This editorial is shameless- IDF is selling air power short and finally winning the war- on the ground. Once again, the Air Force is spewing platitudes while brave soldiers die. Never forget, these "leaders" are in the hip pocket of big $$$ defense contractors trying to sell the golden-gilded F-22/F-35 and thus the darlings of SECDEF Transformation. Ralph Peters at the NY Post is ripping apart the Air Force warriors who crowd the Starbucks in the Pentagon; so should you. They have no idea of what a counter-insurgency battle is- would not another (50) C-17s for humanitarian airlift serve this fucked up world better?
Don't sell air power short (letter)
BY: MAJ. GEN CHARLES J. DUNLAP JR., WASHINGTON POST*
08/03/2006
Once again a policy wonk trying to write about air power gets it wrong. This time it is Philip H. Gordon ["Air Power Won't Do It," op-ed, July 25]. Citing World War II and Vietnam as examples, he claims that "strategic bombing has almost never worked."
Overlooked is air power's destruction of oil supplies that brought the Nazi war machine to a grinding halt during World War II. Crushing air assaults culminating in air-delivered atomic bombs almost wholly catalyzed Japan's surrender without a U.S. invasion.
In Vietnam, air power brought the enemy to the negotiating table.
Today, air power benefits from the "precision revolution" that gives high-tech air forces the unprecedented ability to selectively destroy almost any target. Moreover, the relentless persistence of modern air power can now inflict real hopelessness on even the most hardened adversaries.
Thus, air power alone provided victory in Kosovo, and it was principally responsible for upending the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. Iraq? Our biggest successes have been mainly through air power: from the devastation of the Republican Guard to the killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
Legitimate debates about the use of force are not helped by ignoring inconvenient facts.
Charles J. Dunlap Jr., Washington
The writer is a major general in the U.S. Air F