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Editor's
note: The opinions expressed in this article are the author's
and do not necessarily reflect the views of NDU, the Department
of Defense, or the government of the United States.
 hink
airpower can't bring victory in Afghanistan? Think again. In May,
1919, Afghan Amir Amanullah invaded British India with a force of
several thousand regulars and tribesmen. The invading forces were
checked on the ground, and on May 23 a single RAF Handley Page V/1500
biplane bomber ("Old Carthusian") flown by Captain Robert
"Jock" Halley dropped four bombs on Amanullah's palace
in Kabul. The Amir quickly sued for peace and the war ended August
8th. By way of contrast, Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar vowed
to fight to the death after his house in Qandahar was destroyed
by allied bombs. "We will succeed whether we live or die,"
he said. You have to admire his spunk, fighting to the last Afghan
and all. I suppose that's the difference between a monarch who uses
war as an instrument of policy and a messianic lunatic playing out
his personal eschatology.
The air campaign
over Afghanistan has been effective by most reports. The allied
forces have destroyed the Afghan Air Force and air-defense system,
and have been methodically attacking a variety of military and communication
targets. They have also had some success in striking "leadership
nodes," for example hitting Akhtar Mohammed Mansour, head of
the Taliban Air Force (who was out of a job anyway) and other high-ranking
Taliban regional commanders.
Unfortunately
there have also been civilian casualties. The number is disputed,
and the Taliban is clearly attempting to harness the Western media
to trumpet their claims that allied "saturation bombing"
has destroyed homes, schools, clinics, and mosques. On al Jazeera
TV (the All Osama Network) October 16, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld
expressed regret at the unintended casualties, but allowed that
given the proximity of military targets to civilian areas, some
losses are unavoidable. Paradoxically, sometimes the civilians themselves
bear an element of responsibility — the reputation of Western
munitions for accuracy misleads people to take significant risks.
Case in point: Those four Afghan guards hired by the U.N. were staying
in a house near a Taliban radio tower, hardly what you would call
investment-grade real estate, but a U.N. spokeswoman said, "it
was assumed they were safe where they were."
Critics of
the air campaign at home and abroad make as much of civilian casualties
as suits their purposes, but arguments over whether a few, a dozen,
or hundreds of people have died only show how civilized warfare
has become. Think back to the old way of conducting aerial bombardment.
During the Second World War, "pinpoint" bombing meant
taking out three city blocks to hit one building. Civilian casualties
were inevitable, and accepted. In time, they were desired. The "noncombatant"
was superseded by the "citizen as a cog" in the state's
warmaking machinery. The worker, along with his wife and children,
all supported the war in some way, thus were all legitimate targets.
As the "terror bombing" concept evolved, high explosives
were mixed with incendiary bombs to produce firestorms. Dresden
would have been the model for the future had it not been for the
development of the atomic bomb. The nuclear era ushered in a deterrence
model that held hundreds of millions of innocents hostage, threatening
their annihilation in the name of stability.
We've come
a long way since World War II. Recent conflicts have demonstrated
that the best use of air power is not blindly to destroy, but to
compel the enemy to do our will. It is less effective to threaten
the innocent citizens than the decision makers themselves —
personally. With precision-guided bombs and bunker-busting munitions
we have developed the technology to do so. Knowing that every civilian
death only made him stronger, Slobodan Milosevich did not take Operation
Allied Force seriously until NATO discovered the location of his
bunker and began to target him. Suddenly hanging on to Kosovo
did not seem as important.
Bold rhetoric
aside, the Taliban leaders are indicating that they also get the
point. They are slowly moving towards compliance with President
Bush's nonnegotiable demand of turning over Osama bin Laden. Check
the timeline: at first the Taliban had no idea where bin Laden was;
then they found him but he was their "guest"; then they
said they would try him under Sharia law, pending delivery
of evidence; then they offered to turn him over to a neutral state
for trial, again with evidence; finally they begged to turn him
over to anyone but the U.S., even without evidence. It won't be
long now — but just a few weeks ago pundits talked knowingly
about the "Afghan sense of hospitality" in the face of
which the allies should gracefully accept the Taliban's initial
offer.
The allied
bombing campaign has been coupled with an aerial humanitarian effort
which also has its critics, the "Democracy cannot be air dropped
from 10,000 feet" school. They say the allies cannot possibly
drop sufficient MREs to feed every hungry person in Afghanistan.
While certainly true, no one ever promised that arbitrary standard,
and the United States has been the largest donor of food aid to
Afghanistan since well before September 11.
I must say,
however, the leaflets are a bit of a stumble. The version I saw
features a not very-enthusiastic Afghan shaking hands with a generic
but too Russian-looking soldier, and a color scheme oddly recalling
the Israeli flag. And that message — "The Partnership
of Nations is Here to Help" — sounds more like an encounter-group
session than a well-crafted instrument of propaganda. One is reminded
of Ronald Reagan's famous quip, "The nine most terrifying words
in the English language are 'I'm from the Government and I'm here
to help.'" How about, "Brothers, help us expel the parasitic,
foreign Arab occupiers and their Taliban lackeys?" Just a suggestion.
Opponents of
the humanitarian campaign miss the basic point that even the military
missions themselves have a strong humanitarian component. The United
States and its allies are approaching the air campaign in Afghanistan
far more humanely than the terrorists approached theirs in the United
States. Taliban accusations of "saturation bombing" are
not only inaccurate but cruelly ironic. As Secretary Rumsfeld put
it, "it comes with ill grace for the Taliban to be suggesting
that we are doing what they have made a practice and a livelihood
out of." Any civilian deaths caused by allied bombs are unintended
deaths. As lamentable as they are, the accidental loss of Afghan
noncombatants must be contrasted with the intentional slaughter
of men, women and children — Muslim, Christian, Jew, Hindu
— from dozens of nations — on September 11. Those who
quibble with the euphemism "collateral damage" might tell
us what the al Qaeda equivalent is. My guess is that it probably
translates loosely to "windfall profits."
This war of
humanity against inhumanity will prove that the tools and means
of the humane are both morally and functionally superior to those
of the terrorists. Of course innocent blood will be shed. It already
has been by the terrorists, with full intent and extreme prejudice.
But the critical distinction between our side and theirs is that
we recognize that there are innocents. The terrorists grant
no such fine distinctions. As Osama put it himself so trenchantly
in 1998, "In today's wars, there are no morals." The allied
air campaign is demonstrating how moral a war can be.
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