Airstrikes don’t help the larger effort when you are trying to put down urban insurrection and win over the populace. We lose fewer guys no doubt, but we actually get farther from winning.

Air strikes can help, but somewhere “beneath” (on a smaller scale than) strategic bombing, no, they do not solve the problem. Air strikes are valuable to the extent they recognize that the most important targets are on the ground (something I discussed with a few guys during work on a fighter plane project a few years ago), but strategic bombing and even air strikes sometimes are a modern variant of the same conceit that used to be held by advocates of naval power prior to the development of aerial warfare.

Related to my remark about the “real targets” (on the ground) — control (including what defines a successful occupation or pacification operation) is defined in terms of ability to occupy the ground in question.

And related to this is something else worth posting here, which is somewhat “divergent” in the type of criticism but is still relevent to what Sam is thinking of.

“I would submit to you that using distant punishment to influence a nation is like trying to get rid of the rats living in an inhabited residence, without ever entering the building. You can successfully influence the rats’ behavior by burning the house down (as we did in Dresden), or blowing the house up (as we did in Hiroshima), or even by tossing in canisters of nerve gas. But the human inhabitants of the building, on whose behalf we are supposedly working, and the residents of neighboring houses, all tend to strongly disapprove of such strategies.

The obvious answer is to go into the building with our traps, cats, ferrets, and rat terriers, and to clean up the filth that the rats live in and on. But instead of doing this, some among our military community are still too fastidious to enter the building and confront the rats, and they have come up with the bizarre idea of placing snipers at the windows and periodically firing at the rats with shotguns and high powered rifles. The fact that this strategy is totally ineffective at controlling rats, and that it seriously endangers the innocent residents of the building, is completely inconsequential to the adherents of this distant punishment strategy.”

(printable page)

As an Aussie friend says, “that’s it in a bit, mate.”

In short, pro-war folks got what they wanted, some nice stats to crow about, and anti-war folks get to continue spinning their wheels about how the problem is no closer to being solved.

Somebody – I’ll take experts like Lind and Bracevich over Kristol, Boot and the Podherz anytime.

I think Shaun’s larger point about reconciliation is valid, and I would go one further and suggest that our current strategic goals are unattainable. However, IF the reduction in violence continues and if it continues to decline, then that is a good thing in and of itself, but also gives the next President strategic flexibility in formulating a different policy on Iraq.

Somebody, did you ever see the Team America movie? There is a scene in there where they roll in calling in an airstrike to take out the bad guys, destroying everything around it and killing civilians. You really should watch that. Then they sit there high fiving eachother on a job well done while the people caught in the middle wail and stare death to them.

Airstrikes don’t help the larger effort when you are trying to put down urban insurrection and win over the populace. We lose fewer guys no doubt, but we actually get farther from winning.

And I am shocked to find myself agreeing with your first post. We should pull out of there and leave them to sort things out themselves. Let the tribes tear eachother throats out. Maybe it will be so bloody they will end up taking a step into the modern world. We should so get the hell out of there.

It is you who are proffering the supersimplistic POV.

Pulling out of Iraq does not mean no MidEast engagement nor the letting of Iran rum roughshod w nukes.

To even have to state that shows how silly your POV is, even if it is an emotional reaction to Shaun’s. Get real, or get better at parody.

I can assure you this is a huge and gross distortion that speaks volumes about the authors intentions.

Are we winning? Who knows. Who really cares anymore. Yet I can point to the much lower casualty rates and say they are a direct result of the insurgents realizing once again that death from above is a very real possibility.

No this quote is pure unadulterated BS. Pure and simple from someone who’s only interests are misleading his readership to support his agenda. Which is certainly to bring the boys home.

Im ready for them to come home too but the antiwar accuses us of lies to get us into the war and yet they are resorting to:

LIES to get us out of the war.

Oh wait…mabey that means they just arent interrpreting the facts correctly. Hmm that could be. Mabey they dont have the full picture. Mabey they are making the facts fit their preconceived conclusion and ignoring other data that does not.

I propose the Antiwar is Bush reincarnated. They seem to be using the same logic, goals, aims and intell. They just skew it to fit their agenda.

Reconstruction In Iraq at a Crawl, Auditor Reports
Progress Varies by Area, Official Says

By Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, October 19, 2007; A17

Provincial reconstruction teams, the civilian centerpiece of the Bush administration’s strategy in Iraq, are making “incremental” progress in some areas and very little in others, a government auditor told Congress yesterday.

“Improvement . . . is likely to be slow and will require years of steady engagement,” Stuart Bowen, the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction , told a House panel.

This link to a Baltimore paper goes even further.
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/world/iraq/bal-te.iraq19oct19,0,3632210.story

Bill Lind also calls out the increase in airstrikes as a sign the surge is “failing”.
http://www.antiwar.com/lind/?articleid=11130

“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.”

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.

More Lind:
http://www.antiwar.com/lind/?articleid=11130
http://www.antiwar.com/lind/?articleid=11530
http://www.counterpunch.org/lind08092007.html

We’ll stand down when Iraq stands up! ( of course how can they stand up when their limbs are zip-tied and their shirts are pulled over their heads hockey-fight style?)

We are sitting ducks, appearing to be responsible for every unresolved problem in the region while world opinion weighs in with advice and condemnation, but no help.

On the other channel, the administration seems ever more determined to start a war with Iran.

I’m glad the casualty list is becoming shorter, but I sure don’t feel like celebrating.

Lets leave it be so that Muslims and can kill Muslims. Lets let gasoline get to be 8 or 10 bucks a gallon. Lets let the economies of the west slide into worldwide depression.

Lets go for Shauns view of how we should do things in the middle east. Yeah see in a perverse way he is right. The only way middle east oil will become insignificant is if oil becomes so expensive as to force us to create a new energy policy. This will only happen if we pull out of Iraq and let the middle east burn. Let Iran go unchecked. Let the Middle east and the EX Soviet Empire control the oil flow.

IN his own reckless way Shaun is dead on about Iraq. We need to leave now and let all hell break loose so that this nation will be forced to embrace an energy policy which renders oil obsolete.

Only when they have nothing to give will we then treat them like Darfur…….Let them kill themselves all they want. They have nothing we need.

Liberals/Democrats are dead right. Let the SOB’s die. Kill themselves. As long as they are not blowing up our cities we dont care what they do.

I love it. Can’t wait to see these policies in action.

Correcto mundo. The Vietnam analogies were inapt earlier in the war but have become unavoidable. It’s bloody tragic.

Does not this remind you of Vietnam, where, after a bad month or two there was always victory ‘around the corner.’ Then there was a good month or two, and ‘there never has been a problem.’

3 mos from now, when there’s another spike upward, what will be the mantra?

10 years in Vietnam, folks. 1/2way there already.

Next year’s slogan: “We’ve actually won in Iraq!”