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William J. Astore: Still Pursuing the Dream of Bombing
William J. Astore is the editor of The Contrary Perspective. A retired lieutenant colonel (USAF) and professor of history, he’s written for TomDispatch.com, Truthout, History News Network (HNN), Alternet, and Huffington Post among other sites. He is the author or co-author of three books and numerous articles focusing on military history as well as the history of science, technology, and religion.
B-1 Bomber (NYT photo)
W.J. Astore
There you go again, President Obama, echoing a line delivered by that consummate actor, Ronald Reagan. Yes, we’re bombing Iraq again, in the name of humanitarianism. This time, we’re only getting the “bad” Iraqis, so it’s OK. Right?
The only “humanitarian” bombing I’ve ever heard of is in fiction; specifically, in Slaughter-House Five, where Kurt Vonnegut imagined a bombing raid in reverse, with bombs returning to their planes and bodies blown into pieces magically reassembling into living, breathing, human beings.
The U.S. still believes in the dream of airpower: that it’s cheap, surgical, decisive. But history has taught us otherwise, a fact I wrote about at TomDispatch.com in March of 2013. But who cares about history — it’s bunk, right?
So we persist in our “bombs away” mentality, whether it’s Iraq or Afghanistan or Pakistan or Libya or Yemen or … well…
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