Airpower Hope Springs Eternal

Sigh. I worried that the lesson of the Libya War would be that ground forces aren't needed. Just some nimble special forces to call in air power. Here we go.

The author cites Libya and Afghanistan as proof of his concepts and says Iraq would have worked fine without our conventional troops had we used the Afghan template to attack Saddam's military.

That the Taliban and Khaddafi were feeble enemies with sizable internal foes that we could aid matters not.

If the author can guarantee that we will only face feeble enemies unable to deploy significant ground forces backed by significant air assets plus we will have indigenous ground forces to exploit our air power, I'll go along with his idea. We truly live in a unique age if--for the first time in recorded history--armies are not required to conquer and hold ground.

The author says his ideas are controversial. But only in light of history. For today, he'll be hailed as a visionary who only coincidentally happens to provide a guilt-free way to slash defense spending out of the hide of the Army that has bled through a decade of war since 9/11 and crushed whatever enemy it faced.

This has happened before. Air power purists keep insisting air power can do it all. The Balkans in the 1990s saw efforts to resurrect the concept.

I picked the wrong week to give up sniffing glue.