Ever since aerial bombardment had its inception as an instrument of warfare over a century ago, successive generations of its civilian promoters and military commanders have made expansive claims about its effectiveness. Air power advocates today lay stress on the increased precision of their bombs and other munitions as a reason why their war-making activities generally spare civilian lives. The advent of a variety of “smart bombs” and other highly accurate ordnance truly has allowed modern air warriors to wage conflict while avoiding the horrific collateral trauma of wars past. This is all to the good.
Humanitarian perfection, alas, still is not possible in the grim business of raining high explosives on ground targets.
The Pentagon suspects that our bombing of Islamic State targets has taken some civilian lives. It is almost impossible to separate propaganda falsehoods from the grim truth in the absence of U.S. ground troops to check on the various allegations.
Aerial bombardment, in short, has yet to achieve the sort of “immaculate perfection” in which only bad guys perish and civilians are left alone.
