Generals would have been horrified that someone asked such a question. They know that dropping bombs on an American city to kill a few gunmen is unacceptable to the public and political leaders. It would cause massive damage, may kill innocents and terrify everyone for miles around. Saddam Hussein was considered a brutal dictator, yet he never ordered the Iraqi Air Force to bomb Iraqi cities to suppress revolts. So why are American aircraft allowed to bomb cities during “foreign” peacekeeping operations?

A riddle in the U.S. military is: What is the solution to every tactical problem?

Call in an air strike!

A bombing culture dominates U.S. military thinking. Military experts, political leaders, and many Generals agree that bombing is counterproductive in counterinsurgency operations like those in Iraq and Afghanistan. However, a culture within the military refuses to establish rational “rules of engagement” because bombing is fun. Those unfamiliar with U.S. troops may object that bombing is fun. One only need to watch this video clip http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBXqZ0TnXKA&feature=related and the dozens of others linked on that page to see American and British soldiers having outrageous fun destroying buildings and killing people with bombs. This problem is one that no one cares to address.

The U.S. military has hundreds of combat aircraft in the Middle East piloted by ambitious, thrill-seeking pilots who want to play war, from a safe distance. They fly long missions and circle overhead of combat forces in case they are needed. They are so ready and eager, that as soon small arms fire is exchanged they demand a chance to fight as a warrior by pushing buttons to release a bomb. In other cases, they pressure uncertain intelligence officers to provide targets so they can fly a “combat” mission. Military pilots want to accumulate medals and war stories and not sit around an airbase reading Victoria's Secret catalogs.

As a result, aerial attacks are launched on flimsy evidence and often kill dozens of civilians. Even if insurgents are killed, the destruction and death of innocents enrages the local populace. The death of civilians is never the fault of U.S. military personnel because they weren’t “targeted” or because they chose to live near rebels. American infantrymen also prefer bombing since they have no desire to fight and die for “democracy in Iraq” or whatever the current justification for their unwanted presence.

Paul Fussell’s book “Wartime” describes the enthusiasm during World War II for high-tech precision bombing possible with the new Norton bomb site. Reporters were told this would allow wars to be won through airpower alone. Fussel then describes the multitude of errors that limited its value, causing mass killings of civilians and friendly forces. It was thought that American bombers would devastate opposing German ground forces after the Normandy invasion during World War II. In many cases, German forces in France were obliterated, yet American forces also suffered thousands of casualties from friendly bombs. As a result, the U.S. Army stopped using bombers to support its troops; shortly after U.S. Army General Lesley McNair was killed during a bombing run by the U.S. Army Air Corps (which became the U.S. Air Force in 1947). Ironically, Fort McNair in Washington D.C. is now home to the National Defense University where the bombing culture remains strong.

In the Pacific theater of operations, the U.S. Army Air Corps assured everyone of victory once airbases were seized close enough to allow their new B-29s to bomb Japan. Frustration mounted after months of “precision” bombing had little effect on Japan. As naval forces advanced to secure victory, the General in charge of strategic bombing, Curtis LeMay, ordered Japanese cities razed to the ground with incendiary “fire” bombs. These bombing raids torched cities and killed more Japanese civilians than the later atomic bomb attacks.

In the excellent documentary now on video The Fog of War, former U.S. Defense Secretary Bob McNamara describes the horrors of those bombings and his role on LeMay’s staff. He then describes the bombing campaign in Vietnam, where more bombs were dropped than during all of World War II. He talks of his dismay when he realized that the North Vietnamese were determined to keep fighting no matter how many bombs were dropped.

New laser and GPS guided bombs now make precision bombing valuable when targets are known, but it is easy to hide most targets from satellite and aerial reconnaissance. As a result, wars this past decade have seen the U.S. Air Force bomb anything suspicious while claiming it was devastating the enemy. At a January 2001 U.S. Air Force sponsored Gulf War anniversary retrospective, the leader of the 1991 DESERT STORM air campaign against Iraq, retired Air Force General Charles Horner, noted:

"We need to really think about where we want to go with our airpower. The problem with it is that we have a lot of precision, but we don't have a lot of knowledge. I always say, it's like a doctor with a scalpel. We can cut the enemy's optic nerve with it if we want to blind him, but instead we take it and jab him in the ass.  That's kind of the way we approach airpower even today, 10 years after the Gulf War."

The May 15, 2000 issue of Newsweek reported this about the 1999 U.S. Air Force bombing campaign in Kosovo:

"It was an antiseptic war, fought by pilots flying safely three miles high--for the most part. It seems almost too good to be true, and it was. In fact, as some critics suspected at the time, the air campaign against the Serb military in Kosovo was largely ineffective. NATO bombs plowed up some fields, blew up hundreds of cars, trucks, and decoys, and barely dented Serb artillery and armor. According to a suppressed U.S. Air Force report obtained by “Newsweek,” the number of targets verifiably destroyed was a tiny fraction of those claimed: 14 tanks, not 120; 18 armored personnel carriers, not 220; 20 artillery pieces, not 450. Out of the 744 "confirmed" strikes by NATO pilots during the war, the Air Force investigators, who spent weeks combing Kosovo by helicopter and by foot, found evidence of just 58."

The American takeover of Afghanistan in 2002 is used as an example of the wonders of precision bombing to win wars. While the operation was excellent, it merely tipped the military balance in a civil war. There were events that were generally ignored by the American media, like when Dan Rather of CBS News appeared live (i.e. uncensored) on Larry King's show from Kabul, Afghanistan and announced:

RATHER: Yes, Larry, I'm glad you mention it. I think the Russians involvement in what's going on in Afghanistan now is a vastly underreported story. No. 1, the Russians had a full division, I think it was called the 201st, at least an armored division [12,000 soldiers] right on the border of Afghanistan, and units of that division and other Russian troops have been very much involved in what's been happening lately, but they have kept themselves as much as possible out of sight. There are reports, I have not been able to confirm them, but there are reports that I do believe that what amounts to Russian special forces are, have been operating for some time now even south of Kabul in the effort to make Kandahar fall. And the Russians rushed in here with a humanitarian aid operation.[1]

The bombing campaign against Iraq in 2003 provides a good example of excess. Iraqi air defenses remained weak after the 1991 war, a subsequent embargo, and were attacked repeatedly for a year before the actual war. The official war began with a pleasant surprise. It seemed the Pentagon was just bluffing about employing a mad doctrine of terrorizing civilians with heavy bombing, a concept named after a horrible book “Shock and Awe” written by civilians at Fort McNair. Since the U.S. military hadn't bombed Kabul into rubble to rout the Taliban in Afghanistan, it was assumed the concept of massive strategic bombardment had finally died after a series of failures since World War II.

Two days later, a mindless bombing campaign began. U.S. Navy destroyers and submarines were of no value in this war; yet, Admirals insisted they be allowed to fire hundreds of million-dollar Tomahawk missiles at something. The Air Force spent billions of dollars on their B-2 bombers as part of its "Global Reach" concept, so they must bomb something too. Aircraft carrier pilots also like bombing buildings since they can drop satellite-guided bombs miles away from Iraqi anti-aircraft systems. These groups had a grand time planning and executing a bombardment to pummel Iraqi government buildings in Baghdad.

It didn't look good on television. Reporters on the scene noted that government buildings under attack had been empty for days. They said Iraqi civilians were angry at the pointless destruction. It soon became apparent that "Shock is Awe" was a bad strategy, but it was too much fun to stop, even though 10% of precision munitions malfunctioned and slammed into houses. The leader of Iraq's main Shiite opposition group was so angered at the destruction that he stated U.S. troops must leave as soon as Hussein was overthrown.

Television images of the senseless bombings inflamed world opinion against the war. The Pentagon assured everyone that civilian areas were never "targeted" meaning they don't feel responsible when precision weapons malfunction. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told reporters that what was shown on television was not really happening. He bragged that these precision weapons had accuracy "undreamt of in earlier wars." He was proven correct after some cruise missiles struck Turkey, Iran, and Saudi Arabia; no one had dreamt weapons could miss their target by hundreds of miles. A U.S. Air Force General explained the madness of bombing buildings in Baghdad rather than Iraqi troops hiding in the countryside when he admitted: "We don't like to bomb mud."

Efforts to bomb an enemy into submission have a long history of bloody failure. The "London Blitz" only hardened British resolve to win. Bombing failed over Nazi Germany. The Japanese surrendered because of starvation caused by the naval blockade, not because of bombings. Bombing failed to discourage the North Koreans and the North Vietnamese. It failed in 1999 over Yugoslavia, which withdrew its troops from Kosovo only after NATO agreed to its original demand that Kosovo would remain a sovereign part of Serbia. Finally, bombing has failed to cause Iraqis and Afghans to bow down to the airpower God; it only made them angry.[2]

The first step a new American President can take to improve the situation in Iraq and Afghanistan is to restrain the mad bombers in the U.S. military with three directives:

• Prohibit the targeting of homes and buildings for attack by aircraft. U.S. troops can go anywhere in Iraq and Afghanistan. If they suspect a terrorist is in a home, they should go there and find out just like policemen. If insurgents shoot at them, they shoot back,just like policemen. Dropping a bomb is faster and easier, but it’s criminal and counterproductive, especially when the news media broadcasts the results.
• Reduce the number of combat aircraft in theater. Generals want to allow as many pilots to play war as possible so there is too much airpower in the region. This wastes billions of dollars and only encourages their use.
• Prohibit pilots from engaging targets of opportunity. Many atrocities and most friendly fire incidents committed by American aircraft involved trigger-happy pilots engaging targets they encounter while flying around. This became apparent when gun video leaked out of investigations into friendly fire deaths of American and allied forces. It is easy for pilots to slip into a video game mode and shoot up and bomb suspicious people and vehicles, evidenced by weekly news from the region. Therefore, pilots must be restricted to bombing targets selected by observers on the ground. These cannot be homes or buildings because even local ground troops never know what is inside them.

American Generals will dislike these restrictions. However, they say the war has been won, so why is bombing necessary? If the war has not been won, then a new strategy is needed. Generals are always confused when they see news reports where local people express outrage after their homes are bombed and innocents killed. They dismiss such news as “media bias” influenced by the enemy. Certainly, the victims know that U.S. troops are just trying to help them. Generals still think that the solution to every tactical problem is to call in an air strike.

[1] “CNN Larry King Live”; CNN Transcripts; Dec. 3, 2001; http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0112/03/lkl.00.html

[2] “Aerial Car Bombs,” SRA, March 20, 2007.