explosives, bombs of various ingenious sorts fashioned in home labs, with nails or other bits of sharp metal added in to create instant shrapnel meant to rend human flesh, to maim, and kill. Then they approach a target—an
Israeli bus filled with civilians and perhaps some soldiers, a pizza parlor in Jerusalem, a gathering of Shiite or Sunni worshippers at or near a mosque in Iraq or Pakistan, or of unemployed potential police or army recruits in Ramadi or Baghdad, or of shoppers in an Iraqi market, or perhaps a foreigner on the streets of Kabul—and they blow themselves up. Or they arm backpacks or bags and step onto trains in London, Madrid, Mumbai, and set them off.
Or, to up the technology and modernity a bit, they wire a car to explode, put a jihadist in the driver’s seat, and drive it into—well, this is now common enough that you can pick your target. Or perhaps they audaciously hijack four just-fueled jets filled with passengers and run two of them into the World Trade Center, one into the Pentagon, and another into a field in Pennsylvania. This is, of course, the very definition of barbaric.
Now, let’s jump a step further into our age of technological destruction, becoming less face to face, more impersonal, without, in the end, changing things that much. They send rockets from southern Lebanon (or even cruder ones from the Gaza Strip) against Israeli towns and cities. These rockets can only vaguely be aimed. Some can be brought into the general vicinity of an inhabited area; others, more advanced, into specific urban neighborhoods many tens of miles away—and then they detonate, killing whoever is in the vicinity, which normally means civilians just living their lives, even, in one Hezbollah volley aimed at Nazareth, two Israeli Arab children. In this process, thousands of Israelis have been temporarily driven from their homes.
In the case of rockets by the hundreds lofted into Israel by an armed, organized militia, meant to terrorize and harm civilian populations, these are undoubtedly war crimes. Above all, they represent a kind of barbarism that—with the possible exception of some of those advanced Hezbollah rockets—feels primitive to us. Despite the explosives, cars, planes, all so basic to our modern way of life, such acts still seem redolent of less civilized times when people did especially cruel things to each other face to face.
The Religion of Airpower
That’s them . But what about us? On our we/they planet, most groups don’t consider themselves barbarians. Nonetheless, we have largely
achieved non-barbaric status in an interesting way—by removing the most essential aspect of the American (and Israeli) way of war from the category of the barbaric. I’m talking, of course, about airpower, about raining destruction down on the earth from the skies, and about the belief—so common, so long-lasting, so deep-seated—that bombing others, including civilian populations, is a “strategic” thing to do, that airpower can, in relatively swift measure, break the “will” not just of the enemy, but of that enemy’s society, and that such a way of war is the royal path to victory.
This set of beliefs was common to airpower advocates even before modern air war had been tested, and repeated unsuccessful attempts to put these convictions into practice have never really shaken what is essentially a war-making religion. The result has been the development of the most barbaric style of warfare imaginable, one that has seldom succeeded in breaking any will, though it has destroyed innumerable bodies, lives, stretches of countryside, villages, towns, and cities.
Even during the 2006 Lebanon War, Israeli military strategists were saying things that could have been put in the mouths of their airpower-loving predecessors decades ago. The New York Times ’ Steven Erlanger, for instance, quoted an unnamed senior Israeli commander this way: “He predicted that Israel would stick largely to air power
Israeli bus filled with civilians and perhaps some soldiers, a pizza parlor in Jerusalem, a gathering of Shiite or Sunni worshippers at or near a mosque in Iraq or Pakistan, or of unemployed potential police or army recruits in Ramadi or Baghdad, or of shoppers in an Iraqi market, or perhaps a foreigner on the streets of Kabul—and they blow themselves up. Or they arm backpacks or bags and step onto trains in London, Madrid, Mumbai, and set them off.
Or, to up the technology and modernity a bit, they wire a car to explode, put a jihadist in the driver’s seat, and drive it into—well, this is now common enough that you can pick your target. Or perhaps they audaciously hijack four just-fueled jets filled with passengers and run two of them into the World Trade Center, one into the Pentagon, and another into a field in Pennsylvania. This is, of course, the very definition of barbaric.
Now, let’s jump a step further into our age of technological destruction, becoming less face to face, more impersonal, without, in the end, changing things that much. They send rockets from southern Lebanon (or even cruder ones from the Gaza Strip) against Israeli towns and cities. These rockets can only vaguely be aimed. Some can be brought into the general vicinity of an inhabited area; others, more advanced, into specific urban neighborhoods many tens of miles away—and then they detonate, killing whoever is in the vicinity, which normally means civilians just living their lives, even, in one Hezbollah volley aimed at Nazareth, two Israeli Arab children. In this process, thousands of Israelis have been temporarily driven from their homes.
In the case of rockets by the hundreds lofted into Israel by an armed, organized militia, meant to terrorize and harm civilian populations, these are undoubtedly war crimes. Above all, they represent a kind of barbarism that—with the possible exception of some of those advanced Hezbollah rockets—feels primitive to us. Despite the explosives, cars, planes, all so basic to our modern way of life, such acts still seem redolent of less civilized times when people did especially cruel things to each other face to face.
The Religion of Airpower
That’s them . But what about us? On our we/they planet, most groups don’t consider themselves barbarians. Nonetheless, we have largely
achieved non-barbaric status in an interesting way—by removing the most essential aspect of the American (and Israeli) way of war from the category of the barbaric. I’m talking, of course, about airpower, about raining destruction down on the earth from the skies, and about the belief—so common, so long-lasting, so deep-seated—that bombing others, including civilian populations, is a “strategic” thing to do, that airpower can, in relatively swift measure, break the “will” not just of the enemy, but of that enemy’s society, and that such a way of war is the royal path to victory.
This set of beliefs was common to airpower advocates even before modern air war had been tested, and repeated unsuccessful attempts to put these convictions into practice have never really shaken what is essentially a war-making religion. The result has been the development of the most barbaric style of warfare imaginable, one that has seldom succeeded in breaking any will, though it has destroyed innumerable bodies, lives, stretches of countryside, villages, towns, and cities.
Even during the 2006 Lebanon War, Israeli military strategists were saying things that could have been put in the mouths of their airpower-loving predecessors decades ago. The New York Times ’ Steven Erlanger, for instance, quoted an unnamed senior Israeli commander this way: “He predicted that Israel would stick largely to air power
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