Paul Koring
For more than 90 years, Western warplanes have been killing Arabs as Western powers seek to bomb their way to victory while their leaders sidestep the bloody necessity of putting boots – especially Western boots – on the ground.
Vilifying the enemy while avoiding the costs and casualties of ground fighting – and the even greater costs and longer duration of nation-building – has been the recurrent theme for nearly a century of big power warring in the Middle East.
British warplanes are needed to eradicate the "women-raping, Muslim-murdering, medieval monsters" said British Prime Minister David Cameron as he pleaded with MPs to back another British air war in the Middle East.
Nearly a century ago, the message was the same. To suppress an Arab insurgency in Mesopotamia, Britain sent Gloster Gladiator biplanes to bomb Arab villages. Winston Churchill, then Secretary of State for War, urged the bombers drop chemical weapons, saying he was "strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilized tribes."
The 1920s British air war managed the rare achievement of uniting Sunnis and Shiites and the nationalist uprising wasn't crushed until London sent in more than 100,000 soldiers – most of them colonial troops from India – to limit British casualties.
Big power efforts to shape outcomes in the Middle East by raining death from the relative safety of the skies have rarely worked.
Hence the latest twist in the Obama doctrine which presumes a U.S.-led war coupled with locally provided boots on the ground can avoid any long-term commitment.
But in its latest incarnation, the reality hardly matches President Barack Obama's boast that he is leading a diverse 65-nation coalition committed to crushing Islamic State. In actuality, U.S. warplanes have flown more than 95 per cent of the 2,700 coalition attacks against Islamic State targets in Syria. Many allies have slipped away or quit.
Canada, under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's new government, has left the bombing campaign. Germany is joining the air war – a vote is expected Friday – but the role will be symbolic. German Tornadoes will fly sorties to watch – but not bomb – Islamic State. Danish pilots are taking a rest but may be back.
The Sunni Arab states enlisted to attack Islamic State have quietly bailed out. Saudi warplanes are too busy bombing Yemen in a proxy war against Shia Iran. Jordan ended its limited role after one of its pilots was captured, caged and burned alive by Islamic State militants. Qatar and Bahrain haven't flown a sortie over Syria for months.
But the big Western powers have ramped up the bellicose rhetoric and the bombing pace. France, in the wake of the terror attacks in Paris, has launched a furious set of attacks. British warplanes hit more than a dozen Syrian targets within hours of Mr. Cameron getting his vote in Parliament.
Meanwhile, Russia, attacking the rebels that most threaten beleaguered Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, is conducting a separate air war in the same air space. So is Turkey, officially part of the U.S.-led coalition but sending its warplanes against Kurdish forces it regards as secessionists.
In sum, big powers with interests in the region are – again – attempting to shape outcomes from the air. American, British, French, Russian and Turkish warplanes are bombing different but overlapping communities; each is hoping that ground forces supplied by allies, even if only allies of convenience, will make air power effective.
Similar hopes have rarely, if ever, been successful. Air war didn't work for the British in the 1920s. Nor did British, French and Israeli bombers manage to recover the Suez Canal nationalized by Egypt's President Gamal Abdel Nasser.
British, French and U.S. warplanes patrolled a no-fly zone for a dozen years after the 1991 Iraq war defeated Saddam Hussein's army but left him in power. Despite hundreds of air strikes, it required another war, and 200,000 U.S. troops to topple the Iraqi dictator in 2003.
Western warplanes went back into action in 2011 in Libya. Thousands of bomb and missile strikes later, Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi was toppled but rebel factions – the Arab boots on the ground that supposedly is a model for Syria – turned on each other. A civil war still rages in divided Libya four years later.
Mr. Obama, like Mr. Cameron and French President François Hollande, insist there is no place for Western troops on the ground in Syria. Russian President Vladimir Putin is counting on what's left of the Syrian army still loyal to Mr. al-Assad plus some elite forces from Iran's Revolutionary Guards to serve as ground forces for Russian air strikes.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry admits that Islamic State can't be defeated from the air. "Without the ability to find some ground forces that are prepared to take on Daesh [Islamic State], this will not be won," he said again Thursday.
For the U.S.-led coalition – meaning the big three Western powers – that means finding Syrian rebels who are willing to abandon their fight to topple the brutal Assad regime and – at the behest of the West – turn against Islamic State, which, no matter how unsavoury and ruthless, has proved itself fighting Mr. al-Assad's forces.
As for Mr. Obama, he's ordered a little more mission creep. After pulling all U.S. forces out of Iraq, he has now sent back more than 3,000 to organize an effort to retake the huge swath of western Iraq controlled by Islamic State. And this week, the President has ordered a Special Forces snatch and assassinate team deployed for covert strikes into Syria.