I'm find myself largely in agreement with Bill Arkin on something. Whodathunk?
Ry sent me this link to Arkin's not-terribly-well-scribed (he's working too many angles and demons in it) anti-paean to Airpower.
If there is one thing that defines American military technology, one thing that floats seductively suggesting engagement without true commitment, it is airpower.Airpower was the boost of confidence we needed in 2003 to travel on our own highway of death. Given the current ground quagmire in Iraq, airpower will be even more our downfall in the future.
That is the far greater truth we miss in our splintered and partisan world, where Bush administration "lying" about weapons of mass destruction has become the only politically correct explanation for the mess we have made in Iraq.
The writing doesn't improve much in the rest of the piece, and I'll just skip his politics and mil-bashing.
The thing I'm in agreement with him on is - airpower, and perhaps more accurately, precision-delivered munitions, make war easier to engage in, because there is less risk to human life on the part of the deliverer (it still sucks to be a target). This has correspondingly dropped the threshold at which we start seriously consider using military options - and that was true during Clinton's administration as well, it's not just a Bushitler innovation.
I've long mused, since the late 90's, that this magnificent tool we've built has not been matched in quality, quantity, or effort on the softer side of things. It's too easy to use, yet it isn't a scalpel, it's still a buzzsaw.
We've not put the same intellectual effort, much less money, into developing new tools of diplomacy and analysis that we have into ER-MLRS, Excalibur, LCS, and the F-22? Mind you, it's the business of the Defense Department to do that stuff, and I don't blame 'em for doing it - especially when their masters, who are the real failures here, default to that proposition.
Now DoD finds itself trying to develop the tools and analysis of diplomacy, because State seems unable, uninterested, and incapable of doing so, and has been for some time.
Arkin is blazing away with his blunderbuss, but he's really aiming at the wrong target. Among other things, Rumsfeld's gone - Arkin should be gunning for Rice and her successor, Congress and the next President.
