Lesson #2 Terror from the Air is Neither Moral nor Pragmatic

We hear a lot about "precision bombing" these days from governments like the United States and Israel. But precision bombing, particularly when used against terrorists or insurgents who hide among civilian populations, is a myth. Assaults from the air maximize civilians casualties when compared with most ground campaigns, as the recent assault on Lebanon so vividly demonstrated. 1,002 Lebanese civilians were killed, 30 percent of them children under 12. 3,580 civilians were wounded. Hezbollah, on the other hand, has announced the death of only 58 fighters. This may or may not be an accurate estimate (others claim the number is as high as 500) but the vast majority of casualties were clearly civilian. Killing 1,000 civilians in order to kill 60 fighters, for those of you who can't do the math on your own, is not a very good trade-off. And it reeks of state-sponsored terrorism.

There is reason to believe that Israel's commanders, fearing a protracted ground offensive, overestimated what an air assault might achieve militarily. According to a report from Anthony H. Cordsman, from the Center for Strategic and International Studies: "A number of Israeli experts criticized the chief of staff of the IDF, the head of intelligence, and head of the air force for being too narrowly air-oriented and for presenting unrealistic estimates of what air power can accomplish."