Tomgram: William Astore, The End of Air Power?
By William Astore
Posted on June 21, 2016, Printed on June 21, 2016
http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176155/ ;
On October 7, 2001, less than a month after the 9/11 attacks, the Bush
administration launched a bombing campaign against Taliban-controlled
Afghanistan. An invasion to "liberate" the country followed. Almost 15
years later, with the Taliban again gaining ground, President Obama has just
eased constraints on the U.S. military's use of air power there. To aid
Afghan troops, American planes can once again be sent out in "proactive"
strikes against the Taliban whenever U.S. commanders believe it useful or
necessary. In the decade and a half between those two bombing decisions,
American air power has been loosed not just in Afghanistan, but in Pakistan,
Yemen, Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Somalia -- seven countries across the Greater
Middle East and Africa.
So how'd that turn out? Of those countries, only Somalia might have been
considered a failed state in 2001. Today, it has been joined by Libya,
Yemen, and Syria. All are now egregiously failed states. Iraq, a country
invaded by the U.S., occupied, and in most of the years between 2001 and
2016 repeatedly battered by air strikes, is now a riven land. Its Sunni
areas are partially occupied by the Islamic State, its Kurdish territories
independent in all but name, its government a sinkhole of corruption and
nearly bankrupt, its army notoriously open to collapse. And as in
Afghanistan, so in Iraq all these years later, the skies are again filled
with U.S. bombers and drones and just recently another form of air power as
well: U.S.-piloted Apache helicopters have been sent back into action to
support Iraqi troops in their faltering offensive against the Islamic State
(even as U.S. planes help reduce ISIS-controlled cities to rubble). By now,
Iraq certainly qualifies as a failing, if not failed, state. Afghanistan
(see above) falls into something like the same category. In all of them,
terror groups have spread widely. Of the seven countries in question, only
Pakistan might have escaped the failing category and yet, from the expansion
of terror groups on its territory to its faltering economic state, it is in
worse shape today than it was in October 2001.
Of course, air power can't be blamed for the sorry fates of these lands, but
let's just say -- as TomDispatch regular and retired Air Force Lieutenant
Colonel William Astore does today -- that it has proven remarkably incapable
of producing any positive results. And yet, though the evidence of its
ineffectiveness should be clear to all by now, U.S. politicians from Donald
Trump to Hillary Clinton respond to just about any development -- linked
however minimally to events in the Greater Middle East (including the recent
massacre in a gay nightclub in Orlando) -- with calls for loosing yet more
air power. A disconnect? No one in Washington seems to notice.
Fortunately, William Astore has. Tom
Dominating the Skies -- and Losing the Wars
Air Supremacy Isn't What It Used to Be
By William J. Astore
In the era of the long war on terror, Thursday, June 2nd, 2016, was a tough
day for the U.S. military. Two modern jet fighters, a Navy F-18 Hornet and
an Air Force F-16 Fighting Falcon, flown by two of America's most capable
pilots, went down, with one pilot killed. In a war that has featured total
dominance of the skies by America's intrepid aviators and robotic drones,
the loss of two finely tuned fighter jets was a remarkable occurrence.
As it happened, though, those planes weren't lost in combat. Enemy ground
fire or missiles never touched them nor were they taken out in a dogfight
with enemy planes (of which, of course, the Islamic State, the Taliban, and
similar U.S. enemies have none). Each was part of an elite aerial
demonstration team, the Navy's Blue Angels and the Air Force's Thunderbirds,
respectively. Both were lost to the cause of morale-boosting air shows.
Each briefly grabbed the headlines, only to be quickly forgotten. Americans
moved on, content in the knowledge that accidents happen in risky pursuits.
But here's a question: What does it say about our overseas air wars when the
greatest danger American pilots face involves performing aerial hijinks over
the friendly skies of "the homeland"? In fact, it tells us that U.S. pilots
currently have not just air superiority or air supremacy, but total mastery
of the fabled "high ground" of war. And yet in Afghanistan, Iraq, and
elsewhere in the Greater Middle East, while the U.S. rules the skies in an
uncontested way, America's conflicts rage on with no endgame in sight.
In other words, for all its promise of devastating power delivered against
enemies with remarkable precision and quick victories at low cost (at least
to Americans), air power has failed to deliver, not just in the ongoing war
on terror but for decades before it. If anything, by providing an illusion
of results, it has helped keep the United States in unwinnable wars, while
inflicting a heavy toll on innocent victims on our distant battlefields. At
the same time, the cult-like infatuation of American leaders, from the
president on down, with the supposed ability of the U.S. military to deliver
such results remains remarkably unchallenged in Washington.
America's Experience with Air Power
Since World War II, even when the U.S. military has enjoyed total mastery of
the skies, the end result has repeatedly been stalemate or defeat. Despite
this, U.S. leaders continue to send in the warplanes. To understand why, a
little look at the history of air power is in order.
In the aftermath of World War I, with its grim trench warfare and horrific
killing fields, early aviators like Giulio Douhet of Italy, Hugh Trenchard
of Britain, and Billy Mitchell of the United States imagined air power as
the missing instrument of decision. It was, they believed, the way that
endless ground war and the meat grinder of the trenches that went with it
could be avoided in the future. Unfortunately for those they inspired, in
World War II the skies simply joined the land and the seas as yet another
realm of grim attrition, death, and destruction.
Here's a quick primer on the American experience with air power:
* In World War II, the U.S. Army Air Forces joined Britain's Royal Air Force
in a "combined bomber offensive" against Nazi Germany. A bitter battle of
attrition with Germany's air force, the Luftwaffe, ensued. Allied aircrews
suffered crippling losses until air superiority was finally achieved early
in 1944 during what would be dubbed the "Big Week." A year later, the
Allies had achieved air supremacy and were laying waste to Germany's cities
(as they would to Japan's), although even then they faced formidable systems
of ground fire as well as elite Luftwaffe pilots in the world's first jet
fighters. At war's end, Allied losses in aircrews had been staggering, but
few doubted that those crews had contributed immeasurably to the defeat of
the Nazis (as well as the Japanese).
* Thanks to air power's successes in World War II (though they were
sometimes exaggerated), in 1947 the Air Force gained its independence from
the Army and became a service in its own right. By then, the enemy was
communism, and air power advocates like General Curtis LeMay were calling
for the creation of a strategic air command (SAC) made up of long-range
bombers armed with city-busting thermonuclear weapons. The strategy of that
moment, nuclear "deterrence" via the threat of "massive retaliation," later
morphed into "mutually assured destruction," better known by its telling
acronym, MAD. SAC never dropped a nuclear bomb in anger, though its planes
did drop a few by accident. (Fortunately for humanity, none exploded.)
Naturally, when the U.S. "won" the Cold War, the Air Force took much of the
credit for having contained the Soviet bear behind a thermonuclear-charged
fence.
* Frustration first arrived full-blown in the Korean War (1950-1953).
Primitive, rugged terrain and an enemy that went deep underground blunted
the effectiveness of bombing. Flak and fighters (Soviet MiGs) inflicted
significant losses on Allied aircrews, while U.S. air power devastated North
Korea, dropping 635,000 tons of bombs, the equivalent in explosive yield of
40 Hiroshima bombs, as well as 32,557 tons of napalm, leveling its cities
and hitting its dams. Yet widespread bombing and near total air superiority
did nothing to resolve the stalemate on the ground that led to an
unsatisfying truce and a Korea that remains bitterly divided to this day.
* The next round of frustration came in the country's major conflicts in
Southeast Asia in the 1960s and early 1970s. American air power bombed,
strafed, and sprayed with defoliants virtually everything that moved (and
much that didn't) in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. A staggering seven
million tons of bombs, the equivalent in explosive yield to more than 450
Hiroshimas, were dropped in the name of defeating communism. An area
equivalent in size to Massachusetts was poisoned with defoliants meant to
strip cover from the dense vegetation and jungle of South Vietnam, poison
that to this day brings death and disfigurement to Vietnamese. The North
Vietnamese, with modest ground-fire defenses, limited surface-to-air
missiles (SAMs), and a few fighter jets, were hopelessly outclassed in the
air. Nonetheless, just as in Korea, widespread American bombing and air
superiority, while generating plenty of death and destruction, didn't
translate into victory.
* Fast-forward 20 years to Operation Desert Shield/Desert Storm in
1990-1991, and then to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. In both cases, U.S.
and coalition air forces had not just air superiority but air supremacy as
each time the Iraqi air force fled or was otherwise almost instantly
neutralized, along with the bulk of that country's air defenses. Yet for
all the hype that followed about "precision bombing" and "shock and awe," no
matter how air power was applied, events on the ground proved stubbornly
resistant to American designs. Saddam Hussein survived Desert Storm to
bedevil U.S. leaders for another dozen years. After the 2003 invasion with
its infamous "mission accomplished" moment, Iraq degenerated into insurgency
and civil war, aggravated by the loss of critical infrastructure like
electrical generating plants, which U.S. air power had destroyed in the
opening stages of the invasion. Air supremacy over Iraq led not to
long-lasting victory but to an ignominious U.S. withdrawal in 2011.
* Now, consider the "war on terror," preemptively announced by George W.
Bush in 2001 and still going strong 15 years later. Whether the target's
been al-Qaeda, the Taliban, al-Shabbab, al-Qaeda on the Arabian Peninsula,
or more recently the Islamic State, from the beginning U.S. air power
enjoyed almost historically unprecedented mastery of the skies. Yet despite
this "asymmetric" advantage, despite all the bombing, missile strikes, and
drone strikes, "progress" proved both "fragile" and endlessly "reversible"
(to use words General David Petraeus applied to his "surges" in Iraq and
Afghanistan). In fact, 12,000 or so strikes after Washington's air war
against ISIS in Syria and Iraq began in August 2014, we now know that
intelligence estimates of its success had to be deliberately exaggerated by
the military to support a conclusion that bombing and missile strikes were
effective ways to do in the Islamic State.
So here we are, in 2016, 25 years after Desert Storm and nearly a decade
after the Petraeus "surge" in Iraq that purportedly produced that missing
mission accomplished moment for Washington -- and U.S. air assets are again
in action in Iraqi and now Syrian skies. They are, for instance, flying
ground support missions for Iraqi forces as they attempt to retake Falluja,
a city in al-Anbar Province that had already been "liberated" in 2004 at a
high cost to U.S. ground troops and an even higher one to Iraqi civilians.
Thoroughly devastated back then, Falluja has again found itself on the
receiving end of American air power.
If and when Iraqi forces do retake the city, they may inherit little more
than bodies and rubble, as they did in taking the city of Ramadi last
December. About Ramadi, Patrick Cockburn noted last month that "more than
70% of its buildings are in ruins and the great majority of its 400,000
people are still displaced" (another way of saying, "It became necessary to
destroy the town to save it"). American drones, meanwhile, continue to soar
over foreign skies, assassinating various terrorist "kingpins" to little
permanent effect.
Tell Me How This Ends
Here's the "hot wash": something's gone terribly wrong with Washington's
soaring dreams of air power and what it can accomplish. And yet the urge to
loose the planes only grows stronger among America's political class.
Given the frustratingly indecisive results of U.S. air campaigns in these
years, one might wonder why a self-professed smart guy like Ted Cruz, when
still a presidential candidate, would have called for "carpet" bombing our
way to victory over ISIS, and yet in these years he has been more the norm
than the exception in his infatuation with air power. Everyone from Donald
Trump to Barack Obama has looked to the air for the master key to victory.
In 2014, even Petraeus, home from the wars, declared himself "all in" on
more bombing as critical to victory (whatever that word might now mean) in
Iraq. Only recently he also called for the loosing of American air power
(yet again) in Afghanistan -- not long after which President Obama did just
that.
Even as air power keeps the U.S. military in the game, even as it shows
results (terror leaders killed, weapons destroyed, oil shipments
interdicted, and so on), even as it thrills politicians in Washington, that
magical victory over the latest terror outfits remains elusive. That is, in
part, because air power by definition never occupies ground. It can't dig
in. It can't swim like Mao Zedong's proverbial fish in the sea of "the
people." It can't sustain persuasive force. Its force is always staccato
and episodic.
Its suasion, such as it is, comes from killing at a distance. But its bombs
and missiles, no matter how "smart," often miss their intended targets.
Intelligence and technology regularly prove themselves imperfect or worse,
which means that the deaths of innocents are inevitable. This ensures new
recruits for the very organizations the planes are intent on defeating and
new cycles of revenge and violence amid the increasing vistas of rubble
below. Even when the bombs are on target, as happens often enough, and a
terrorist leader or "lieutenant" is eliminated, what then? You kill a dozen
more? As Petraeus said in a different context: tell me how this ends.
Recalling the Warbirds
From Ronald Reagan to Barack Obama, dropping bombs and firing missiles has
been the presidentially favored way of "doing something" against an enemy.
Air power is, in a sense, the easiest thing for a president to resort to
and, in our world, has the added allure of the high-tech. It looks good
back home. Not only does the president not risk the lives of American
troops, he rarely risks retaliation of any kind.
Whether our presidents know it or not, however, air power always comes with
hidden costs, starting with the increasingly commonplace blowback of
retaliatory terrorist strikes on "soft" targets (meaning people) in cities
like Paris or Madrid or London. Strikes that target senior members of enemy
armies or terrorist organizations often miss, simply stoking yet more of the
sorts of violent behavior we are trying to eradicate with our own version of
violence. When they don't miss and the leadership of terror groups is hit,
as Andrew Cockburn has shown, the result is often the emergence of even more
radical and brutal leaders and the further spread of such movements. In
addition, U.S. air power, especially the White House-run drone assassination
program, is leading the way globally when it comes to degrading the
sovereignty of national borders. (Witness the latest drone strike against
the head of the Taliban in violation of Pakistani airspace.) Right now,
Washington couldn't care less about this, but it is pioneering a future
that, once taken up by other powers, may look far less palatable to American
politicians.
Despite the sorry results delivered by air power over the last 65 years, the
U.S. military continues to invest heavily in it -- not only in drones but
also in ultra-expensive fighters and bombers like the disappointing F-35
(projected total cost: $1.4 trillion) and the Air Force's latest, already
redundant long-range strike bomber (initial acquisition cost: $80 billion
and rising). Dismissing the frustratingly mixed and often destabilizing
results that come from air strikes, disregarding the jaw-dropping prices of
the latest fighters and bombers, America's leaders continue to clamor for
yet more warplanes and yet more bombing.
And isn't there a paradox, if not a problem, in the very idea of winning a
war on terror through what is in essence terror bombing? Though it's not
something that, for obvious reasons, is much discussed in this country,
given the historical record it's hard to deny that bombing is terror. After
all, that's why early aviators like Douhet and Mitchell embraced it. They
believed it would be so terrifyingly effective that future wars would be
radically shortened to the advantage of those willing and able to bomb.
As it turned out, what air power provided was not victory, but carnage,
terror, rubble -- and resistance.
Americans should have a visceral understanding of why populations under our
bombs and missiles resist. They should know what it means to be attacked
from the air, how it pisses you off, how it generates solidarity, how it
leads to new resolve and vows of vengeance. Forget Pearl Harbor, where my
uncle, then in the Army, dodged Japanese bombs on December 7, 1941. Think
about 9/11. On that awful day in 2001, Homeland USA was "bombed" by
hijacked jet liners transformed into guided missiles. Our skies became
deadly. A technology indelibly associated with American inventiveness and
prowess was turned against us. Colossally shocked, America vowed vengeance.
Are our enemies any less resolutely human than we are? Like us, they're not
permanently swayed by bombing. They vow vengeance when friends, family
members, associates of every sort are targeted. When American "smart" bombs
obliterate wedding parties and other gatherings overseas, do we think the
friends and loved ones of the dead shrug and say, "That's war"? Here's a
hint: we didn't.
Having largely overcome the trauma of 9/11, Americans today look to the sky
with hope. We watch the Blue Angels and Thunderbirds with a sense of awe,
wonder, and pride. Warplanes soar over our sports stadiums. The sky is our
high ground. We see evidence of America's power and ingenuity there. Yet
people in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere often pray for clouds and bad
weather; for them, clear skies are associated with American-made death from
above.
It's time we allow other peoples to look skyward with that same sense of
safety and hope as we normally do. It's time to recall the warbirds. They
haven't provided solutions. Indeed, the terror, destruction, and
resentments they continue to spread are part of the problem.
A retired lieutenant colonel (USAF) and history professor, William Astore is
a TomDispatch regular. His personal blog is Bracing Views.
Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest
Dispatch Book, Nick Turse's Next Time They'll Come to Count the Dead, and
Tom Engelhardt's latest book, Shadow Government: Surveillance, Secret Wars,
and a Global Security State in a Single-Superpower World.
Copyright 2016 William J. Astore
C 2016 TomDispatch. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176155
Tomgram: William Astore, The End of Air Power?
By William Astore
Posted on June 21, 2016, Printed on June 21, 2016
http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176155/ ;
On October 7, 2001, less than a month after the 9/11 attacks, the Bush
administration launched a bombing campaign against Taliban-controlled
Afghanistan. An invasion to "liberate" the country followed. Almost 15 years
later, with the Taliban again gaining ground, President Obama has just eased
constraints on the U.S. military's use of air power there. To aid Afghan
troops, American planes can once again be sent out in "proactive" strikes
against the Taliban whenever U.S. commanders believe it useful or necessary.
In the decade and a half between those two bombing decisions, American air
power has been loosed not just in Afghanistan, but in Pakistan, Yemen, Iraq,
Syria, Libya, and Somalia -- seven countries across the Greater Middle East
and Africa.
So how'd that turn out? Of those countries, only Somalia might have been
considered a failed state in 2001. Today, it has been joined by Libya,
Yemen, and Syria. All are now egregiously failed states. Iraq, a country
invaded by the U.S., occupied, and in most of the years between 2001 and
2016 repeatedly battered by air strikes, is now a riven land. Its Sunni
areas are partially occupied by the Islamic State, its Kurdish territories
independent in all but name, its government a sinkhole of corruption and
nearly bankrupt, its army notoriously open to collapse. And as in
Afghanistan, so in Iraq all these years later, the skies are again filled
with U.S. bombers and drones and just recently another form of air power as
well: U.S.-piloted Apache helicopters have been sent back into action to
support Iraqi troops in their faltering offensive against the Islamic State
(even as U.S. planes help reduce ISIS-controlled cities to rubble). By now,
Iraq certainly qualifies as a failing, if not failed, state. Afghanistan
(see above) falls into something like the same category. In all of them,
terror groups have spread widely. Of the seven countries in question, only
Pakistan might have escaped the failing category and yet, from the expansion
of terror groups on its territory to its faltering economic state, it is in
worse shape today than it was in October 2001.
Of course, air power can't be blamed for the sorry fates of these lands, but
let's just say -- as TomDispatch regular and retired Air Force Lieutenant
Colonel William Astore does today -- that it has proven remarkably incapable
of producing any positive results. And yet, though the evidence of its
ineffectiveness should be clear to all by now, U.S. politicians from Donald
Trump to Hillary Clinton respond to just about any development -- linked
however minimally to events in the Greater Middle East (including the recent
massacre in a gay nightclub in Orlando) -- with calls for loosing yet more
air power. A disconnect? No one in Washington seems to notice. Fortunately,
William Astore has. Tom
Dominating the Skies -- and Losing the Wars
Air Supremacy Isn't What It Used to Be
By William J. Astore
In the era of the long war on terror, Thursday, June 2nd, 2016, was a tough
day for the U.S. military. Two modern jet fighters, a Navy F-18 Hornet and
an Air Force F-16 Fighting Falcon, flown by two of America's most capable
pilots, went down, with one pilot killed. In a war that has featured total
dominance of the skies by America's intrepid aviators and robotic drones,
the loss of two finely tuned fighter jets was a remarkable occurrence.
As it happened, though, those planes weren't lost in combat. Enemy ground
fire or missiles never touched them nor were they taken out in a dogfight
with enemy planes (of which, of course, the Islamic State, the Taliban, and
similar U.S. enemies have none). Each was part of an elite aerial
demonstration team, the Navy's Blue Angels and the Air Force's Thunderbirds,
respectively. Both were lost to the cause of morale-boosting air shows.
Each briefly grabbed the headlines, only to be quickly forgotten. Americans
moved on, content in the knowledge that accidents happen in risky pursuits.
But here's a question: What does it say about our overseas air wars when the
greatest danger American pilots face involves performing aerial hijinks over
the friendly skies of "the homeland"? In fact, it tells us that U.S. pilots
currently have not just air superiority or air supremacy, but total mastery
of the fabled "high ground" of war. And yet in Afghanistan, Iraq, and
elsewhere in the Greater Middle East, while the U.S. rules the skies in an
uncontested way, America's conflicts rage on with no endgame in sight.
In other words, for all its promise of devastating power delivered against
enemies with remarkable precision and quick victories at low cost (at least
to Americans), air power has failed to deliver, not just in the ongoing war
on terror but for decades before it. If anything, by providing an illusion
of results, it has helped keep the United States in unwinnable wars, while
inflicting a heavy toll on innocent victims on our distant battlefields. At
the same time, the cult-like infatuation of American leaders, from the
president on down, with the supposed ability of the U.S. military to deliver
such results remains remarkably unchallenged in Washington.
America's Experience with Air Power
Since World War II, even when the U.S. military has enjoyed total mastery of
the skies, the end result has repeatedly been stalemate or defeat. Despite
this, U.S. leaders continue to send in the warplanes. To understand why, a
little look at the history of air power is in order.
In the aftermath of World War I, with its grim trench warfare and horrific
killing fields, early aviators like Giulio Douhet of Italy, Hugh Trenchard
of Britain, and Billy Mitchell of the United States imagined air power as
the missing instrument of decision. It was, they believed, the way that
endless ground war and the meat grinder of the trenches that went with it
could be avoided in the future. Unfortunately for those they inspired, in
World War II the skies simply joined the land and the seas as yet another
realm of grim attrition, death, and destruction.
Here's a quick primer on the American experience with air power:
* In World War II, the U.S. Army Air Forces joined Britain's Royal Air Force
in a "combined bomber offensive" against Nazi Germany. A bitter battle of
attrition with Germany's air force, the Luftwaffe, ensued. Allied aircrews
suffered crippling losses until air superiority was finally achieved early
in 1944 during what would be dubbed the "Big Week." A year later, the Allies
had achieved air supremacy and were laying waste to Germany's cities (as
they would to Japan's), although even then they faced formidable systems of
ground fire as well as elite Luftwaffe pilots in the world's first jet
fighters. At war's end, Allied losses in aircrews had been staggering, but
few doubted that those crews had contributed immeasurably to the defeat of
the Nazis (as well as the Japanese).
* Thanks to air power's successes in World War II (though they were
sometimes exaggerated), in 1947 the Air Force gained its independence from
the Army and became a service in its own right. By then, the enemy was
communism, and air power advocates like General Curtis LeMay were calling
for the creation of a strategic air command (SAC) made up of long-range
bombers armed with city-busting thermonuclear weapons. The strategy of that
moment, nuclear "deterrence" via the threat of "massive retaliation," later
morphed into "mutually assured destruction," better known by its telling
acronym, MAD. SAC never dropped a nuclear bomb in anger, though its planes
did drop a few by accident. (Fortunately for humanity, none exploded.)
Naturally, when the U.S. "won" the Cold War, the Air Force took much of the
credit for having contained the Soviet bear behind a thermonuclear-charged
fence.
* Frustration first arrived full-blown in the Korean War (1950-1953).
Primitive, rugged terrain and an enemy that went deep underground blunted
the effectiveness of bombing. Flak and fighters (Soviet MiGs) inflicted
significant losses on Allied aircrews, while U.S. air power devastated North
Korea, dropping 635,000 tons of bombs, the equivalent in explosive yield of
40 Hiroshima bombs, as well as 32,557 tons of napalm, leveling its cities
and hitting its dams. Yet widespread bombing and near total air superiority
did nothing to resolve the stalemate on the ground that led to an
unsatisfying truce and a Korea that remains bitterly divided to this day.
* The next round of frustration came in the country's major conflicts in
Southeast Asia in the 1960s and early 1970s. American air power bombed,
strafed, and sprayed with defoliants virtually everything that moved (and
much that didn't) in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. A staggering seven million
tons of bombs, the equivalent in explosive yield to more than 450
Hiroshimas, were dropped in the name of defeating communism. An area
equivalent in size to Massachusetts was poisoned with defoliants meant to
strip cover from the dense vegetation and jungle of South Vietnam, poison
that to this day brings death and disfigurement to Vietnamese. The North
Vietnamese, with modest ground-fire defenses, limited surface-to-air
missiles (SAMs), and a few fighter jets, were hopelessly outclassed in the
air. Nonetheless, just as in Korea, widespread American bombing and air
superiority, while generating plenty of death and destruction, didn't
translate into victory.
* Fast-forward 20 years to Operation Desert Shield/Desert Storm in
1990-1991, and then to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. In both cases, U.S. and
coalition air forces had not just air superiority but air supremacy as each
time the Iraqi air force fled or was otherwise almost instantly neutralized,
along with the bulk of that country's air defenses. Yet for all the hype
that followed about "precision bombing" and "shock and awe," no matter how
air power was applied, events on the ground proved stubbornly resistant to
American designs. Saddam Hussein survived Desert Storm to bedevil U.S.
leaders for another dozen years. After the 2003 invasion with its infamous
"mission accomplished" moment, Iraq degenerated into insurgency and civil
war, aggravated by the loss of critical infrastructure like electrical
generating plants, which U.S. air power had destroyed in the opening stages
of the invasion. Air supremacy over Iraq led not to long-lasting victory but
to an ignominious U.S. withdrawal in 2011.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1608466485/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1608466485/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20* Now,
consider the "war on terror," preemptively announced by George W. Bush in
2001 and still going strong 15 years later. Whether the target's been
al-Qaeda, the Taliban, al-Shabbab, al-Qaeda on the Arabian Peninsula, or
more recently the Islamic State, from the beginning U.S. air power enjoyed
almost historically unprecedented mastery of the skies. Yet despite this
"asymmetric" advantage, despite all the bombing, missile strikes, and drone
strikes, "progress" proved both "fragile" and endlessly "reversible" (to use
words General David Petraeus applied to his "surges" in Iraq and
Afghanistan). In fact, 12,000 or so strikes after Washington's air war
against ISIS in Syria and Iraq began in August 2014, we now know that
intelligence estimates of its success had to be deliberately exaggerated by
the military to support a conclusion that bombing and missile strikes were
effective ways to do in the Islamic State.
So here we are, in 2016, 25 years after Desert Storm and nearly a decade
after the Petraeus "surge" in Iraq that purportedly produced that missing
mission accomplished moment for Washington -- and U.S. air assets are again
in action in Iraqi and now Syrian skies. They are, for instance, flying
ground support missions for Iraqi forces as they attempt to retake Falluja,
a city in al-Anbar Province that had already been "liberated" in 2004 at a
high cost to U.S. ground troops and an even higher one to Iraqi civilians.
Thoroughly devastated back then, Falluja has again found itself on the
receiving end of American air power.
If and when Iraqi forces do retake the city, they may inherit little more
than bodies and rubble, as they did in taking the city of Ramadi last
December. About Ramadi, Patrick Cockburn noted last month that "more than
70% of its buildings are in ruins and the great majority of its 400,000
people are still displaced" (another way of saying, "It became necessary to
destroy the town to save it"). American drones, meanwhile, continue to soar
over foreign skies, assassinating various terrorist "kingpins" to little
permanent effect.
Tell Me How This Ends
Here's the "hot wash": something's gone terribly wrong with Washington's
soaring dreams of air power and what it can accomplish. And yet the urge to
loose the planes only grows stronger among America's political class.
Given the frustratingly indecisive results of U.S. air campaigns in these
years, one might wonder why a self-professed smart guy like Ted Cruz, when
still a presidential candidate, would have called for "carpet" bombing our
way to victory over ISIS, and yet in these years he has been more the norm
than the exception in his infatuation with air power. Everyone from Donald
Trump to Barack Obama has looked to the air for the master key to victory.
In 2014, even Petraeus, home from the wars, declared himself "all in" on
more bombing as critical to victory (whatever that word might now mean) in
Iraq. Only recently he also called for the loosing of American air power
(yet again) in Afghanistan -- not long after which President Obama did just
that.
Even as air power keeps the U.S. military in the game, even as it shows
results (terror leaders killed, weapons destroyed, oil shipments
interdicted, and so on), even as it thrills politicians in Washington, that
magical victory over the latest terror outfits remains elusive. That is, in
part, because air power by definition never occupies ground. It can't dig
in. It can't swim like Mao Zedong's proverbial fish in the sea of "the
people." It can't sustain persuasive force. Its force is always staccato and
episodic.
Its suasion, such as it is, comes from killing at a distance. But its bombs
and missiles, no matter how "smart," often miss their intended targets.
Intelligence and technology regularly prove themselves imperfect or worse,
which means that the deaths of innocents are inevitable. This ensures new
recruits for the very organizations the planes are intent on defeating and
new cycles of revenge and violence amid the increasing vistas of rubble
below. Even when the bombs are on target, as happens often enough, and a
terrorist leader or "lieutenant" is eliminated, what then? You kill a dozen
more? As Petraeus said in a different context: tell me how this ends.
Recalling the Warbirds
From Ronald Reagan to Barack Obama, dropping bombs and firing missiles has
been the presidentially favored way of "doing something" against an enemy.
Air power is, in a sense, the easiest thing for a president to resort to
and, in our world, has the added allure of the high-tech. It looks good back
home. Not only does the president not risk the lives of American troops, he
rarely risks retaliation of any kind.
Whether our presidents know it or not, however, air power always comes with
hidden costs, starting with the increasingly commonplace blowback of
retaliatory terrorist strikes on "soft" targets (meaning people) in cities
like Paris or Madrid or London. Strikes that target senior members of enemy
armies or terrorist organizations often miss, simply stoking yet more of the
sorts of violent behavior we are trying to eradicate with our own version of
violence. When they don't miss and the leadership of terror groups is hit,
as Andrew Cockburn has shown, the result is often the emergence of even more
radical and brutal leaders and the further spread of such movements. In
addition, U.S. air power, especially the White House-run drone assassination
program, is leading the way globally when it comes to degrading the
sovereignty of national borders. (Witness the latest drone strike against
the head of the Taliban in violation of Pakistani airspace.) Right now,
Washington couldn't care less about this, but it is pioneering a future
that, once taken up by other powers, may look far less palatable to American
politicians.
Despite the sorry results delivered by air power over the last 65 years, the
U.S. military continues to invest heavily in it -- not only in drones but
also in ultra-expensive fighters and bombers like the disappointing F-35
(projected total cost: $1.4 trillion) and the Air Force's latest, already
redundant long-range strike bomber (initial acquisition cost: $80 billion
and rising). Dismissing the frustratingly mixed and often destabilizing
results that come from air strikes, disregarding the jaw-dropping prices of
the latest fighters and bombers, America's leaders continue to clamor for
yet more warplanes and yet more bombing.
And isn't there a paradox, if not a problem, in the very idea of winning a
war on terror through what is in essence terror bombing? Though it's not
something that, for obvious reasons, is much discussed in this country,
given the historical record it's hard to deny that bombing is terror. After
all, that's why early aviators like Douhet and Mitchell embraced it. They
believed it would be so terrifyingly effective that future wars would be
radically shortened to the advantage of those willing and able to bomb.
As it turned out, what air power provided was not victory, but carnage,
terror, rubble -- and resistance.
Americans should have a visceral understanding of why populations under our
bombs and missiles resist. They should know what it means to be attacked
from the air, how it pisses you off, how it generates solidarity, how it
leads to new resolve and vows of vengeance. Forget Pearl Harbor, where my
uncle, then in the Army, dodged Japanese bombs on December 7, 1941. Think
about 9/11. On that awful day in 2001, Homeland USA was "bombed" by hijacked
jet liners transformed into guided missiles. Our skies became deadly. A
technology indelibly associated with American inventiveness and prowess was
turned against us. Colossally shocked, America vowed vengeance.
Are our enemies any less resolutely human than we are? Like us, they're not
permanently swayed by bombing. They vow vengeance when friends, family
members, associates of every sort are targeted. When American "smart" bombs
obliterate wedding parties and other gatherings overseas, do we think the
friends and loved ones of the dead shrug and say, "That's war"? Here's a
hint: we didn't.
Having largely overcome the trauma of 9/11, Americans today look to the sky
with hope. We watch the Blue Angels and Thunderbirds with a sense of awe,
wonder, and pride. Warplanes soar over our sports stadiums. The sky is our
high ground. We see evidence of America's power and ingenuity there. Yet
people in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere often pray for clouds and bad
weather; for them, clear skies are associated with American-made death from
above.
It's time we allow other peoples to look skyward with that same sense of
safety and hope as we normally do. It's time to recall the warbirds. They
haven't provided solutions. Indeed, the terror, destruction, and resentments
they continue to spread are part of the problem.
A retired lieutenant colonel (USAF) and history professor, William Astore is
a TomDispatch regular. His personal blog is Bracing Views.
Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest
Dispatch Book, Nick Turse's Next Time They'll Come to Count the Dead, and
Tom Engelhardt's latest book, Shadow Government: Surveillance, Secret Wars,
and a Global Security State in a Single-Superpower World.
Copyright 2016 William J. Astore
C 2016 TomDispatch. All rights reserved.
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