Flawless Victory: Airstrikes and COIN

Yesterday, in a television address that was aired nationally in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChystal apologized for the NATO air-strike on Sunday that mistook a civilian bus convoy for insurgent reenforcement to the battle in Marja and resulted in as many as 27 deaths including four women and a child.  Apart from wondering about efficacy of television addresses as strategic communication in a country where in 2005 only 19% of households owned a TV, NATO's newfound sensitivity to civilian collateral damage underscores the difficulty of counter-insurgency warfare.  Can the U.S. win wars fought with its principal advantages used sparingly, a tactical necessity to avoid any mistakes to adhere to larger strategic goals and sharp political reprisals from allied leaders should any errors occur?  Moreover, will we have the patience and will to even try?

I remember having discussions in high school, with Air Force recruiters no less, about the immorality of air warfare, which kills indiscriminately and without any human cost on our part.  Which is to say, that my support for a more local and tactile American combat presence is long held and deeply felt.  Yet, it must be pointed out what that means: we can only use air power sparingly, with restraint and without doubt.  This entails the U.S. forgoing its principal advantage in combat and instead committing to increased risk, casualties and time-frames. The U.S. supremacy in the skies has been unbroken and unquestioned since the Korean War, the last time an American pilot was shot down by another airplane.  Since then, we have owned the skies; but the ground, we can only rent.  We toppled Saddam and the Taliban in days principally because we bombed them to oblivion; no force on Earth could long stand against the firepower the U.S. can rain down from its drones, long range rockets and bombers.  Unfortunately, in the wars of tomorrow much of this firepower will have to stand as a deterrent rather than a primary participant, because air warfare is fundamentally incompatible with population-centric counter-insurgency.  This will make our wars more humane, but also far, far more costly and difficult.

For those on the ground, restraint from the air will be acutely felt.  Another incident from the battle in Marja demonstrates the impossibility of "surgical strikes" and victim-less war.  11 people were killed when a U.S. rocket fired from miles away struck the wrong house.  Marines said they were startled by the rocket, because after taking small arms fire from a nearby building earlier in the day they had called in an attack and been denied.  I hesitate to infer too much, but in all likelihood the initial request was denied to comply with McChyrstal's increased scrutiny of air attacks and yet the eventual result was a tragic mistake.  Taking more time and being more careful means that sometimes, perhaps often, enemy combatants will elude troops pinned down on the ground who could have called for an air-strike.  Necessarily, being sure means not exploiting every opportunity.  Supposedly NATO had intercepted Taliban radio communication about the bombed bus convoy, but without an urgent need to bomb it, even somewhat credible intelligence might not participate an attack.  Bombings that go awry are incompatible with the strategy of "winning of hearts and minds" by proving that NATO troops protect the population, as the deaths are poignant reminders of the violence we bring with us.

Finally, by declaring our intentions to minimize civilian deaths, we allow our political allies to sharply criticize us when things go wrong.  Hamid Karzai has proven a liability more than an asset anyway, but his condemnation of the attack removed any cover we might have had and threatened to weaken the entire enterprise in Marja.  If we fought by conventional rules, we could greet political condemnation with a shrug and the explanation that we break eggs to make omelets.  Instead, the NATO commander apologized on national television and Karzai gets a win without risking anything.  We must tolerate this situation, because these are the rules we created.

Despite all of this, population-centric COIN remains the most promising mechanism for fighting these types of wars.  Our attempts at violent coercion were an abject failure in Iraq and COIN offers us new possibilities for just warfare along with justified intentions.  However, embracing the inherent difficulties of these conflicts will hopefully allow to make strategic considerations about whether or not we should enter into any more of them.  If COIN is the only way out of Afghanistan, hopefully it is also tough enough medicine to teach us to avoid future applications of its methods.