Tomgram: "Air War, Barbarity and the Middle East"/ Interesting Read

[KoKo]

Tomgram: Air War, Barbarity, and the Middle East
Degrading Behavior
The Middle East and the Barbarism of War from the Air
By Tom Engelhardt

Someday someone will take up the grim study of the cleansing language of air power. Every air war, it seems, now has its new words meant to take the sting out of its essential barbarism. In the case of the Israeli air assault on Lebanon, the term -- old in the military world but never before so widely adopted in such a commonplace way -- is "degrading," not as at Abu Ghraib, but as in "to impair in physical structure or function." It was once a technical military term; in this round of air war, however, it is being used to cover a range of sins.
-snip-
As air wars go, the one in Lebanon may seem strikingly directed against the civilian infrastructure and against society; in that, however, it is historically anything but unique. It might even be said that war from the air, since first launched in Europe's colonies early in the last century, has always been essentially directed against civilians. As in World War II, air power -- no matter its stated targets -- almost invariably turns out to be worst for civilians and, in the end, to be aimed at society itself. In that way, its damage is anything but "collateral," never truly "surgical," and never in its overall effect "precise." Even when it doesn't start that way, the frustration of not working as planned, of not breaking the "will," invariably leads, as with the Israelis, to ever wider, ever fiercer versions of the same, which, if allowed to proceed to their logical conclusion, will bring down not society's will, but society itself.

For the Lebanese prime minister what Israel has been doing to his country may be "barbaric destruction"; but, in our world, air power has long been robbed of its barbarism (suicide air missions excepted). For us, air war involves dumb hits by smart bombs, collateral damage, and surgery that may do in the patient, but it's not barbaric. For that you need to personally cut off a head.

http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=106273

[smacky44]

1. Barbarism nonetheless.