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

<strong>Air</strong> <strong>Power</strong> <strong>and</strong> Ethics in <strong>the</strong> Age of <strong>the</strong> Global Salafi Jihad
on “semi-civilised <strong>and</strong> un-civilised tribes”. It argued that “all war is not only brutal but
indiscriminate in its brutality,” <strong>and</strong> that at least <strong>the</strong> lives of attackers were safer in air
operations. The <strong>Air</strong> Staff proposed an unemotional humanitarian argument, insisting that
bombing ultimately lowered casualties even amongst <strong>the</strong> enemy by forcing <strong>the</strong>m to give
up in <strong>the</strong> face of “continual unending interference with <strong>the</strong>ir normal lives.” 406
Civilian casualties in Iraq were explained away in a number of interesting ways. Lord
Trenchard addressed <strong>the</strong> House on <strong>the</strong> topic as follows: “<strong>the</strong> natives of a lot of <strong>the</strong>se tribes
love fighting for fighting’s sake. They have no objection to being killed.” 407
This was an interesting assumption about <strong>the</strong> Arabs’ seeming willingness to accept being
bombed. A British comm<strong>and</strong>er observed that <strong>the</strong> Arabs “do not seem to resent that
women <strong>and</strong> children are accidentally killed by bombs.” Yet, when eventually <strong>the</strong> figures
containing numbers of women <strong>and</strong> children made uncomfortable reading for Churchill,
Trenchard directed that where visual marks could not distinguish between combatants
<strong>and</strong> non-combatants, casualties were to be reported in “bulk numbers” without details of
age or sex. 408
The British High Commissioner in Iraq warned against restraining <strong>the</strong> RAF in 1932
because, “<strong>the</strong> term ‘civilian population’ has a very different meaning in Iraq from what it
has in Europe … <strong>the</strong> whole of its male population are potential fighters as <strong>the</strong> tribes are
heavily armed.” 409 According to T E Lawrence, aerial bombing from an Arab’s point of
view is, “not punishment, but misfortune from heaven striking <strong>the</strong> community.” 410 <strong>Air</strong>craft
were considered to be a source of divine wrath <strong>and</strong> measures were taken to ensure that
locals did not become too familiar with <strong>the</strong>m so that <strong>the</strong> aura of “divine retribution” could
be maintained.
The experience of using air power in Iraq as an effective way to enforce compliance
influenced <strong>the</strong> strategic <strong>and</strong> operational outlook of British politicians <strong>and</strong> RAF officers for
decades to come. In his 1924 report, OC 45 Squadron asserted:
[The] Arab <strong>and</strong> Kurd … now know what real bombing means, in
casualties <strong>and</strong> damage; <strong>the</strong>y now know that within 45 minutes
a full-sized village can be practically wiped out <strong>and</strong> a third of its
inhabitants killed or injured by four or five machines which offered
<strong>the</strong>m no real target, no opportunity for glory as warriors, no effective
means of escape. 411
That officer was Squadron Leader Arthur Harris, who was to take <strong>the</strong> strategy of aerial
bombardment from <strong>the</strong> villages of Kurdistan <strong>and</strong> “perfect” it to produce <strong>the</strong> firestorms
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<strong>Air</strong> <strong>Power</strong>, <strong>Insurgency</strong> <strong>and</strong> <strong>the</strong> “War on Terror”