight." Well, they then see a few kids hauling ammo over to the rebels, but they can't shoot those kids because, according to the liberals, everyone under 18 is wholly innocent and cannot be made wartime casualties, so Joe has to let the rebels get more ammo and three more of his friends are killed during the firefight. Later, Joe is on patrol when shots are fired from within a mosque. He immediately takes cover, but sees that one of his friends is wounded and caught out in the middle. He knows that any second, the rebels will realize he's still alive and shoot him. Joe, in sudden act of extreme bravery, tumbles out of his hiding spot and opens fire, killing 6 rebels and forcing the rest to retreat, although, sadly, a stray bullet ricochets and kills a civilian inside the mosque. Joe's friend lives, but Joe, instead of getting a medal for bravery above and beyond the call, gets court martialed for firing on a religious structure and killing a civilian. Now, poor Joe has lost 9 friends in Iraq, and has lost his rank, job, and reputation for saving the tenth, all because the U.S. government held the saftey of all Iraqi civilians far higher than that of U.S. soldiers.
War is hell. We do what we can to win, apologize for those caught in the middle, and pray for the safety of everyone except the enemy. It's not always clean, but it's what has to be done.