Curtis Emerson LeMay is, as architects don't like journalists to put it, "the principal architect," of one of the most pernicious memes in human history: The myth of strategic air power; the idea that the possession and use of technologically superior weaponry raining death from the air can win a war (and the peace) for a modern nation state.
From March through August 1945, American B-29 bombing raids on Japanese cities directed by Major General Curtis LeMay, including the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killed as many as one million Japanese civilians--or more. Result: Japan surrenders; however, it is arguable that Japan would have surrendered anyway. It is arguable that the atom bombs were dropped not to intimidate the Japanese high command into surrender, but as a demonstration and a warning to our Russian allies.
This is the text of leaflets dropped by LeMay's B-29s during the spring and summer of 1945: "Unfortunately, bombs have no eyes. So, in accordance with America's humanitarian policies, the American Air Force, which does not wish to injure innocent people, now gives you warning to evacuate the cities named and save your lives."
LeMay told Time Magazine in 1945, "There are no innocent civilians, so it doesn't bother me so much to be killing innocent bystanders...if the war is shortened by a single day the attack will have served its purpose." LeMay also once remarked that had the U.S. lost the war, he fully expected to be tried for war crimes.
60 odd years later, our bombs do have eyes, and our bombs still kill civilians--the guilty and the innocent together. Whether we're dropping them, or the Israelis.
We have eyes, but we keep them "wide shut." Let's take a tally of some other WWII bombing raids and campaigns:
German Luftwaffe "Blitz" of London 1941. Result: In spite or perhaps because of the death and destruction caused by the raids, the resolve and unity of the British in their fight against the Nazis is strengthened; the weaknesses of the Luftwaffe are exposed, and its effectiveness as a 'bogeyman' diminished; made Hitler's planned invasion of England untenable.
Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor by carrier-based fighters, dive bombers, and torpedo bombers. Result: Several thousand American causalities, several US Navy warships, including the USS Arizona and the USS Oklahoma sunk, or significantly damaged. United States declares war on Japan and becomes England's principal ally against Germany. No US carriers happen to be in Pearl Harbor, and thus none are sunk. Said carriers are pivotal to US victory in the Pacific War.
Allied mass bombing raids on German cities and civilian targets 1943-1945. Result: At great cost, hundreds of thousands of civilians are killed; entire cities, their cultural treasures, and much of the infrastructure and industry of Germany is destroyed; in spite of this Germany has to be invaded, conquered, and occupied at great cost by armies on the ground; and the Germans resist almost to the last gasp.
In spite of the questionable effectiveness of strategic bombing, the American military in wake of its victory in WWII maintained an unreasonable belief in its effectiveness, and also were converts from faith in battleships to the new dogma of an aircraft carrier based navy. The precept of maintaining massive air superiority was truly a Muse of fire, that would ascend the brightest heaven of invention to the modern major general. Major General Curtis E. LeMay went on to organize and develop the Strategic Air Command, as the delivery system of nuclear apocalypse-on-command, and helped put God's Own Hammer in each and every POTUS' hand.
As far as I'm concerned, anyone who pilots a warplane and bombs, strafes, or otherwise attacks people on the ground is a war criminal, and as much of a terrorist as the Al Qaeda hijackers on 9-11.
Anyone who participates in the design and manufacture of our ever more shiny, lethal, technically sophisticated/complicated, and expensive warplanes and their weapons systems is a war criminal.
Any legislator who votes to spend the People's money on producing and using these automated angels of death is a war criminal.
Anyone who plans and orders the execution of an attack from the air on people on the ground is as much of a terrorist as Osama Bin Laden, and as much of a war criminal as Luftwaffe Reichsmarshall Herman Goering--or Major General Curtis E. LeMay.
If you think the above statements to be unreasonable, try this one on: For all the billions and billions of dollars the United States has poured into producing the most powerful, the most deadly, and shiniest engines of destruction ever conceived by the mind of man, will avail us but little in the conflict in which we are now embroiled. We have been revealed as a paper tiger--a paper tiger with nuclear claws--but a paper tiger none the less. We have been seduced by the myth of our own power.
For instance, we may have the best-equipped and best-trained soldiers in the most powerful modern army on Earth, but such an army is now obsolete. We can defeat another army and conquer a country, but so what? Our enemies are not organized as conventional modern armies and do not fight by the rules of wars waged by armies. Our enemies have searched out our weaknesses, and adapt their tactics faster than any army can.
A ten cent bullet fired from AK-47 (47 as in 1947, it's 59 year old design) can kill a very expensive soldier, the cost of whose training, equipping, maintenance, and shipping back home in a box runs into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. The men firing the AK-47s are a lot cheaper by the unit (hatred is free) and you get them wholesale just by being there and doing what an army occupying a country does, particularly when your soldiers don't speak the language. We've been using our soldiers, exquisitely and expensively trained to fight the wrong war, like blunt instruments. It's like taking your precision power tools and using them like sledgehammers, to kill roaches. It's not very effective, and there's a lot of collateral damage.
Our smart bombs may be the smartest damn bombs on Earth, but how smart are we when we've used them, in effect, to create tens of thousands of recruits for our enemies at our own very expensive expense. Oh, yah, sure we killed some that we were aiming at, and some extra ones as well, but you gotta break a few eggs to create a world-wide jihad, and to ensure that the "War on Terror" never ends.
If we attack Iran, there is a strong possibility that we will provide the world with the greatest example of hubris on the high seas since the Spanish Armada sailed to conquer England. Queen Elizabeth's rag tag navy of glorified pirates declined to be annihilated by the invincible galleons of Phillip, King of Spain, at that time owner of the largest empire and leader of the greatest `superpower' on Earth. Instead, Drake's corsairs bushwhacked the Spanish fleet and Phillip found his puissant puss sporting a catastrophic bloody nose.
So, you ask, how can Iran give us a collective bloody nose? Aren't our galleons, our modern armadas--aka aircraft carrier groups--invincible? It's like that 10 cent rifle bullet I mentioned. Some of you may be old enough to remember the Falkland Islands War, fought between Argentina and England back when Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister of old Britannia. The Argentines sank two British ships, if I recall correctly, each with a single French made Exocet cruise missile. Argentina only had five Exocets at the time; if they'd had 10 or 15 they might have won the war. A cruise missile costs a few million dollars apiece, give or take; what is the cash value of a modern ship of the line and all its sailors?
You see, back when our endless war was cold, the Soviet naval planners realized that they did not have the resources to match the US Navy ship for ship, carrier group for carrier group. Instead of building aircraft carriers Soviet engineers and designers spent a lot of time and effort to craft the perfect arrow for our Achilles' heel. It is called a "Moskit "--Mosquito. It is cruise missile that has a range of 180 miles--below the horizon, as military types put it. It travels just above the wave tops at Mach 2.5. That's faster than a rifle bullet. A US Navy ship's antimissile defense system will have 30 seconds to respond once the Moskit is detected. It is designed specifically to evade and penetrate that defense system. It is said to be so accurate that it can "hit a squirrel in the eye." It can carry a 250 kilogram conventional or a nuclear warhead. It can be launched from the ground, from a submarine or surface ship, or from the air.
Since the demise of the Soviet Union the Russians have been manufacturing these babies and selling them for fun and profit to countries like China, Indian, and Iran. Maybe the Russians would like to see us get a bloody nose. After all, they never got to use them on us themselves. China bought two missile destroyers armed with Moskits--might come in handy in a tussle over Taiwan.
Iran is known to have at least 300 Exocet cruise missiles, and is said to have a smaller but unknown number of Moskit missiles together with mobile launchers. Iran designs and produces its own range of missiles.
I hope it is fresh in everyone's memory that in spite of heavy bombardment of South Lebanon with American armaments the Israeli Air Force was unable to stop the barrage of missiles the Hezbollah was launching into northern Israel. Lebanon is a small country and Hezbollah's fighting force was no more than a few thousand men. The Israeli Air Force was unable to defeat or deter a few thousand men, much less destroy them--which was the objective. The missiles the Hezbollah fired were short range and inaccurate. The Hezbollah is said to possess more accurate and longer range missiles that could reach, say, Tel Aviv, which they did not use--because it did not suit their objectives to use such missiles. In an earlier conflict, Hezbollah is said to have used a cruise missile to sink an Israeli destroyer. Where did they get such missiles? Iran. From whom, in large part, did they receive their training and learn their tactics? From the Iranians.
I hear that the POTUS is having a confab with his generals to consider new tactics--not the strategy, it is emphasized, just some new tactics, in hopes of bringing that ever more elusive final solution of the mission we've already accomplished--if not within grasp--within sight. Curtis LeMay won his war; can Bush win his?
No, of course he can't. Bush's war is already lost. The real question is how many more people have to die before he is forced to change his "strategy." Another question is how much of our democracy will be left before he's through.
If someone doesn't change his mind soon, I fear that the situation in Iraq may become so bad that it will collapse into a black hole into which our people on the ground will be sucked and annihilated. We'll be arguing about how many tens of thousands of Americans are dead as a result of this war, not just Iraqis. And only the Devil knows what Bush and his goons will do then.