Taking the “War” Out of Air War: What U.S. Air Power Actually Does

[marmar]

from TomDispatch:




Taking the “War” Out of Air War
What U.S. Air Power Actually Does

By Tom Engelhardt


When men first made war in the air, the imagery that accompanied them was of knights jousting in the sky. Just check out movies like Wings, which won the first Oscar for Best Picture in 1927 (or any Peanuts cartoon in which Snoopy takes on the Red Baron in a literal “dogfight”). As late as 1986, five years after two American F-14s shot down two Soviet jets flown by Libyan pilots over the Mediterranean’s Gulf of Sidra, it was still possible to make the movie Top Gun. In it, Tom Cruise played “Maverick,” a U.S. Naval aviator triumphantly involved in a similar incident. (He shoots down three MiGs.)

Admittedly, by then American air-power films had long been in decline. In Vietnam, the U.S. had used its air superiority to devastating effect, bombing the north and blasting the south, but go to American Vietnam films and, while that U.S. patrol walks endlessly into a South Vietnamese village with mayhem to come, the air is largely devoid of planes.

Consider Top Gun an anomaly. Anyway, it’s been 25 years since that film topped the box-office -- and don’t hold your breath for a repeat at your local multiplex. After all, there’s nothing left to base such a film on.

To put it simply, it’s time for Americans to take the “war” out of “air war.” These days, we need a new set of terms to explain what U.S. air power actually does. ..............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175368/tomgram%3A_engelhardt%2C_top_guns_no_more/

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1. recommend

[ixion]

2. here's a key quote:

Yet in those years, the U.S. has remained almost continuously at war somewhere and has used air power extensively, as in its “shock and awe” launch to the invasion of Iraq, which was meant to “decapitate” Saddam Hussein and the rest of the Iraqi leadership. (No plane was lost, nor was an Iraqi leader of any sort taken out in those 50 decapitation attacks, but “dozens” of Iraqi civilians died.) You might even say that air power, now ramping up again in Afghanistan, has continued to be the American way of war.

We're getting ready to do this to Libya, the end result of which will be the same.

[Kolesar]

3. Way too wordy

Tom Engelhardt needs an editor. Such it is with blogs