what ever happened to the good old days when we carpet bombed cities?

Question

why not just carpet bomb all the cities of Iraq...i'm sure they will be more willing to form a peacful government.

Answer 1

That was when we knew how to win a war, come hell or high water. Since then , we have had civilians making the hard decisions, unfortunately their thinking is clouded with politically correct issues, so instead of carpet bombing, we pacify. We get so much more accomplised in this way, except we haven't won a war since then.

If they re-consider the old policy, Tehran or Damascus would get my vote on where to start.

Answer 2

1. Carpet bombing is seen in our society as immoral. It was only done in a few wars and only done without compunction in one war. That was felt to be a "total" war and so extreme violence was seen as fitting. Afterwards, though, the mass killing of non-combatants was a cause of at least some reflection. In the case of Iraq, it would raise some moral question if we massacred children, old people, the infirm, policemen and public officials who are helping us, aid workers and the unlucky and destroyed so much infrastructure and building stock that everyone else huddled in starving misery for years afterwards, as they did in late 1940s Europe.

2. Conventional carpet bombing is out of date. The technological endpoint of our carpet bombing campaign was the A-bomb and if you wanted to accomplish a carpet bombing, nowadays you'd just use a small nuke on a city, a few kilotons. No practical difference if the nuke is small enough to limit fallout. If that makes you squeamish than you shouldn't be carpet bombing.

3. Carpet bombing "all the cities of Iraq," would involve killing mass numbers of Kurds, who are not the problem, and long-victimized Shiites, as well as leveling Baghdad, which we have put a lot of effort into repairing, and Basra, which the UK has painstakingly rendered slightly governable. Arguably that would be wrong.

4. Even in the good old days, many historians believe, carpet-bombing cities didn't work. There is no instance until the Nagasaki bombing where a population's will to fight was dented by greasing cities. Quite the opposite. It only increased fighting spirit in the bombed populations. When the Germans accidently bombed London, the UK bombed Berlin. When the UK bombed Berlin, Germany started carpet bombing UK cities. That made the UK dig in and look forward to the day it could return the favour. Unlike precision bombing, the levelling of German and Japanese cities had little impact on industrial production, convinced no one to stop fighting and basically accomplished little directly. Indirectly, in the German case, it did damage the Luftwaffe, but the Iraqis and their insurgents have no air defense to wreck. Ultimately, in the case of Nagasaki, levelling a city caused the emperor and war cabinet to throw in the towel. Trouble is, our enemies in Iraq have no emperor or war cabinet and such leaders as they do have revel in conflict and death, more the better. Most Iraqis are willing to form a peaceful government; they just can't. Bombing them will just make them more willing to kill us in return, which would be pretty much the only action open to them in the circumstances.

As a headline in the Onion mocked soon after 9/11, "Bush Asks Al Qaeda to Form Country So We Can Bomb the Crap Out of it."
They did not accede to our request, nor has the Iraqi opposition, so really, the reason we don't carpet bomb them is that it would be wrong, useless and counterproductive.



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Answer 3

I think its to late to target the citizens of Iraq considering the government is under ocupation. Besides, we seemed to be gripped in the mindset of bloodless wars. The good ol days where pilots feared of going to hell is probably over because we have international community's to look over our shoulder's as well as an american public to impress.

Answer 4

The pc virus took over?
I think it's supposed to save people and money. Taking a single stealth (worth a few billion) with a lazer guided bomb(worth 100,000) is less expensive than sending 10 large bombers with 100's of bombs in the long run. Less people to maintain ir fly all the aircraft, less fuel, less bombs, less manufacturing, and less people to get killed when stingers or the likes of start flying back.

Answer 5

That wouldn't be PC. Further, warfare is impolite. We would irretrievable offend most of the world. The weeping would be heard throughout the vastness of space.

Besides, the average Iraqi hasn't done anything to deserve being blown to pieces.

Answer 6

In the good old days the military conducted the war and we fought wars to win,but since Korea the politicians put their stupid nose in all we do is sacrifice our brave men&women to satisfy world opinion.Every war has corlatable damage

Answer 7

Because the same liberal democrats that want to cut and run don't have the balls for it.

Answer 8

Geez I love that idea, but that would be genocide. We would be accused of killing thousands of innocents.

Answer 9

sure idiot want to commit war crimes go ahead be my guest