With forces of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) launching a blitzkreig throughout Iraq, President Barack Obama seems to have caught the “Victory Through Airpower” disease.
ISIS has thrown the American-trained Iraqi Army into a panic, with soldiers dropping their rifles and running for their lives.
This has led Republicans to accuse the President of being about to “lose” Iraq.
As a result, Obama has shipped at least 300 American “advisors” to Iraq to provide support and security for U.S. personnel and the American Embassy in Baghdad.
And on August 7 he authorized “limited airstrikes” against ISIS forces in Iraq, to prevent the fall of the Kurdish capital, Erbil
“Earlier this week, one Iraqi cried that there is no one coming to help,” said Obama. “Well, today America is coming to help.”
By August 10, the United States announced a fourth round of airstrikes Sunday against militant vehicles and mortars firing on Irbil.
Yet giving that order will not alter the balance of power in Iraq. It didn’t work for America in the 1991 and 2003 wars against Iraq.
Both wars opened with massive barrages of American missiles and bombs. The 1991 war saw the first use of the vaunted “stealth bomber,” which could avoid detection by enemy radar.
The 2003 war opened with an even greater bombardment to “shock and awe” the Iraqis into surrendering. They didn’t.
Baghdad under “shock and awe” bombardment
Nor did air power prove effective on the Iraqi insurgency that erupted after American forces occupied Baghdad and much of the rest of the country.
That war had to be fought by U.S. Army regulars and Special Operations soldiers-–especially Navy SEALS. It was a dirty and private effort, marked by nightly kidnappings of suspected Iraqi insurgents.
Here’s where fantasy became fact for America’s military–and p0liticians.
Victory Through Air Power is a 1943 Walt Disney animated Technicolor feature film released during World War II. It’s based on the book–-of the same title–-by Alexander P. de Seversky.
Its thesis is summed up in its title: That by using bombers and fighter aircraft, the United States can attain swift, stunning victory over its Axis enemies: Germany, Italy and Japan.
Although it’s not explicitly stated, the overall impression given is that, through the use of air power, America can defeat its enemies without deploying millions of ground troops.
The movie has long since been forgotten except by film buffs, but its message has not. Especially by the highest officials within the U.S. Air Force.
Although the Air Force regularly boasted of the tonage of bombs its planes dropped over Nazi Germany, it failed to attain its primary goal: Break the will of the Germans to resist.
On the contrary: Just as the German bombings of England had solidified the will of the British people to resist, so, too, did Allied bombing increase the determination of the Germans to fight on.
Nor did the failure of air power end there.
On June 6, 1944–-D-Day–-the Allies launched their invasion of Nazi-occupied France.
It was the largest amphibious invasion in history. More than 160,000 troops landed–-61,715 British, 73,000 Americans, and 21,400 Canadians.
Allied air power bombed and strafed German troops out in the open. But it couldn’t dislodge soldiers barricaded in steel-and-concrete-reinforced bunkers or pillboxes. Those had to be dislodged, one group at a time, by Allied soldiers armed with rifles, dynamite and flamethrowers.
This situation proved true throughout the rest of the war.
Starting in 1964, the theory of “Victory Through Air Power” once again proved a dud–in Vietnam.
From 1964 to 1975, 14 million tons of bombs were dropped on Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia–-more than five times as many as it dropped in World War II.
Yet the result proved exactly the same as it had in World War II: The bombing enraged the North Vietnamese and steeled their resolve to fight on to the end.
The belief that victory could be achieved primarily–-if not entirely–-through air power had another unforeseen result during the Vietnam war. It gradually sucked the United States ever deeper into the conflict.
To bomb North Vietnam, the United States needed air force bases in South Vietnam. This required that those bombers and fighters be protected.
So a force to provide round-the-clock security had to be maintained. But there weren’t enough guards to defend themselves against a major attack by North Vietnamese forces.
So more American troops were needed–-to guard the guards.
North Vietnam continued to press greater numbers of its soldiers into attacks on American bases. This forced America to provide greater numbers of its own soldiers to defend against such attacks.
Eventually, the United States had more than 500,000 ground troops fighting in Vietnam–with no end in sight to the conflict.
If American troops once again face off with Iraqis, “Victory Through Air Power” will prove as hollow a slogan as it has in the past.
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TRUTHS ABOUT “AMERICAN SNIPER” AND THE MILITARY
In Entertainment, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on January 27, 2015 at 1:50 amClint Eastwood’s latest movie, American Sniper, has become the most controversial film now being considered for Best Picture at the upcoming Oscars.
The Academy Awards telecast is scheduled for February 22.
Clint Eastwood
The criticism is coming from the Left, and this has triggered outrage on the Right. Some of this criticism is correct and fair, but some of it isn’t.
CHARGE: The film implies that the Iraq was was in response to 9/11.
There’s a scene where Kyle (Bradley Cooper) and his wife, Taya (Sienna Miller) are watching TV as the World Tradd Center crashes. Then the scene cuts to him serving in Iraq.
FACT: The movie is a biography of Kyle, who became the deadliest sniper in American history, not a documentary on the Iraq war. And, in fact, Kyle did his service in Iraq.
Bradley Cooper as Chris Kyle in American Sniper
CHARGE: The movie depicts a terrorist sniper who becomes Kyle’s nemesis.
Named “Mustafa,” he is portrayed as a Syrian Olympics champion marksman. In a furious mano-a-mano duel with Kyle, he almost nails the SEAL sniper. But in the climax of the movie, he meets his end with a well-placed bullet from Kyle’s rifle.
FACT: Mustafa is mentioned in a single–and short–paragraph in Kyle’s autobiography. Writes Kyle: “I never saw him, but the other snipers later killed an Iraqi sniper we thought was him.”
So the climatic duel never happened. But Eastwood clearly thought he needed the duel to make a dramatic and satisfying finish for his movie. This is what’s known as “dramatic license” in moviemaking.
CHARGE: The movie portrays Chris Kyle as tormented by his rising casualty rate among Iraqis.
During his fourth tour of duty in Iraq, as depicted in the film, he agonizes over his possible need to shoot a child who’s about to pick up a rocket launcher. “Don’t pick it up,” he mutters, and when the child drops it and runs off, Kyle is visibly relieved.
FACT: Throughout his autobiography–on which the film is based–he refers to Iraqis as “savages.” He brags of telling a military investigator: “I don’t shoot people with Korans. I’d like to, but I don’t.”
And having been credited with 160 confirmed kills, he writes: “I only wish I had killed more….I believe the world is a better place without savages out there taking American lives.”
CHARGE: Chris Kyle was a hate-filled killer, but the movie turns him into a hero.
FACT: It’s entirely natural for soldiers to hate their enemies. They know that they–or their comrades–can be blown away at any moment. So they fear and hate those intent on their destruction.
The toughening-up process starts in boot camp, where the restraints of individuality and pacifism are shattered. The purpose of boot camp is to turn “boys” into “fighting men,” and this must be done in a matter of weeks. So the process is shockingly brutal.
Soldiers who aren’t toughened up in boot camp are by the battlefield. As General George S. Patton famously warned: “When you put your hand into a bunch of goo, that a moment before was your best friend’s face, you’ll know what to do.”
General George S. Patton
During the Indian wars, soldiers called Indians “Red niggers.” In World War II–“the Good War”–America’s servicemen fought “Japs” and “Krauts.” During the Vietnam war, Vietnamese became “gooks” and “dinks.”
Today our servicemen and women refer (unofficially) to their Islamic enemies as “ragheads” and “sand niggers.”
CHARGE: “In Kyle’s version of the Iraq war, the parties consisted of Americans, who were good by virtue of being Americans, and fanatic Muslims, whose ‘savage, despicable evil’ led them to want to kill Americans simply because they are Christian.” –Laura Miller, in Salon
FACT: British military historian B.H. Liddell Hart noted in his introduction to the memoirs of World War II German General Heinz Guderian, the creator of the Blitzkreig theory:
Heinz Guderian
“[Guderian] did not question the cause which he and his troops were serving, or the duty of fighting for their country. It was sufficient for him that she was at war and thus in danger, however it had come about.
“As a dutiful soldier, he had to assume that his country’s cause was just, and that she was defending herself against would-be conquerors.”
What proved true for Guderian proved equally true for Kyle–and for soldiers in armies throughout the world.
Moreover, every great war movie tells its story from a given viewpoint–such as American, German, Russian or British. Audiences are invited to identify with the leading character.
In All Quiet on the Western Front, the narrator is a young, idealistic German soldier who becomes disallusioned with the horrors of war. When he dies at the end of the movie, we feel saddened by his loss, even though he served in the ranks of America’s adversaries.
Similarly, when we learn, at the end of American Sniper, that Chris Kyle was killed while trying to help a fellow veteran, we feel a similar loss.
In the end, a historical or biographical movie can tell only so much. Its audience must then decide its meaning–and whether to learn more about the subjec through their own researches.
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