The Bomber's Dream is defined in this documentary as ending a war quickly and decisively by air power.
It seems that this idea keeps coming up in the history of modern warfare - of bombs demoralising a population, or causing it to revolt against its own government in despair.
An example given in the program was the bombing of Serbia, to prevent ethnic cleansing in Kosovo. The European NATO countries wanted to concentrate on the Serbian military in Kosovo; the US wanted to bomb bridges, power stations and so on throughout Serbia - forcing Milosovic to stop (or forcing ordinary Serbs to force Milosovic to stop). In the end they bombed both kinds of target. Other examples were the fire-bombing of German and Japanese cities, or 'the Blitz' on English cities
Hezbollah's ball-bearing packed rockets and Israel's massive overkill are surely based on the same fallacy - that a population can be demoralised, or persuaded to change its collective mind, by terror from the sky.
I came across another reference to the idea just now - 'One former defense official, who still deals with sensitive issues for the Bush Administration, told me that the military planning was premised on a belief that “a sustained bombing campaign in Iran will humiliate the religious leadership and lead the public to rise up and overthrow the government.” He added, “I was shocked when I heard it, and asked myself, ‘What are they smoking?’”'www.newyorker.com
Anyway, finally, the question...
The program asserted that the bomber's dream has never, since the very first bomb was dropped from a plane, been realised. No population has ever been demoralised, or risen in revolt against its government, because of bombing.
Is that true? Is it likely to hold true in the future? If it is true (and I suspect so) why the continued reliance on bigger, smarter or scarier bombs?
Koz would know more about what I am about to say, but I don't think that either atomic bomb that the US dropped on Japan in WWII convinced the populace to rise up against the war. The people, and part of the military, were already trying to convince the holdouts in the Japanese cabinet to surrender. (Japan was a constitutional monarchy, and the cabinet operated on a consensus basis; one dissent was enough to block any action.)
Posts: 16177 | Location: Lincoln Place, Granite City, IL, USA | Registered: 06-03-02
As somebody who has been at the hot end of the bombing of a city (Liverpool - May Blitz 1941), my experience is that bombing of civilians is counterproductive. It improved the spirit of the people rather than diminished it. Whilst individuals suffered, the collective spirit strengthened.
Human spirit is extremely hard to break, as the Germans found in the siege of Stalingrad. It was a sort of "You can hit me as hard as you like but we will still stand up". The bombings did in fact help support for the war government of Great Britain. When the German people were bombed by the Allies, they too never gave up because of it. The Vietnamese, who were nearly bombed back into the middle ages, also never wavered in the face of the overwhelming power of the U.S. Air Force.
The people, and part of the military, were already trying to convince the holdouts in the Japanese cabinet to surrender.
What convinced the people? Nagasaki and Hiroshima were chosen partly because so many other cities had already been destroyed by conventional bombs. There was worry about revolt even before the atomic bombs were dropped.
That said, the people never did revolt and Japan had been in a war that was certainly not limited to bombs for years, so I don't think this can be characterized as a "bomber's dream."
The program asserted that the bomber's dream has never, since the very first bomb was dropped from a plane, been realised. No population has ever been demoralised, or risen in revolt against its government, because of bombing.
I think the premise that bombings are carried out to demoralize a population is not necessarily true. If Bush thinks this in regards to Iran then he is nuts but I don't think it's the case in Israel and I don't think it was the case in Iraq. I believe bombings are carried out as a show of force, to weaken infrastructure and to incapacitate a government. It has never been the goal to show force so that the civilian population will be swayed... perhaps in Serbia but even then the bombings were directed at Serbian leadership, no?
Posts: 3031 | Location: USA | Registered: 06-04-02
"What convinced the people? Nagasaki and Hiroshima were chosen partly because so many other cities had already been destroyed by conventional bombs."
You may be right that the prior bombing moved the people towards ending the war, but I thought that most of the people were accepting the hardships, but were tired of the (by then) near constant military losses. The government, at least a large part of it, wanted to make a "last stand", and had a "carrying your shield or on it" attitude.
Posts: 16177 | Location: Lincoln Place, Granite City, IL, USA | Registered: 06-03-02
Sorry, I didn't mean that question rhetorically, and the 2 statements following it were meant as suggestions or food for thought rather than answers.
Obviously, the Japanese people never did rise up. However, DG indicated that the people had already turned against the war before the atomic bombs were dropped, and, while my brief search didn't find anything conclusive on the Japanese people's attitude or what caused it, I did find a quote from a high-level official (I've forgotten who) expressing concern about that possibility.
I'm not saying that the conventional bombings caused the Japanese people to turn against the war, I honestly have no idea. I'm just saying that their being against the war before the atomic bombs were dropped doesn't exclude the possibility that conventional bombs had that effect.
Just some thoughts on this issue, in World War II Tokyo and other cities were not destroyed using “conventional” bombs of the day. A fairly new type of bomb (napalm) was used to destroy the city and kill more people in Tokyo than that died in Nagasaki. The first use of a napalm bomb occurred on July 23, 1944, during pre-invasion air strikes on the island of Tinian. The attack on Dresden, Germany in February 1945 about 4,000 tons of napalm were dropped on the city causing an estimated 25,000 deaths. Winston Churchill specifically asked that East German cities be bombed to create refugees and spread havoc.
The majority of the civilian people in Japan were largely unaware that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were destroyed using a new “atomic” bomb. Those that did were in bad shape.
I agree with Fourbrick in that the intentional targeting and bombing of civilians is counter productive, but not so to some armies. The armed forces in Serbia were fairly quick to give up once the bombs starting falling. There was never a large scale land invasion and I believe this is the only time in history (to this date) that an air campaign exclusively caused the collapse of a standing army and an undisputed victory.
A close second happened in the Gulf War. The constant air bombing of Iraqi Armed Forces and infrastructure caused a complete breakdown of the standing army. If the air war continued I have no doubts that Iraq would have left Kuwait without the use of ground forces, as much of them had already left before the ground invasion began.
Not technically a war but the bombing by air of Libya did have the desired effect on the leadership.
Posts: 3590 | Location: Long Island, New York USA | Registered: 06-03-02
I don't think it was the damage done by the 1986 bombing that changed Qadhāfī's mind, although the death of his adopted daughter was certainly major, but the fact that the US was willing to do so that was the important factor. It is one thing to taunt the biggest kid on the block; it becomes quite another when that kid stands up. It may or may not have been the best thing for the US to do at that time, but it got Lybia to re-consider pulling Uncle Sam's whiskers. (But note that it was more likely the economic sanctions that made him cough up the Lockerbie terrorists in 1999.)
Posts: 16177 | Location: Lincoln Place, Granite City, IL, USA | Registered: 06-03-02
'General Joseph Hoar, the Commander in Chief of U.S. Military Central Command under presidents Bill Clinton and George H. W. Bush, said the George W. Bush administration would be advised to remember the French occupation of Algeria, which lasted 134 years.
Nationalist rebels launched an insurgency against the French in 1954. After eight years of insurgent bombings and counter-terrorism operations, France was finally forced to quit Algeria in 1962.
Hoar says like the Battle of Algiers the current war on terror is a war of ideas.
"Until we get away from the idea that we can solve these problems through the use of military force and begin to change the political problems causing discontent by providing security and services, we're not going to win this war," he said.'uk.oneworld.net
"Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey's opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945, and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated." - United States Strategic Bombing Survey 1946
Of course Algeria was different.That was colonialism. Algerians killed amounted to hundreds of thousands. The French lost 18,000 soldiers killed. They tried interning many thousands of muslims who had done nothing but who were, well, muslims. The opposition used terrorist tactics, bombings and the assassination of officials. There were anti-muslim terrorists too, so a lot of the trouble was from those who were 'rat-hunting' ( they called the muslims 'rats'), and France found itself trying to control them as well as the muslims: an internecine war.These anti-muslims were people who feared the consequences of the French pulling out and leaving the country in the hands of the muslim majority.There is, of course, no comparison with , say, Sunnis who fear that they will be victimised or attacked by a majority now the government, 'their' government has been overthrown. Likewise there's no comparison with any other country that stations large numbers of military in a place but finds that sheer military force cannot bring peace or stability,nor is there one with a country, ruling a place or not, that fails miserably to understand the feelings, needs, culture, history and grievances of those who are native.
'There is something important to be learned from the recent experience of the United States and Israel in the Middle East: that massive military attacks, inevitably indiscriminate, are not only morally reprehensible, but useless in achieving the stated aims of those who carry them out.
The United States, in three years of war, which began with shock-and-awe bombardment and goes on with day-to-day violence and chaos, has been an utter failure in its claimed objective of bringing democracy and stability to Iraq. The Israeli invasion and bombing of Lebanon has not brought security to Israel; indeed it has increased the number of its enemies, whether in Hezbollah or Hamas or among Arabs who belong to neither of those groups...
...The history of wars fought since the end of World War II reveals the futility of large-scale violence. The United States and the Soviet Union, despite their enormous firepower, were unable to defeat resistance movements in small, weak nations -- the United States in Vietnam, the Soviet Union in Afghanistan -- and were forced to withdraw...
...Beyond the futility of armed force, and ultimately more important, is the fact that war in our time inevitably results in the indiscriminate killing of large numbers of people. To put it more bluntly, war is terrorism. That is why a ``war on terrorism" is a contradiction in terms. Wars waged by nations, whether by the United States or Israel, are a hundred times more deadly for innocent people than the attacks by terrorists, vicious as they are.
The repeated excuse, given by both Pentagon spokespersons and Israeli officials, for dropping bombs where ordinary people live is that terrorists hide among civilians. Therefore the killing of innocent people (in Iraq, in Lebanon) is called accidental, whereas the deaths caused by terrorists (on 9/11, by Hezbollah rockets) are deliberate.
This is a false distinction, quickly refuted with a bit of thought. If a bomb is deliberately dropped on a house or a vehicle on the grounds that a ``suspected terrorist" is inside (note the frequent use of the word suspected as evidence of the uncertainty surrounding targets), the resulting deaths of women and children may not be intentional. But neither are they accidental. The proper description is ``inevitable."
So if an action will inevitably kill innocent people, it is as immoral as a deliberate attack on civilians. And when you consider that the number of innocent people dying inevitably in ``accidental" events has been far, far greater than all the deaths deliberately caused by terrorists, one must reject war as a solution for terrorism.
For instance, more than a million civilians in Vietnam were killed by US bombs, presumably by ``accident." Add up all the terrorist attacks throughout the world in the 20th century and they do not equal that awful toll.'Howard Zinn, a World War II bombardier
The US dropped a greater tonnage of bombs on Cambodia than had been dropped in total (including Hiroshima and Nagasaki) by the Allies in WWII. It didn't work.
'If the most dominant military force in the region – the Israeli Defense Forces – can’t pacify a country like Lebanon, with a population of four million, you should think carefully about taking that template to Iran, with strategic depth and a population of 70 million. The only thing that the bombing (in Lebanon) has achieved so far is to unite the population against the Israelis,” former U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage told Hersh.
Still, air war theorists (and the general public) get all googly-eyed with hi-tech planes equipped with “precision” bombs – to the point where it blinds them to the resilient reality of low-tech, ground-based asymmetrical warfare.
You’d think our experience in Vietnam would give pause to “strategic bombing” fans. Even those like John Arquilla, a defense analyst at the Naval Postgraduate School who supports Israel’s war against Hezbollah, agrees that “strategic bombing” failed to achieve one of Israel’s main goals – rallying the Lebanese against Hezbollah.
“Strategic bombing has been a failed military concept for ninety years, and yet air forces all over the world keep on doing it,” Hersh quotes Arquilla in his New Yorker piece in August.'The ‘Cut and Run’ of Bombing
'...That military strategy is so casual about bomb inaccuracy is largely due to the technological glamour attached to air forces as against ground troops. The latter are always worse equipped and worse protected. Air commanders have long oversold the efficacy of strategic bombing and ignore the degree to which, in counter-insurgency war, such bombardment can be wildly counter-productive. The destruction of non-military targets and the incidental killing of civilians is far more damaging to the cause of victory than friendly-fire casualties that attract so much publicity and inquiry.
The recent recourse of British troops in Afghanistan to aerial bombardment has, by general agreement, set back the cause of winning hearts and minds. A relative killed or a village destroyed only fertilises the desire for revenge. "One dead Pashtun recruits 10 Taliban," is not an idle boast. Close air support may win one day's battle, but only to necessitate another. Yet Nato forces in Afghanistan continue to bomb villages from the air.
Britain is now fighting two wars which it is patently losing. In such circumstances the killing of the enemy appears to be the only policy that delivers good news. In Iraq and Afghanistan kill rates have taken on the symbolic role they served in Vietnam. "We may not be winning but they are hurting," is the general's desperate cry. Yesterday we were shown how good bombers are at hurting, but how bad they are at winning. They are war at its most stupid.'The images of US 'friendly fire' show how good bombers are at hurting, but how bad they are at winning
It seems to me that the Royal Canadian Legion is missing the point. It's entirely possible to honour and respect the allied aircrews, including the ten thousand who gave their lives, who showed such bravery in repeateadly undertaking missions knowing the odds were against their survival, and yet to also - with hindsight - acknowledge that the bombing of German towns and cities didn't have a large effect on Germany's ability to fight.
Nobody's "knocking the memory" of the aircrews. There was no way to know it at the time those strategic decisions were being made and such bravery was being shown, but history - or as near to the truth as it's possible to get historically - points out that the strategy just wasn't too effective. It's also true that there was a debate at the time, and has been since.
It's possible to take our hats off to brave men and women, while knowing that (with hindsight and in the bigger picture) what they did (although they did it with the utmost courage and highest intentions) was actually ill-planned or ultimately not so effective.
'...Senior British officers told these journalists that Gen. McNeill, with too few troops on the ground to hold off the Taliban offensive, plans to rely on massive aerial bombing to do the job. “Bomber McNeill,” the Brits call him bitterly, because they know that his heavy-handed strategy will be counter-productive in the long run. “Every civilian dead means five new Taliban,” a British officer recently returned from southern Afghanistan told Jason Burke. “This could lose the entire south of the country to the Taliban, alienating them permanently from the Karzai government and its international supporters,” Robert Fox adds. “In that case, the future of Hamid Karzai and his nemesis in Pakistan, Pervez Musharraf, looks dim.”
The British are unhappy because they are losing too — losing control of the Afghan war effort. Before McNeill took command of NATO forces, they were headed by a British General, David Richards. He focused more on economic reconstruction and building good relations with the Afghan people. But the Americans and Karzai criticized him for being too soft. Now they’ve got the tough guy they want in charge...'Civilian Casualties in Afghanistan No Coincidence
