Counterinsurgency by Air

A commenter on yesterday's post on the subject drew my attention to both Charles Haney's AP story "US Forces Step Up Air War: Bombing runs more than double from '06" and William S. Lind's comment upon it: "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."

This seems right to me. Lind goes on to say further smart things.

Comments

People in London still talk about the blitz.

Posted by Whispers | June 17, 2007 12:30 PM

I'm shocked the numbers are so low.

"In the first 4 1/2 months of 2007, American aircraft dropped 237 bombs and missiles in support of ground forces in Iraq, already surpassing the 229 expended in all of 2006, according to Air Force figures obtained by The Associated Press."

I had imagined the numbers were in the thousands. There is the qualification there about "in support of ground forces". That wouldn't include bombing anyone who is thought to be a terrorist or their suspected hang outs with none of our troops around. I suspect that's right.

For one brief moment in history bombing civilian targets was considered an atrocity. Think Guernica Later Hitler upped the anti with the London blitz. We paid that back ten thousand times over on Germany. Then did the same in Japan culminating in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Nothing says America like dropping bombs on people.

It's never remarked upon how in Gulf War 1 we destroyed huge swaths of Iraq'a infrastructure, thus guaranteeing a failing state. Round two wasn't as extensive but then there were fewer targets left.

Bombing Iran will serve the same purpose, Damage a weak economy and bring plenty of direct suffering on civilians and vast suffering indirectly on them. By remote control from thousands of feet in the air or even hundreds of miles away. So neat, so clean, so impersonal. So easy.

In any case bombing Iraq now is counter productive but you can understand how the Air Force and Naval Air is just dying to drop some shit on somebody, anybody, to be in the game.

Posted by rapier | June 17, 2007 12:35 PM

In the future, we'll have to worry about attacks from outer space. When will we kick those Russians out of that space station? I don't trust them...

Posted by Soccer Mom | June 17, 2007 12:38 PM

In Gulf War 1 we bombed a parking garage that was being used as a bomb shelter, killing 700 some as I recall. Iraq said we should have known. Maybe yes, maybe no. However what the fuck was the purpose of destroying a parking garage?

There were probably, before I mentioned it here ,100 people in America at most who have thought about this in ten years. Nearly 20% of the deaths from 911 and it's not even worth a thought. There were a few pictures in the press I think. Probably a few Iraqis with pictures of their babies and children wives lost in the garage. So it goes.

Somewhere I think a Union of Concerned Scientists source I saw an estimate of possible casualites if we bomb Iranian Nuke sites. Not that many, if you happen not to be one of those killed, in several of them. However one enrichment site is quite close to an urban area. I recall the estimate there in a worst case scenario was civilian deaths in the six figures.

Posted by rapier | June 17, 2007 12:50 PM

So neat, so clean, so impersonal is exactly the relationship of the majority of readers here to the soldiers.

You will talk your revisionist bullshit about how ineffective air cover is and how it fuels the war.

If "we" (I mean they, the people who are fighting) had zero air cover from day one would the war's outcome have been any different? The second I see infantry officers advising we don't use air cover is the day I believe we should stop using it!

Posted by MrSparkle | June 17, 2007 12:58 PM

But counter-insurgency actions by air work wonders: hiding behind your superior airplane technologies is a real way to show insurgents that you're brave and mean business and are willing to fight them, as they used to say in the westerns, mano-a-mano. And we all know that those new-fangled smart bombs dropped from airplanes are always 100% accurate and don't cause nearly the collatoral damage that gets caused when you have soldiers on the ground who actuall have a clue as to at what they might be shooting.

Yep. ... airpower always defeats insurgencies and wins over the civilian populations in which insurgents are stationed. Just look at the success Israel has had with such techniques. Everybody in the Arab world loves Israel thanks to the strength they project with their superior air power. They never mistarget anything. And throughout the Arab street people are in awe about "those Israelis who don't love living too much that they aren't afraid to fight us face-to-face".

Oh wait a minute, the opposite is true? Maybe we should be careful with relying too much on air power ...

Posted by DAS | June 17, 2007 12:59 PM

The smartest recent commentary I can think of comes from Stephen Biddle (Winter 2005/06). Though it functions as an extremely effective takedown of some of the assumptions made by Rummy and his favorite planners, I also think he does a good job of dismantling some the motivated bias-driven thinking behind the policies referred to in this post. Fun fact: Biddle is not just extremely thoughtful and cogent, he's also funny as all hell--book him now while he's still relatively cheap.

Biddle, Stephen D. "Allies, Airpower, and Modern Warfare: The Afghan Model in Afghanistan and Iraq," International Security, Volume 30, Number 3, Winter 2005/06, pp. 161-176.

Posted by VasyaDC | June 17, 2007 1:03 PM

If "we" (I mean they, the people who are fighting) had zero air cover from day one would the war's outcome have been any different? - Mr Sparkle

I confess. I did not read the linked article. If he's talking about air cover, your point is correct. But there is a fantasy in certain quarters (based in large part on Israel's stunning, although in the long run pyrrhic, victories involving air power) that battles should be waged primarily involving shock and awe with advanced, airbased weapons.

The idea is that such an overwhelming show of force will demoralize enemies. And that precisely targetted bombings will "decapitate" governments allowing dictatorships to be toppled, terrorists to be killed -- without so much collateral damage that civilian populations will be turned against us.

In reality, what happens is that the overwhelming air power, instead of showing strength, is viewed as a sign of cowardice. And targetted attacks are never as targetted as hoped, especially when, from the air (or any distance whatsoever), even with fancy radar, etc., it's really hard to tell an insurgent from a civilian.

At some level, dealing with insurgencies is less about military action than police work where you really get in and police a community as well as provide insurgents with a political outlet. Britain learned that lesson dealing with the IRA, but in other contexts, nobody seems to have learned anything.

Of course, in this particular case, it would help getting people involved in the political process if we put a timeline/benchmarks on our own actions so that way those we are essentially protecting have an incentive to make some progress and also that way those who oppose our presence know that, if they become peaceful, we will reward them for their peaceful involvement in the political process by leaving.

Alas, Bush & CO seem to have the strategy entirely backwards! We should want insurgents to be "waiting us out" -- they might get used to not "insurging" and being peaceful: it's a heckuva lot safer for them and just as fun ;)

Posted by DAS | June 17, 2007 1:08 PM

If I were an Air Force general, the last thing I would want would be to get bogged down in the Iraq War that is tearing up the Army and the Marines.

The Air Force right now has a nice little gig that it does very well. It may not be effective against insurgencies, but then it also is not effective against tooth decay - if you get my drift. It does manage to deter China from taking Taiwan, helps threaten Iran, and does a few other things which many people find to be useful.

Should the Air Force become more involved in counterinsurgency, at minimum it would mean the sort of wear and tear on the aircraft that Army vehicles now are suffering. It also would mean extended tours of duty for the pilots - with all of the accompanying morale problems.

There's an old saying, "If you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas." That is what the Air Force would have to look forward to.

Posted by Duncan Kinder | June 17, 2007 1:08 PM

The thinking of Iraqi as some abstract clay, to be pushed and molded at will, by force, was here from the beginning of the operation.

First, the savages would not only be militarily defeated, but properly "awed". If you throw enough military high tech at some savages, you reasonably expect from them at least a little mystical terror in repayment, and it helps sell the war home.

Besides this will help the subsequent molding of the savages to run smoothly. The awe will morph into respect, and the savages will embrace the ways of the conquerors. If not self evident, the change will come through the pursuit by the savage of his own interests. And arab springs will abound.

For the unlikely recalcitrants, apply more awe. Awe at the military strength one the one hand, and its self interest on the other, explain the savage in its entirety, I tell you.

One should go mlaybe as far as the WW2 mythologies ("we made postwar Japan, Germany") to find where this shit began.

Grmbl.

Posted by yabonn | June 17, 2007 1:24 PM

A. it wasn't a parking garage...it was a military headquarters that turned out be built on top of a bomb shelter.

B. there's a major difference today in terms of the use of airpower...for the first time in history it is a precision instrument. the CEPs of guided munitions today are so small.

"collateral damage" doesn't happen because the munitions miss...it happens because of either a. bad intel (there weren't bad guys in that house after all); or b. there were both civilians and bad guys in that house (pretty common).

to a large extent, the U.S. has shifted to precision airpower as a replacement for large-effect ground fire support. this is intentional and has been in the works since the 1990's. see the development of the small diameter bomb...

Posted by Nathan | June 17, 2007 3:44 PM

Rapier, you're wrong. The 229 munitions dropped last year was the entire number for Iraq, regardless of the proximity of ground forces, according to publicly available figures.

In total, according to USAF statistics, there were 15,675 close air support sorties in 2006. American and allied air forces put up 68 armed planes for every munition dropped. Figures are comparable for 2004 and 2005.

Lind is wrong about current CAS attack practices leading "inevitably" to more civilian than enemy casualties. There is ample statistical evidence from Kosovo, Afghanistan in 2001, etc. that that has not been the case, although his other points against an air strategy seem stronger. Certainly an uptick in early 2007 is not good news for the American occupation forces.

Posted by BruceR | June 17, 2007 4:16 PM

"Calling in air is the last, desperate, and usually futile action of an army that is losing."

Contra Yglesias, that sounds wrong to me. As I understand it, when a ground unit encounters any sort of significant military resistance, calling in an airstrike is a standard tactic. You don't just call in an airstrike when you are losing. You also call in an airstrike when you are winning, because your goal is to achieve victory without taking any more casualties than necessary. I don't think you can draw any conclusions about whether we are winning or losing based on the number of airstrikes.

The fundamental reason we are losing in Iraq is the definition of winning. Before the war, Bush spelled out two objectives for the war:

1. Remove Saddam from power. This has been done.
   
2. Eliminate Iraq's WMD. This was accomplished before the war even began.
   

So we've accomplished our objectives, which means we've won, right? Well, it turns out that Bush had a third, unstated goal: to achieve an outcome in Iraq that would make it appear that invading Iraq was a good idea. And I don't think that's going to happen because, in my opinion, invading Iraq was a really, truely, and insanely stupid idea.

Posted by Kenneth Almquist | June 18, 2007 1:06 AM

Good grief! When you ramp up aggressive operations on the ground, you ramp up air support right along with them. What would really be lunacy, would be to do the first without the second. Has anybody opining so confidently on military strategy here ever actually followed any of the campaigns on the ground in Iraq? Mr. Lind states "It turns out the bombed railroad station was no fluke." Why on earth would it be a fluke? The fact that railroad stations can have enormous tactical significance should be obvious to anybody, but apprently that possibility escapes Lind completely, so he's reduced to speculating about Air Force ambitions. Did he expect the surge to be greeted with flowers? That's what Pelosi and Reid seem to think. Sheesh.

Posted by JM Hanes | June 18, 2007 1:58 AM

The issue is the efficacy (and hence the desirability) or aerial operations in counterinsurgency. No one is arguing that close air support, for instance, is vital in standard tactical operations where the enemy is identified. The two questions raised in the attempted application of standard tactical air doctrine to counterinsurgency are about the ability of ground units to identify insurgents with relatively the same level of confidence as foreign armies and the utility of calling in airstrikes when, for example, there are likely to be three civilians for every twenty insurgents in a given location. Many commanders still believe, more or less, that there is a set number of insurgents that one just has to eliminate to bring the country under control. That assumptions structures both tactical and strategic decisions; If one takes past lessons of counterinsurgency even semi-seriously, that kind of thinking is ass-backwards.

Posted by VasyaDC | June 18, 2007 8:57 AM

Contra Yglesias, that sounds wrong to me.

No. Air strikes are the modern-day equivalent of artillery. Standard military techniques would have called for artillery at the beginning of an offensive to soften up the opposition, and later send in the ground troops. Calling out the artillery (air strikes) after the ground troops have gone in is definitely a sign of desperation.

Posted by raj | June 18, 2007 9:04 AM

The Israeli military historian Martin Van Creveld has noted "the power of weakness": The stronger you are, the more you look like a bully to the rest of the world.

f you have no interest in Vietnam or Moshe Dayan, you can just skip to the last three paragraphs of the linked article. I'll point out to MrSparkle when I use quotation marks ("), that means I'm quoting someone else.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig5/crevald1.html

"In other words, he who fights against the weak – and the rag-tag Iraqi militias are very weak indeed – and loses, loses. He who fights against the weak and wins also loses. To kill an opponent who is much weaker than yourself is unnecessary and therefore cruel; to let that opponent kill you is unnecessary and therefore foolish. As Vietnam and countless other cases prove, no armed force however rich, however powerful, however, advanced, and however well motivated is immune to this dilemma. The end result is always disintegration and defeat..."

Posted by beowulf | June 18, 2007 7:02 PM

J.M. Hanes,

"Mr. Lind states "It turns out the bombed railroad station was no fluke." Why on earth would it be a fluke? The fact that railroad stations can have enormous tactical significance should be obvious to anybody, but apprently that possibility escapes Lind completely, so he's reduced to speculating about Air Force ambitions."

I'm sorry, but did you even read the article before sputtering off like this? Lind notes quite clearly that these attacks are taking place in a country we already occupy, and that we have to attack such civilian targets in "shock and awe" fashion is indicative of how well our military strategy is working there.

Why not answer Mr. Lind's question? Would you take the same stance toward attacking Iraqi power-plants, considering their "obvious tactical significance"? How about attacking the Iraqi parliment, which is controlled by mostly pro-Iranean parties like Dawa and SCIRI? Those sorts of attacks aren't far removed from the sort of strategy indicated by recent air-strikes, as Lind also points out with several other examples.

Posted by Tyler DiPietro | June 18, 2007 10:35 PM