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

Chapter 13
<strong>and</strong> o<strong>the</strong>r military installations, <strong>and</strong> stories of cruise missiles following roads <strong>and</strong> turning
left <strong>and</strong> right in order to find <strong>the</strong>ir designated target.
Modern air power has created a picture of war as something precise, clean <strong>and</strong> more or
less casualty free in terms of both non-combatants <strong>and</strong> friendly aircrews. When using
<strong>the</strong> means of air power, we, as airmen, have <strong>the</strong> habit of using terminology reflecting <strong>the</strong>
picture of “cleanness”. When talking, especially in a public context, we use words like
“surgical intervention” <strong>and</strong> “surgical precision,” which obviously refers to surgeons who
use a scalpel to make clean precise cuts. 567 We seem to like to think of ourselves as doctors
who remove unwanted <strong>and</strong> infected tissues from <strong>the</strong> social body before neatly closing <strong>the</strong>
incision. When collateral damage occurs due to air power, it is harder to use vocabulary
such as “surgical” or “precise”. The effects created cannot be said to be “precise”. They
become “dumb hits” by “precise weaponry”. Is our choice of words aimed at cleansing
reality from <strong>the</strong> use of air power?
Is <strong>the</strong> use of such vocabulary intended to make <strong>the</strong> conduct of military operations more
acceptable to western societies? Does this kind of rhetoric concerning <strong>the</strong> use of air power
contribute to lowering <strong>the</strong> aversion to military solutions to political problems? If this is
true does our air power terminology say something about ourselves <strong>and</strong> <strong>the</strong> st<strong>and</strong>ards of
our societies’ ethical involvement?
We see ourselves as noble warriors <strong>and</strong> our enemies as despicable
tyrants. We see war as a surgical scalpel <strong>and</strong> not a bloodstained
sword. In so doing we mis-describe ourselves as we mis-describe
<strong>the</strong> instruments of death. We need to stay away from such fables of
self-righteous invulnerability. Only <strong>the</strong>n can we get our h<strong>and</strong>s dirty.
Only <strong>the</strong>n can we do what is right. 568
What is Michael Ignatieff trying to tell us in this quotation? As I see it he has two
messages. The first is how we in <strong>the</strong> west view ourselves compared to <strong>the</strong> enemy. Yet
I want to focus on <strong>the</strong> second message. Here Ignatieff tells us that <strong>the</strong> perspective of
war is no longer viewed as cruel battle involving <strong>the</strong> horrors with which war has been
previously associated. New wars are something to be related to <strong>the</strong> removal of something
like a tumour with precision <strong>and</strong> cleanness. If we do not relate to <strong>the</strong> reality of war <strong>and</strong>
somehow absorb it, we can not do right.
Perhaps we can learn something from how we describe <strong>the</strong> use of air power. Our rhetoric
says something about how we want air power to appear <strong>and</strong> thus make it more acceptable
to <strong>the</strong> opinion in <strong>the</strong> west. Do we, as airmen, create an ethical shield by deliberately using
<strong>Air</strong> <strong>Power</strong>, <strong>Insurgency</strong> <strong>and</strong> <strong>the</strong> “War on Terror” 235