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What is Wrong with the Air Force?
By John
Buckle up folks, this one is a bear.
JERUSALEM, Oct. 13 — A study of the 2006 Israeli-Hezbollah war commissioned by the United States Air Force and to be published this month concludes that Israel’s use of air power was of diminishing value as the fight dragged on because it was used without enough discrimination.Although the war was widely criticized in Israel and abroad for relying too heavily on the air force, the study argues that air power remains the most flexible tool in fighting groups like Hezbollah, because ground forces alone could not have achieved Israel’s aims. Israel’s error, the study concludes, was insufficient discernment in its airstrikes.
By bombing too many targets of questionable importance for its aims, and not explaining why it bombed what it did, Israel lost the war for public opinion, according to the author of the study, William M. Arkin, an expert in assessing bomb damage. “Israel bombed too much and bombed the wrong targets, falling back upon cookie-cutter conventional targeting in attacking traditional military objects,” Mr. Arkin wrote. “Individual elements of each target group might have been justified, but Israel also undertook an intentionally punishing and destructive air campaign against the people and government of Lebanon.”
If this guy could stick to straight-shooting analysis, I'd have no problem with the Air Force drawing on him as a resource. The problem is, everything that he writes is corrupted by his ideology. His military "analysis" was slanted enough to draw the attention of The Weekly Standard back in 2003:
For starters, he is the scribbler who launched the assault on Lt. Gen. Jerry Boykin a week ago by providing NBC with tapes of Boykin speaking in churches, and then followed with a Los Angeles Times op-ed that accused the general of being "an intolerant extremist" and a man "who believes in Christian 'jihad'" (Arkin later admitted on my radio program that Boykin never used the term "jihad").Arkin also wrote that "Boykin has made it clear that he takes his orders not from his Army superiors but from God--which is a worrisome line of command." This statement, like the "jihad" quotation appears to be pure fiction.
ARKIN TOLD ME he got his tip on Boykin's faith talks from a Pentagon source, which suggests that the general has an enemy inside the Pentagon. But if, as most of Boykin's critics have argued, the danger presented by the general's private talks about his faith is their effect on the Islamic world, then why did Arkin rush to publicize these private, little-noticed talks that he believes will hurt the U.S. abroad?
The answer is best found in Arkin's own speech to an audience at the U.S. Naval War College on September 25, 2002. In this lengthy and vitriolic attack on the Bush administration, Arkin admitted to feeling "cynical about the fact that we are going to war to enhance the economic interests of the Enron class," and declared that "the war against terrorism is overstated." Arkin believed, in fact, that the war "is not the core United States national security interest today." He rhetorically asked the audience: "Aren't I just another leftist, self-hating American?" and condemned the administration for taking "enormous liberties with American freedoms." "The war against terrorism," he said, "if it is a war at all, is not World War II or the Cold War, and it is grasping at empty patriotism to claim that it is." He warned of "our tendency to fall back upon secrecy and government control." And he concluded by warning that our foreign policy "convey[s] the wrong message, which is that we have no values, that we are for sale...."
Arkin caused a national uproar earlier this year when he accused American soldiers of being "mercenaries." So yeah, while he's got the cred to talk about the war, it's pretty obvious that his inability to separate factual military analysis from his strong political convictions makes him completely unreliable as an analyst.
So let's analyze his analysis.
“Israel bombed too much and bombed the wrong targets, falling back upon cookie-cutter conventional targeting in attacking traditional military objects,” Mr. Arkin wrote. “Individual elements of each target group might have been justified, but Israel also undertook an intentionally punishing and destructive air campaign against the people and government of Lebanon.”
So if I'm reading this correctly, Israel restricted itself to "cookie-cutter" aim points against strictly military targets, while they waged an unrestricted air war against the Lebanese people.
Yeah, it confused me too.
This is junior high crap, real armchair general stuff. If the US Air Force is "influenced" by Arkin's report, then the Air Force has bigger problems than its budget. Israel's air war was a highly sophisticated, force-centric campaign. Sophisticated enough, the Israelis thought, to do the job of ground troops. Hence the light grunt footprint back in summer 2006. Which, both Arkin and I agree, was foolish..... although for completely different reasons.
Here's a simplified version of the problem:
Arkin is regurgitating a popular meme in anti-war circles, that the Untied States and Israel indiscriminately use air power in their quest to defeat Islamic terrorists, despite the fact that Hezbollah is clearly the one ignoring the established law of armed conflict. It's become a common trademark with Arkin's military analysis. He disguises his opinion pieces by garnishing them with all the right military language, "target sets" and "precision air campaigns," and his only interest seems to be in pushing his ideology.
So that's that. He's a self professed leftist (not that there's anything wrong with that) and his analysis fits a common leftist narrative.
The bigger question is, why did the Air Force hire a used car salesman like Arkin? Or to paraphrase Michael, the OPFOR reader who sent me this link, "What is wrong with the Air Force????"
The New York Times answers:
While critical of how Israel used its air force, Mr. Arkin defends the flexibility of air power in counterterrorism. Although Israel was retaliating for a Hezbollah raid that captured two soldiers and killed others, he considers the war pre-emptive. He said Israel used the raid as a pretext to destroy most of Hezbollah’s longer-range Syrian and Iranian missiles and launchers, which posed the largest threat to Israel.In a post-9/11 world, Mr. Arkin said, the likelihood of the United States’ engaging in another ground war like Iraq is very small. A better model is the fight against the Taliban in 2001, he said, emphasizing air power, special operations and covert action. The 2006 conflict was only the second war of “pure counterterrorism,” he said, which is why the Pentagon wanted to study it.
Why did the Air Force hire Arkin? Because Arkin makes the Air Force relevant again. He writes what they want to hear: that air power is critical to a successful COIN strategy, that properly executed air campaigns can win low-level wars, and that technology -not boots on the ground- is the key to winning to the War on Terrorism.
Think it'd piss off Arkin's buddies at Human Rights Watch and Greenpeace that he's one of the biggest advocates of Secretary Rumsfeld's failed Transformation concept?
This is what the Air Force needs to be told, folks. With the Soviet Union dissolved, they have a dozen secondary missions and no primary one. There's no big bad Bear to fight anymore, just a loosely organized confederation of platoon sized cells..... mosquitoes that the Air Force wants to kill with its cannons. They need someone to say that they're still important, so they hired Arkin to say it.
Unfortunately, despite Arkin's expert "bomb assessment," the Lebanon War proved one thing. This war is a grunt war, it can't be won with the "flexible" employment of air power, or any use of air power for that matter. It takes hearts and minds to win hearts and minds folks, something that a PFC running patrols in Mosul could tell you....but William Arkin and impressive academic resume could not.
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Comments
There is not such thing as bombing too much especially when its Arabs on the receiving end. Its like the idea of a girl too pretty-the concept does not exist.
Imagine if we had stopped being so concerned about collateral damage in the begining of the Iraq campaign and really gone after some of Iraqs major cities-it would have been better in the long run and helped the Iraqi people to understand that like it or not they were defeated.
Considering Arkin's blatant hatred of our military (perusing through the last few years of his printed spit), and therefore his endearment to the far left, IMHO the Air Force is hedging its bets for a President from the Democratic Party.
It's smart business - I don't like it at all, but it's the smart thing to do.
First, the USAF is still very important. I'm not saying that as current USAF, but as former Army.
The USAF is still very relevent in Global Strike, CAS, Global Mobility, and Air Superiority.
Global Strike is extremely important in helping contain Russia, NK, and Iran. That lets us take more ground troops out of ROK, or else the Army would be stretched even more thin.
CAS isn't as important in this stage of the GWOT...but it was key in toppling the Taliban and Saddam. We didn't take many losses on the ground in either conflict due to USAF. Who got Zarqawi, again? Hint: it wasn't the Army, or the Marines.
I don't think the Army would be have as effective in Iraq without supplies coming in by C-17s and C-5s.
Air Superiority is pretty much a given, considering it pretty much takes a formal State to provide the support structure for an air force.
But even though this fight doesn't require USAF in a central role, the next fight probably won't be COIN. If, say, anything kicks off between Taiwan and China, it will be the USAF that wins that war.
No, the service that is the most useless to us in almost any contingency is the Navy. Russia's Navy is a shell of its former self, and China's is still pretty much brown water. There's nothing that the Navy can do these days but be a target, because anything a Carrier Group could do in the East Pacific, the USAF can do better out of ROK, Okinawa, the Philippines, Thailand, and mainland Japan.
As to why the USAF paid him to publish, well, there are politics in the military, especially at high levels. I had co-workers when I was enlisted that loved Bill Clinton, even after he tried to impose a 5-year pay raise freeze on the military. There are many people who believe the military should only be used to defend US soil, and one of those people might have been behind the decision.
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What I don't understand is how/why this study was awarded to Arkin -- a documented hater of the U.S. military. Who was responsible at the USAF for letting this? They should be held accountable.