Air Support Insanity
So now we are bombing the railroad stations in a
country we occupy?
Looking idly at the front page of last
Wednesday’s Washington Post Express as I rode the Metro to work, I
received a shock. It showed a railroad station in Iraq, recently destroyed by an American air strike. So now we
are bombing the railroad stations in a country we occupy? What comes next,
bombing Iraq’s power plants and oil refineries? How about the Green Zone?
If the Iraqi Parliament doesn’t pass the legislation we want it to, we can
always lay a couple of JDAMs on it.
It turns out the bombed railroad station was no fluke. According to other reports, U.S. aircraft have dropped more than 200 bombs or missiles on Iraqi ground targets this year in support of U.S. ground forces at a rate double that of last year.
Nothing could testify more powerfully to the failure of U.S. efforts on the ground in Iraq than a ramp-up in airstrikes. Calling in air is the last, desperate, and usually futile action of an army that is losing. If anyone still wonders whether the “surge” is working, the increase in air strikes offers a definitive answer: It isn’t.
William Lind and I couldn’t be further apart, politically and culturally. But, most of the folks I get to have serious discussions with - about military history and strategy - are probably closer to his viewpoint than mine. At least, this side of Sun Tzu.
I think he’s got this part of the Iraq War right on the target.
It turns out the bombed railroad station was no fluke. According to other reports, U.S. aircraft have dropped more than 200 bombs or missiles on Iraqi ground targets this year in support of U.S. ground forces at a rate double that of last year.
Nothing could testify more powerfully to the failure of U.S. efforts on the ground in Iraq than a ramp-up in airstrikes. Calling in air is the last, desperate, and usually futile action of an army that is losing. If anyone still wonders whether the “surge” is working, the increase in air strikes offers a definitive answer: It isn’t.
William Lind and I couldn’t be further apart, politically and culturally. But, most of the folks I get to have serious discussions with - about military history and strategy - are probably closer to his viewpoint than mine. At least, this side of Sun Tzu.
I think he’s got this part of the Iraq War right on the target.
Posted: Tue - June 19, 2007 at 04:29 PM