Air Power, Insurgency and the “War on Terror” - Prof. Joel Hayward's ...

Chapter 7
<strong>the</strong> scientists pointed to one of <strong>the</strong> major strategic flaws in Ranch H<strong>and</strong> as well as a key
moral issue.
Predictably, <strong>the</strong> Communist bloc media loudly <strong>and</strong> frequently denounced <strong>the</strong> US use
of unconventional weapons in South Vietnam. Gerhard Grümmer, an East German
journalist, wrote an account of his travels in South Vietnam, featuring descriptions of badly
damaged rice paddies <strong>and</strong> forests <strong>and</strong> severely injured South Vietnamese. “By employing a
wide range of chemical agents <strong>the</strong> US aggressors are systematically committing <strong>the</strong> most
monstrous crime <strong>the</strong> world has seen since atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima
<strong>and</strong> Nagasaki.” 270 The Hanoi-published collection, American Use of Gases <strong>and</strong> World
Opinion used excerpts from newspapers, predominantly but not exclusively Communist,
to make its case against <strong>the</strong> US. The passages were shrewdly chosen to highlight <strong>the</strong>
racial implications of US policy. The West German Frankfurter Allgemeine asked: “Who
could forget, be it for a moment, that ‘gas’ was <strong>the</strong> best means under <strong>the</strong> Third Reich to
exterminate <strong>the</strong> Jews <strong>and</strong> <strong>the</strong> gypsies. The US cannot ignore that besides physical effects,
<strong>the</strong> use of gases has also a moral effect which does not limit itself on battlefields.” 271 The
Japanese Economic Weekly was more direct. “In Japan <strong>the</strong>re seems to be some racial feeling
connected with <strong>the</strong> Vietnam issue, since many Japanese recall that <strong>the</strong> atomic bombs
which were used against Japan were aimed at Asians <strong>and</strong> that, similarly, <strong>the</strong> chemicals
now being used in Vietnam are aimed at Asians.” 272
Those protesting <strong>the</strong> use of defoliants in Vietnam had more convincing data than <strong>the</strong>
US government did. Pictures of desiccated forests or counts of starving peasants can
be extremely persuasive. The challenge for <strong>the</strong> US was particularly difficult because
quantifying <strong>the</strong> effectiveness of Ranch H<strong>and</strong> with any precision was nearly impossible.
The US did not have firm baseline measurements of infiltration, so any progress at
stopping it would have to be determined qualitatively. Denial of food to opposing forces
was equally hard to measure.
<strong>Air</strong> power remains difficult to incorporate into an effective counter-insurgency strategy.
Theorists of conventional air power have addressed air operations in counter-insurgencies
with limited success. Robert Pape, in Bombing to Win: <strong>Air</strong> <strong>Power</strong> <strong>and</strong> Coercion in War,
proposes four questions that must be asked when determining if a coercive campaign
was successful. “First, what were <strong>the</strong> goals of <strong>the</strong> air offensive? Was it pursued for coercive
purposes alone, or were o<strong>the</strong>r goals also important? Were <strong>the</strong>y pursued in <strong>the</strong>ir most
ambitious form, or truncated to conform to political <strong>and</strong> organizational constraints? Third,
how was <strong>the</strong> campaign conducted? How fully were <strong>the</strong> requirements of each proposed
strategy achieved in practice? Finally, what ultimately explains <strong>the</strong> failure or success of
each strategy?” 273
<strong>Air</strong> <strong>Power</strong>, <strong>Insurgency</strong> <strong>and</strong> <strong>the</strong> “War on Terror” 123