A critical aspect of United States domination on the battlefield has been maintaining air superiority and usage of the advantages that free reign over the skies gives the military. This was starkly illustrated in the first Gulf War, where once the Iraqi Air Force had been rendered ineffectual, the armor was also practically obsolete– coalition ground forces simply had to mop up after air strikes destroyed enormous amounts of the Iraqi Army before they even had a chance to fight back.

Yet the success in the early 90s is translating into new difficulties as the US finds itself embroiled in different conflicts. This is not simply a problem of military strategy – roots go further into the US military’s slowness in adapting to change. Decades after the Cold War has ended, the assumption still exists within strategic policy planners that the US will face a ‘peer competitor’ that has a chance of matching it in several areas. The most plausible rising power to notice is China – but focusing too much on being prepared for a hypothetical future conflict in the region contradicts with the usefulness of the current Air Force today, within the context of supporting military action in Afghanistan. Thus there is inadequate funding to maintain engines for the Air Force’s venerable A-10, while instead the nation’s youngest military branch has instead allotted money on lucrative projects such as buying F-22s which cost 138 million dollars apiece and are designed primarily for air superiority and is thus not well-suited towards providing precise air support for ground forces due to its limited ground attack arsenal. As far as military equipment goes, it is not designed to fight in our current conflicts. To be fair, this is not necessarily a problem entirely with the Air Force itself, as it is designed for high-tech superpower showdown.

As the situation stands now, the US is not involved in conventional military clashes between armies with similar resources and weaponry. Thus this reliance on air power slowly has devolved into an over-reliance on airpower, and is arguably undermining efforts to stabilize nation-building efforts – most notably, in Afghanistan.

It is not uncommon to read in the newspapers: “The US military intensified its usage of airstrikes in Afghanistan over the past month. Last night’s strike coincided with a coalition counter-offensive against Taliban remnants in the southeast, bombing a stronghold in the Uruzgan province and pounding an area near Khost.”

Even in Iraq where the US has hundreds of thousands of troops occupying the military recently increased its usage of air strikes in Iraq which has a higher population density than Afghanistan and thus higher potential for civilian casualties. As the USA Today reported about 2007:

“The U.S. military has increased airstrikes in Iraq four-fold this year, reflecting a steep escalation in combat operations aimed at al-Qaeda and other militants.
Coalition forces launched 1,140 airstrikes in the first nine months of this year compared with 229 in all of last year, according to military statistics.
Airstrikes are up in Afghanistan, too. Coalition planes have made 2,764 bombing runs this year, up from 1,770 last year. The figures don’t include strikes by helicopter gunships.”

Indeed, Taliban leaders and insurgents who took Guerilla Warfare 101 would have done well to thank the US Air Force for increasing its support among civilians in the bombed areas. The US through its past military expeditions in various parts of the world (mostly visibly in Vietnam) should have learned many lessons regarding guerilla warfare, one of which is vital to understanding a source of continued insurgent resistance: Air power is counter-productive. The inevitably imprecise nature of bombing even with the most advanced Laser Guided Bombs (LGBs) guarantees that at least some people who weren’t your enemies will be killed, and their relatives and friends will be recruited to become your future enemies.

Much as we may wish it, air strikes are too large and inaccurate despite the videos some of us saw as children of laser-guided bombs flying through air vents in Iraq and hitting their targets perfectly. The Winograd Commission, which was convened in Israel last year to analyze why the Israeli Defense Force’s bombing of Hezbollah was relatively ineffective noted this pertinent point. NATO is slowly trying to compensate for this by implementing measures such as using smaller bombs which supposedly will reduce civilian casualties. Yet this is not simply a problem that can be fixed on the micro level – a 500lb. bomb is not too different from a 1000lb. bomb – both still have the ability to flatten a small city block. Such reported reductions are useful for public consumption, but do not significantly reduce the risk of unwanted civilian casualties.

One of the many unfortunate aspects of fourth generation warfare where civilian populations are commonly mixed in with hostile actors is that the attacker needs enough troops to suppress the enemy on the ground without resorting to air strikes which almost by definition have an area effect. While it is certainly easy to understand the need to protect the lives of soldiers through overwhelming firepower, this overkill goes a long way towards prolonging the havoc and antipathy today (among other factors). An Iraqi family that might have been neutral regarding the invasion and occupation when it began could easily develop feelings of hostility towards coalition forces if they themselves are bombed, intentional or not. There are a couple options open here in regards to counter-insurgency warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan:

(1) Continue bombing – As noted above, the inevitable deaths of innocent people will simply increase the number of enemies, until you are either forced to pull out, or commit genocide.
(2) Drastically reduce the number of air strikes being used – this unfortunately will also increase coalition casualties as new soldiers will be forced to move into areas in which they will be more exposed to enemy fire. Politically, an increased death toll makes it difficult to continue such a military operation. Without a certain level of public support, pressure increases exponentially on leaders to retreat.

As seen by an understandable but misguided unwillingness for coalition leaders to significantly increase troop levels in Afghanistan, there is still a strong belief in this system where Western powers believe that it is possible to make up for low troop levels with precision weaponry, and as such civilian casualties will continue to rise. Even a 3-meter CEP (Circular Error Probable – the radius in which a weapon will land 50% of the time) is not enough because even ‘mild’ blasts can rip apart flimsy huts and create shrapnel which does not discriminate between the innocent and the guilty. Difficult as it is, the most effective weapon is the individual soldier, who can more easily distinguish between friend and foe on the ground (especially if accompanied by locals are those culturally trained in the area), and can direct smaller and more limited amounts of firepower precisely.

In the Global War on Terror, a major evaluation of tactical strategies must be made if anything besides the increasing death toll is to change – but also on a macro level, the most important issue is to address the regeneration cause of the Taliban if the occupation is to even have a chance at achieving positive results. Beginning from day one of the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, the Bush Administration has not taken sufficient notice to the local political and power culture. An example was bypassing the Afghan tribal system and its importance within the Pashtun majority in the country. While at first the US-led coalition was effective in overthrowing the Taliban by utilizing local warlords and militia alongside with brute military force, in the long run this neglect of the sensitive traditional Pashtun-centered power structure in the country, helped to aggravate the power vacuum that was left behind after the fall of the Taliban. A parallel could be drawn with the mistake made in Iraq – disbanding and excluding the former Iraqi Army and the state-bureaucracy through “de-Baathification”.

This sectarian divide has set off a (arguably predictable) chain reaction – feeling oppressed and disadvantaged by losing their traditional status as the rulers of Afghanistan, many Pashtuns felt that they had few options besides uniting under the Taliban. For example, within the influential Foreign Ministry within Mr. Karzai’s government, 50% of the positions are taken by ethnic Tajiks, and 30% by Pashtuns. (Pashtuns comprise roughly 40% of the population as a whole) This Pashtun political exclusion in Afghanistan has consistently served as a stumbling block towards stability in Afghanistan – if there is to be any hope of reversing the current situation in the war on Al-Qaeda, a share of power on fair basis must be created.

Afghanistan may very well be known as the other forgotten war – but if we don’t want to write it off as yet another humanitarian disaster, then we have to evaluate what we know and don’t know about the situation. Hard as it may be, dangerous and politically unpopular strategies will have to be used, or else we are better off not staying in Afghanistan at all. Otherwise like the Soviet Union in the 1980s, the United States will ultimately have accomplished little besides contributing to the bloodshed.