From The Washington Post (h/t Marilyn Young):
“It’s a childish story that keeps repeating in the West,” smiled Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, in an interview with the BBC last week. He was dismissing allegations that his regime is attacking Syrian civilians with barrel bombs, crude devices packed with fuel and shrapnel that inflict brutal, indiscriminate damage.
“I haven’t heard of the army using barrels, or maybe, cooking pots,” Assad said, and then repeated when pressed again: “They’re called bombs. We have bombs, missiles and bullets. There [are] no barrel bombs, we don’t have barrels.”
If you think Assad doth protest too much, you’re probably right.
The Post not only cites evidence supporting the claim of the Syrian regime’s “frequent use of barrel bombs in densely packed urban areas” but also cites other instances of regimes using barrel bombs, including the US in Vietnam.
But I was more struck by the civilizational machismo of Assad’s claim that “we have bombs, missiles and bullets. There [are] no barrel bombs, we don’t have barrels.”
Like so many of the West’s defenders of just war, restrained war, and humanitarian war, Assad takes great—albeit unearned—pride in his precision weaponry. Implicit is a contempt for those pathetic, perhaps even feminized, warriors (the “cooking pot” reference), who would rely on such primitive crudities as barrel bombs.
As the Post explains, the US has its own history with such methods:
Look a bit further into the past, and you’ll find that barrel bombs were featured in an American military campaign, too.
A smart post on the War Is Boring blog details when the United States dropped barrels packed with fuel in an attempt to burn foliage in the dense forests of Vietnam and smoke out Viet Cong guerrillas:
Army crews kicked the incendiary drums out of Chinook helicopters onto suspected enemy camps. They strapped white phosphorus smoke grenades to the cylinders to set them alight.
The Air Force took the concept one step further and tried to start raging forest fires in Viet Cong base areas. The flying branch used fire barrels as well as normal incendiary bombs.
In April 1968, the United States carried out “Operation Inferno,” in which 14 C-130 cargo planes dropped dozens of 55-gallon incendiary barrels filled with fuel over southern Vietnam’s U Minh forest. The sorties sparked raging fires, but they had limited effect, as they all tended to die down once the fuel burned out. The United States also dropped barrels full of a chemical equivalent of tear gas, aimed at flushing insurgent fighters out of their bunkered hideaways.
But throughout the war, you had figures like Robert McNamara and McGeorge Bundy (though McNamara left the Johnson Administration in February 1968 and Bundy in 1966), stressing the reason and rationality, the precision and pride, of the American war effort. And, not infrequently, wrapping it all up in a bow of unrestrained masculinity.
Assad, McNamara, Bundy: these are the real Mad Men of history.
{ 46 comments }
john in california 02.16.15 at 6:13 pm
Philip Levine is dead.
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/philip-levine#poet
He was sane.
Mike Schilling 02.16.15 at 6:32 pm
Somewhat similarly, the weapons used by the insurgents in Iraq were always called “improvised” explosive devices, even when they were being mass-produced.
Abbe Faria 02.16.15 at 6:53 pm
“But I was more struck by the civilizational machismo of Assad’s claim that “we have bombs, missiles and bullets. There [are] no barrel bombs, we don’t have barrels.—
Corey – what’s the difference between a barrel bomb and a bomb?
Barrel bomb is a relatively recent term adopted by the Western press largely for rhetorical purposes to demonize Assad. The questioning is weird, it is fair to expect Assad to be familiar with a recent term in a second language used in a media he doesn’t follow and fixate on this?
Some barrels were used early in the war (though will Assad be aware of the technicalities, could Obama accurately name USAF munition?). However, as it’s relatively easy to improve on just a barrel, most ‘barrel bombs’ are instead manufactured tubes with fins full of explosives – or to use the technical term ‘bombs’.
There’s actually not much evidence barrels are used most cases, it’s the media jumping to conclusions. After all, in most ‘barrel bomb’ attacks there’s a big explosion, which removes the evidence of a barrel and is exactly what you see if a bomb’s dropped – barrel or not.
Ze Kraggash 02.16.15 at 6:59 pm
Jeez. The guy denies that his army used these “barrel bombs”. That’s what it is. Maybe they don’t use them, maybe he doesn’t know, or maybe he lies. But is it really a sufficient basis for psychoanalysis?
john c. halasz 02.16.15 at 7:16 pm
Barrel bombs are poor man’s bombs. They are relatively easy and cheap to make, but because they are less accurate than high tech munitions, they tend to require more explosive power than the 500 or 1000 pound high explosive warheads that high tech munitions would deliver. The Iraqi army was using barrel bombs against Sunni areas recently, though no one seemed to condemn them for it. Assad’s denial is perhaps less about denying a barbarity, than about denying that his regime is struggling with a lack of more advanced technical means. But even “precision” bombs and artillery will have a certain statistical error rate, so pretending that more expensive, high tech munitions are somehow more “civilized” is equivalent to claims that the chosen enemy is always the aggressor.
LFC 02.16.15 at 7:18 pm
from the OP:
But throughout the war, you had figures like Robert McNamara and McGeorge Bundy (though McNamara left the Johnson Administration in February 1968 and Bundy in 1966), stressing the reason and rationality, the precision and pride, of the American war effort.
By the time McNamara left the Johnson admin, he had become disillusioned w the war and an advocate of bombing halt and negotiation efforts. There is the famous story of how he broke down in a meeting exclaiming (I’m paraphrasing) “We’ve dropped more bombs than in the whole of WW2 and it hasn’t done a ******* thing.” (McNamara on leaving the admin went to the World Bank, where his record was pretty good, not that that erases what he did before, of course.)
The most hawkish of LBJ’s advisors (by a fairly wide margin) was Walt Rostow, who replaced Bundy as national security advisor in mid-1966. See David Milne’s excellent America’s Rasputin: Walt Rostow and the Vietnam War.
Btw the point in the OP about “cooking pots” and masculinity/femininity is interesting, whether or not Assad consciously meant the gender implication.
Abbe Faria 02.16.15 at 7:25 pm
“Assad’s denial is perhaps less about denying a barbarity, than about denying that his regime is struggling with a lack of more advanced technical means.”
This is spot on.
Dropping unguided bombs from helicopters isn’t that great a weapon. It is hard to target rebels, so not your first choice. Assad would actually love to get his hand on the latest precision munitions. The best way to reduce civilian casualties would be to give him some.
The problem is if this happened those who want to turn Syria into Libya V2.0 would be unable to use ‘barrel bombs’ to demonize him, and he might start making progress against the moderate Islamic extremists the West has been arming. The ‘indiscriminate’ criticism is really insincere, the Western press and governments who make it would absolutely hate for Assad to get his hands on discriminate weapons.
Anarcissie 02.16.15 at 7:40 pm
‘Assad, McNamara, Bundy: these are the real Mad Men of history.’
Sure. But they are admired, praised, given power, followed, as are the many others of their kind. Why is that, and what do you propose to do about it?
Ronan(rf) 02.16.15 at 7:44 pm
“Dropping unguided bombs from helicopters isn’t that great a weapon. It is hard to target rebels, so not your first choice. Assad would actually love to get his hand on the latest precision munitions. The best way to reduce civilian casualties would be to give him some.”
I don’t really buy this. It’s a little too convenient an assumption of the Assad regimes aims are. Whether or not ‘dropping unguided bombs from helicopters’ is or is not a great weapon depends on what your goals are. If your goals are to bomb the opposition and civilian population into compliance then it can be a ‘good weapon.’ And this could very plausibly be the strategy that those in the regime are following. (and it does have historical precedents, ie Hama in 82 for example)
LFC 02.16.15 at 7:53 pm
Agree w Ronan @9.
The idea that if Assad were given the highest-tech precision weapons civilian casualties wd go down depends on the assumption that Assad doesn’t want to kill civilians, and I see little to no evidence to support that assumption.
It’s not just ‘the West’ that is ‘demonizing’ or criticizing Assad, nor is it just the Islamist opposition that it is doing so. There’s a range of opposition, incl a no-doubt small but existent secular-democratic opposition.
mattski 02.16.15 at 8:01 pm
See here, Jim DiEugenio, JFK’s embrace of 3rd world nationalism.
LFC 02.16.15 at 8:32 pm
@mattski
even if one accepts yr view of JFK in its entirety, does it have much of anything to do w the OP? The OP doesn’t say anything about JFK.
LFC 02.16.15 at 8:39 pm
Personally I am not big on hagiography of the JFK-cd-no-wrong-at-all-and-only-had-he-lived-everything-wd-have-been-perfect type of thing. Clearly there is significant evidence JFK had v. different views on Vietnam than Johnson and things might well have turned out v. differently in that area had JFK lived. As for JFK-was-a-great-friend-of-3rd-world-nationalism-regardless-of-its-ideological-coloration, I’m not as certain. Why are you on this particular crusade anyway, and why here? JFK was a superb politician and in some respects an insightful, thoughtful person, but let’s not go overboard. Wd be my feeling, fwiw.
Matt 02.16.15 at 9:06 pm
There was a UK blogger who a year or two ago was painstakingly documenting weapons used in the Syrian civil war, by all combatants, by way of carefully watching YouTube videos and analyzing images. His “Brown Moses” blog became fairly famous among people following the war wonkishly. It looks like he has stopped regular updates of that sort. He definitely documented a lot of barrel bombs. These were unguided containers holding explosives and scrap metal that didn’t have proper fuzing or aerodynamics like ordinary unguided gravity bombs. They tended to tumble, drift, and fail to explode at a higher rate than ordinary factory-made munitions.
I don’t know if it is the case, but it is at least plausible that the government forces no longer rely on barrel bombs. Certainly government forces would prefer proper factory-made bombs to the unreliable barrel bombs. But the issue of civilian casualties is completely separate from the issue of barrel bombs; the war is heavily concentrated in urban areas that have not been fully abandoned. Civilian casualties are baked in to the war. More accurate bombs just mean government forces bomb the rebel-controlled marketplace full of civilians, as intended, instead of hitting the nearby apartments full of civilians by accident.
It’s a fucking civil war. People in the West who are looking for some pure “good guys” to arm and cheer on are waiting for Godot. Show me a civil war without atrocities from every major belligerent group and I’ll show you a civil war that was inadequately documented.
LFC 02.16.15 at 10:22 pm
For support of my statement re the existence of a secular/democratic opposition (albeit presumably not large), see e.g.:
http://newpol.org/content/revolution-reaction-%E2%80%A8and-intervention-syria
LFC 02.16.15 at 10:28 pm
It’s a fucking civil war. People in the West who are looking for some pure “good guys†to arm and cheer on are waiting for Godot. Show me a civil war without atrocities from every major belligerent group and I’ll show you a civil war that was inadequately documented.
That doesn’t mean that in every civil war the commission of atrocities is evenly distributed. In the Sri Lanka civil war that ended several yrs ago, to take one ex., there were atrocities on both sides, but my recollection is that outside reports found a higher proportion on the govt side. That’s just one example. Saying ‘it’s a civil war, there are atrocities on all sides’ isn’t all that useful — except to debunk the idea that there is a ‘pure’ faction or side w any significant strength, which I doubt anyone thinks is the case in this conflict. I do tend to agree w yr pt re civilian casualties (in second paragraph).
mattski 02.16.15 at 11:02 pm
LFC,
I understand your reaction. I’ll try to explain where I’m coming from.
As far as being topical to the OP, I think the closing paragraphs reference the appropriate time frame and atrocities that we are (collectively) trying to understand. I bring up JFK not because I want to convince people he could do no wrong, but because I think the true history of the 60’s is hidden. I think current scholarship (in no small part the beneficiary of the Assassination Records Review Board which was formed as a result of Oliver Stone’s 1991 movie, JFK) is slowly unearthing that history and [bad news first] a) the truth of that era is nightmarish and shocking beyond belief and [good news last] b) bringing out that hidden history and the government & media role in suppressing it has the potential to become an Archimedean lever for meaningful change in the US and beyond.
Suppose I were to say to you, LFC, I believe the murders of JFK, MLK & RFK were all covert intelligence operations? Would you dismiss me? Well, I’m willing to bet that if I had a couple of hours of your time I could soften your skepticism to a substantial degree, and possibly set you off on a tear of new reading materials.
I realize that I risk being considered “not quite right” by raising the specter of secretive, high level political violence. It’s just that I’ve come to believe that is where the evidence leads us. It is potentially earth shaking, but I’m not sure we’re going to break out of the plutocratic rut we’re in without major tremors.
;^)
Ronan(rf) 02.16.15 at 11:09 pm
Personally, I do agree with LFC in large part. Recognising that there are atrocities on all sides in a civil war shouldn’t obscure the reality of the civil war (ie that at times some sides are more brutal than others, that some causes are more just etc) It certainly shouldn’t obscure the reality of *this* conflict, which was a brutal response by the Assad regime from the start, and initially against genuinely peaceful protesters. (Also the role the regime played in creating the Islamist opposition that people now want to side with Assad to destroy) So let’s be under no illusions, Assad might indeed not be personally the personification of pure evil, but he’s the head of a regime that has behaved with incredible callousness from the start and really don’t have a huge amount of interests that overlap with the US.
What should the US do ? I think we have to be clear what ‘arming the opposition’ or ‘arming the regime’ achieves/or is meant to achieve. The evidence (as I know it) doesn’t support the idea that the US arming groups (either govt or rebels) during a conflict is particularly effective, if effectiveness is measured by ‘your side’ winning. Obviously when the US arms someone it can’t be assumed that victory for their side is the main factor driving policy (which more plausibly most times is just to do something, to bleed geopolitical rivals, to exert some control over involved actors etc) So I agree with Matt aswell, the US picking a side and arming them to victory is not particularly likely. (whether that’s Assad or the rebels) I don’t even see how a meaningful alliance with Assad could developat this stage; considering the geopolitical alliances involved, the blowback the US would get in the region, the political costs at home etc.
Better to try and develop a meaningful ceasefire and peace process, both in Syria and regionally, which *would mean* dealing with Assad, and not being overly committed to one particular side.
LFC 02.16.15 at 11:16 pm
@Mattski
Ok, I see better now where you’re coming from, thks. (I don’t esp. want to say anything substantive on the matters you raise b.c I’m really not familiar w the research on the assassinations; but I would not, as a rule, dismiss something without first giving it a hearing.)
P O'Neill 02.16.15 at 11:37 pm
Another mad man of war is Abdelfattah al-Sisi. He has an economy so dire that people migrate to Libya in search of work, but he’s also got the fighter aircraft to bomb the “bad guys” (the actual damage looked like apartment buildings) when those migrants get beheaded.
Omega Centauri 02.16.15 at 11:40 pm
After reading for more than a year about the horror of barrel bombs, I finally found something that explained what they are. Its mostly what we’ve seen about, cheap improved explosive devices rolled out of a helicopter. Allegedly those copters are at 15,000 feet or so elevation so the accuracy if quite low. It is claimed that because of the inaccuracy of barrel bombs, they can’t be used too close to one’s own forces, so civilians in rebel held territory have reputably moved close to the “front lines” because it is actually safer than away from them.
I suspect they are used for two reasons. Firstly they are cheap. I doubt Assad has the financial wherewithall to wage a protracted civil war using only precision” munitions. Also if the goal is to punish or decimate or drive into exile civilian populations, they are an effective choice. While even precision weapons have high rates of collateral damage per combatant killed, these cruder weapons will inflict far more civilian damage/deaths per combatant killed.
Do note that the Syrian conflict has been largely sectarianized )partly as a deliberate strategy. Sunni’s see no choice but to fight Assad or flee, whereas most other ethnic groups feel they have to side with Assad (or at least acquiesce), because their future should the Sunni’s prevail currently looks grim. I think this dynamic works towards ISIS recruitment of foreign Sunni.s who feel they have to do something to supportr their co-religionists
David J. Littleboy 02.17.15 at 12:23 am
“As the Post explains, the US has its own history with such methods:”
It’s worse than you think. Way worse.
I was a comp. sci. undergrad at MIT from 1972 to 1976, and the comp. sci. department insisted we take some number of courses in a real science, so I did materials science (called Metallurgy and Materials Science in those days). One of the courses included field trips to local companies doing leading edge materials work. One place was doing what was then called “thick film circuits”. The engineer there blathered on and on about how they made the things, and so I asked, hey, what is this used for. What he was making was the “fuse” for anti-personnel land mines for use in Vietnam. Why not just a trigger that blows up when you step on it? This is way better. This thing shoots the mine up into the air end explodes it exactly at waist height, he explained. These mines use plastic shrapnel, so even if you get the victim to a hospital with X-ray equipment, the shrapnel can’t be seen, and they’ll die of sepsis.
Said engineer was very proud of his work and it never crossed his mind that what he was doing was horrifically evil.
Main Street Muse 02.17.15 at 12:51 am
“But I was more struck by the civilizational machismo of Assad’s claim that ‘we have bombs, missiles and bullets. There [are] no barrel bombs, we don’t have barrels.’â€
I guess I don’t understand why the barrel bomb is so much less civilized than whatever other bomb that might be used in densely populated areas.
100 years ago, poison gas was launched on the world. And in ’45, Little Boy was dropped on the unwitting citizens of Hiroshima.
Why go back to the 60s to find the Mad Men of history? We have Dick Cheney as a forceful advocate for torture. And in 2003, Bush landed on the USS Lincoln claiming “Mission Accomplished.”
Anarcissie 02.17.15 at 12:59 am
David J. Littleboy 02.17.15 at 12:23 am @ 22 —
Honeywell made such a device during the war in Vietnam. Maybe the same device. One day while I was working there, I was given a house newspaper which featured the engineer who designed it. As you say, it popped up in the air a few feet and then exploded. At that time there was already some outcry about the fact that these weapons were being heavily deployed against civilians, and that a large number of the victims were children. The story ended with some human-interest words about the engineer: he was a family man, and also a Sunday-School teacher. He looked like a kindly fellow.
Ronan(rf) 02.17.15 at 1:42 am
Me- “Better to try and develop a meaningful ceasefire and peace process”
(just to add, IMO, I don’t think that’s neccesarily going to work) ie
http://www.integrityresearch.com/wp-content/uploads/Integrity-Research-Summary-Report-Localised-Truces-and-Ceasefires.pdf
Matt 02.17.15 at 1:43 am
I guess I don’t understand why the barrel bomb is so much less civilized than whatever other bomb that might be used in densely populated areas.
It’s not. There is no such thing as a bomb that can be used in a civilized fashion in a densely populated area. “Reducing civilian casualties” was never a driving motivation for developing precision guided weapons, though that’s a nice spin. It was about “increasing damage to military targets.” For forces waging war, missing the enemy factory and hitting nearby civilians is lamentable more because the factory still works than because innocents are killed. Just the same as it’s a tragedy if the bombs destroy trees or rocks instead of the factory.
On the one hand I have long been an advocate for eliminating particularly indiscriminate or horrific weapons: incendiary bombs, land mines, nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons. On the other hand I think that a protracted struggle over the letter of the law when it comes to indiscriminate weapons of war can distract from the original spirit of reducing human suffering. If somehow the world succeeds in ending the barrel bombing of Syrian civilians, and they’re instead bombed with proper weapons built to the highest standards, that’s not really an improvement.
ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®© 02.17.15 at 1:44 am
If you don’t commit your mass murders with the latest in hi-tech weaponry, those are war crimes.
(Otherwise, they are for FREEDOMâ„¢!!!)
~
Matt 02.17.15 at 1:57 am
If you don’t commit your mass murders with the latest in hi-tech weaponry, those are war crimes.
“We fire into civilian-dense areas only with the most precise and modern weapons” is not actually equivalent to “we take every measure possible to spare civilians.” Certain military forces seem to expect full credit for the latter while committing only to the former. Maybe the Western press implication of “Syrian civilians are being killed with barrel bombs“, as opposed to “Syrian civilians are being killed with barrel bombs,” is just another reflection of how the US and its allies justify their own particular use of weapons.
Ronan(rf) 02.17.15 at 2:01 am
“Reducing civilian casualties†was never a driving motivation for developing precision guided weapons, though that’s a nice spin”
Genuine question as I’m curious (and don’t know) Does the desire to “reduce civilian casualties†not play a role in that it enables western countries fight wars with fewer direct civilian casualties so less domestic opposition, and gives more plausibility to claims that they’re abiding by international law etc
Surely sometimes precision bombing (and reduced civilian casualties) *is a strategic aim*, while other times (when you are explictly trying to terrify the opposition into submission) indiscriminate bombing is *the* strategic aim. In the second circumstance you dont use indiscriminate method because you dont have the resources , but because you don’t want to *waste* the resources using more expensive weapons when cheaper ones enable you to meet your goals.
Ronan(rf) 02.17.15 at 2:17 am
sorry typo/missing word -” In the second circumstance you dont use indiscriminate method NOT because you dont have the resources “
Peter T 02.17.15 at 2:34 am
The lawyers view of war is that it’s like a boxing match, and it would be great if this were so. Fought according to rules, and the prizes distributed afterwards as agreed. This was nearest the case in eighteenth-century “cabinet wars”, when interested civilians of a suitable class could dine with commanders and then take their picnic to watch the battle. The inhabitants of provinces re-allocated at the concluding conference were expected to change their subject status without unseemly fuss. It’s a nice picture, and only dissolves into the usual blood and misery if you look beyond the picnic at what often happened in the villages when the army came through.
In fact, methods and aims in war are closely related. At one extreme, if you want the land, and see the people as superfluous, then they get starved, un-homed, penned into odd corners and then pressured by any available means into leaving. Or dying. As Cromwell did with the Irish, or the US with native Americans, or Britain in numerous places, or as many regimes are doing today with uncooperative hill-tribes. At the other, if you want a new group of compliant taxpayers, then some care must be taken to preserve civilian life and property. In another variant, you want to frighten enough people away from one form of politics that your preferred version will prevail. This means killing enough of them that the survivors accept their cause as hopeless and acquiesce in the new regime.
ISIS, for instance, wants to create an “Islamic” state. Read Wahhabite version of Sunni Arab Islam. So Iraqi Kurds, Yazidi, Kakai, Shia and Syrian Christians, Druze, Alawi and Kurds must convert, emigrate or die. It does not want to rule these people: it wants to destroy them. Its tactics are adapted to this end.
Damascus’ aims are a bit different, and have probably changed as the war has gone on (as have the other parties’).
The madness cannot be judged by the method, but by whether the aim is achievable (ISIS’s aim is almost certainly not), and whether the method fits the aim.
But to understand is not, in this case, to forgive.
Matt 02.17.15 at 2:40 am
“Terrify the opposition into submission” was the sort of back-up, default justification for strategic bombing in World War II. It wasn’t effective. Even while the war was happening both sides could see it wasn’t effective, but they had the ability to make and deliver a lot of bombs without the ability to target those bombs very well. Bombs that landed exactly on tank factories, railroad depots, oil refineries, etc. would have been a lot more effective but they didn’t know how to make that happen at the time. On average it took waves of bombers to destroy a single major facility. Nowadays of course a first-world military could destroy an oil refinery with a single plane-load of guided bombs or a couple of cruise missiles. Having many more bombs and aircraft than opportunities to effectively bomb important targets, the belligerents of WW II took to bombing unimportant targets that were at least too large to miss: entire cities.
I don’t know if the availability of precision guided weapons increases the willingness of Western militaries, especially the US, to go to war. There are too many unknowns about the counterfactual situation of not-having precision guided weapons. The US had almost no precision guided weapons before 1970. It had a lot by 1990, and of course after Gulf War I the idea of precision guided weapons was really taken up by the US public and politicians. Did the US get more belligerent after 1970, or even after 1990? If you look back at the 20th century before 1970 the US used military power abroad pretty damn often then too. But there was also a different international context, a different media environment, a lot of things that make it hard to tease out the effects of military technology on political decisions around use of military force.
Ronan(rf) 02.17.15 at 2:52 am
I’m not really trying to say that they *cause* western countries to go to war more often, but that they enable them to better abide by international laws of war and appease domestic opposition (ie by reducing direct civilian casualties) So ‘reducing civilian casualties’ *could* be seen as a motivation to use precision weapons (which was a question above, rather than a statement, in response to – “Reducing civilian casualties†was never a driving motivation for developing precision guided weapons, though that’s a nice spinâ€)
On effectiveness – I’m not really talking about effectiveness per se, but saying that in the case of (for example) Syria it doesnt seem to be the case that they use indiscriminate methods because they dont have the technology not to, but because this is part of their strategy (to terrorise the population) and things like barrel bombs are a cheap way of doing that.
I think the point that indiscriminate bombing is not ‘effective’ is debatable (but I have to go now, and also don’t think I want to argue the case ‘for’)
LFC 02.17.15 at 3:20 am
A story about Rostow and bombing: In WW2 he had been in London, involved in picking German targets for Allied bombers to (attempt to) strike, became convinced that destroying German oil and other industrial facilities (to the extent they were destroyed) made an important cont. to the war effort (whether that was true or not, he became convinced of it). In the Vietnam context, he thought that destroying N. Vietnamese facilities would have a similar effect. Thought Ho Chi Minh might back down b.c he didn’t want his ‘industrial base’ destroyed. Of course N.Vietnam didn’t have that big an industrial base and Ho didn’t give a **** about protecting it, compared to his other aims.
Matt 02.17.15 at 3:52 am
I’m saying something slightly different. The motivation for developing precision weapons was absolutely not to reduce civilian casualties. It was to destroy military targets more rapidly and effectively. Now that the weapons are already developed and available in large quantity to many militaries, they can also used to minimize civilian casualties, but many times it’s really murky if the systemic effect is to reduce risk to civilians. The “we’re protecting civilians” aspect of precision weapons tends to be trumpeted out of proportion to the degree that civilians are actually protected. Like blowing up a house where insurgents are meeting, using an anti-tank missile, even if there are civilians inside the house or nearby. The implicit counterfactual defending this sort of operation often seems to be “well we should get credit for not saturation bombing the whole village like in the old days!” or something like that, but it’s a dubious counterfactual because if the CIA only had only unguided bombs at their disposal they probably wouldn’t be trying to assassinate insurgents from the air in Pakistan. They’d either have to do up close and personal assassinations on the ground or wait for the terrorists to attack US forces in territory where US forces operate openly.
I think that Syria forces use barrel bombs because they don’t have enough conventional factory-made bombs to keep up with consumption, not because they’re trying to be extra-terrifying to the rebel factions with slapdash bombs that are full of surprises for attackers and targets alike. The news of barrel bombs IIRC turned up only after the war had been going for a while. It’s consistent with running low on stocks of ordinary weapons and improvising bombs to make up for the shortfall. The indiscriminate targeting of the bombing has increased over time, barrel bombs and proper factory-made bombs alike, because the aircraft are now bombing from a higher altitude and this decreases accuracy. They stopped bombing from lower, more accurate altitudes (especially from helicopters) because the rebels got enough anti-aircraft weapons to make the low altitude bombing runs unsafe for government forces. You can find quite a few YouTube videos from a couple of years ago of rebels shooting down government helicopters. But the rebels don’t have powerful enough AA weapons to reach aircraft that attack from high altitude.
Omega Centauri 02.17.15 at 3:52 am
I think I disagree about “precision” versus non precision weapons. Assuming the mission is to take out some “military” target, then the former won’t be collateral casualty-free. but at least the civilian death toll will be a lot smaller. It may be the same morally, but the numbers do matter in the end.
Also during WW2, area bombing wasn’t just about imprecision or terror, it was also about denying the resources of the city to the enemy. Basically an application of the scorched earth tactics that have been used for thousands of years:, destroy any resources in territory controlled -or about to be controlled by the enemy. These resources are not just food, but also farm animals, infrastruture including stuff like wells, and even the local population. General Sheridan did not invent this sort of total war (I don’t think he targeted civilian lives even). It was used by both sides in the Punic wars. War really does bring out the worst in mankind.
kidneystones 02.17.15 at 9:18 am
What about Bill Clinton? Speaking of speaking truth to power, here’s Henry serving up some home truths with Greece’s new finance minister:
http://bloggingheads.tv/videos/3218
Bob Wright follows up with Yanis a year later:
http://bloggingheads.tv/videos/9943
Both interviews timely and very well worth watching if you’re interested in the slow-motion train wreck. Course, if twitter is your thing, you may find it hard to concentrate for the full hour.
Tim Worstall 02.17.15 at 9:49 am
The equivalence between the two sets of barrel bombs seems a bit odd. Those alleged in Syria are HE. Those in Vietnam were incendiaries. Very different points and purposes to the two technologies.
Bit like claiming that beer is equal to oil because both come in barrels.
Ronan(rf) 02.17.15 at 11:25 am
Okay Matt, got you. Thanks for the response. On the effectiveness question, which also speaks to strategic intent, I’m not sure that indiscriminate attacks specifically aimed at the population are ineffective, especially in these types of war ie ‘internal insurgencies.’ Mainly because to judge effectiveness you have to be clear about what the goal of the side using these tactic is. Take three examples; Russia in Chechnya, Israel during the second intifada and the end part of the campaign against the Tamil Tigers.
I’m not particularly confident about speaking to the specifics of any of them, but my impression is that all three did (to varying levels of brutality) specifically target the civilian population as a means to (1) increase the costs of any actions by the insurgency (2) make life so uncomfortable for population that they turn against it.
The argument might be made that they were ineffective because they didn’t resolve the conflict politically, at least in Palestine and Second Chechen War, but I think that would be beside the point as the specific aim at that time was to weaken the insurgency not resolve the underlying reasons for the conflict.
For example, in the second chechen war the political scientist Jason Lyall (in “Does Indiscriminate Violence Incite Insurgent Attacks? Evidence from Chechnyaâ€) looked at random shelling and the effect it had on responsive violence coming from a targetted population and came to the conclusion that when the Russian military shelled population centres at random, violence from them dropped substantially.
My impression is that it’s plausible to argue that when you explictly adopt a strategic position that you will respond to any use of violence with an overwhelming, disprortionate (and indiscriminate) response, it can have the desired effect of reducing violence. (this is, obviously, not to say that this *should* be the response, just to note what might drive decisions to respond with indiscriminate violence, even from actors that have the capacity to not have to.)
(I would note as well the use of indiscriminate violence as ‘punishment’ removed from any larger tactical aim, but this has gone on long enough as is.)
novakant 02.17.15 at 12:21 pm
Does the desire to “reduce civilian casualties†not play a role in that it enables western countries fight wars with fewer direct civilian casualties so less domestic opposition, and gives more plausibility to claims that they’re abiding by international law etc
If the US/Israel had any desire to “reduce civilian casualties” they wouldn’t have used bloody Cluster Bombs and White Phosphorus in very recent conflicts such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon and Gaza.
Fuzzy Dunlop 02.17.15 at 3:29 pm
I think there has been some terminological confusion. The term “barrel bomb” was being used early in the war for bombs filled with shrapnel, dropped on marketplaces and city streets–IOTW to punish civilian populations who protested against Assad’s gov’t. It was not AFAIK a term intended to make him look primitive, except insofar as attacking civilian populations–which, as Corey pointed out, the US has not shied from–is primitive. By saying ‘we don’t need barrels we have real bombs’ Assad is practically boasting that his goal was to attack civilians, these attacks had nothing to do with difficulties fighting actual militants with more standard weaponry. That is what is so sick about his ‘joke’.
LFC 02.17.15 at 4:11 pm
Peter T @31
The madness cannot be judged by the method, but by whether the aim is achievable (ISIS’s aim is almost certainly not), and whether the method fits the aim. But to understand is not, in this case, to forgive.
Implicit in this, ISTM, is also the question whether achievement of the aim is desirable, i.e., something that should be welcomed. In the case of ISIS’s aim the answer is obviously no.
As for civilians taking picnic baskets to watch battles (your opening graph): in the earliest battles of the U.S. Civil War, at least at the first battle of Bull Run, I recall reading that people took carriages from Washington to watch the battle. The practice pretty quickly stopped when people realized what Civil War battles were going to be like.
In certain 18th-century wars, if you were a young, fearless aristocrat and lucky enough not to be wounded or killed, war could be a kind of sport for you; in Corsica in the 1760s, the duke of Lauzun, with his mistress in tow, “dash[ed] across the battlefield [at the siege of Barbaggio] … under Corsican fire, as if the war were nothing more than a glorious game” (D. Bell, ‘The First Total War,’ p.23). By the time the Revolutionary and Napoleonic campaigns arrive and cannonballs routinely take off people’s heads and limbs, it’s probably not quite so much fun anymore. Though the dinner parties still take place (see e.g. ‘War and Peace’, or a vaguely remembered TV adaptation, as the case may be).
LFC 02.17.15 at 6:44 pm
p.s. his lover, not his mistress. Whatever.
Donald johnson 02.17.15 at 8:51 pm
Google for the AP story that came out on Feb 13 “High civilian toll in Gaza House Strikes”. I am new to IPads, so I don’t know how to cut and paste a link yet. Anyway, the story is about how most of the 800 dead in Israel’s precision strikes on Gaza houses last summer were civilians, as anyone could have guessed.
Donald johnson 02.17.15 at 8:55 pm
The Isreli human rights group B’Tselem also did a report on the results of the precision strikes on houses. So yeah, precise weapons in urban environments are not necessarily humane, though they might be presented that way for propaganda purposes.
Abbe Faria 02.18.15 at 12:47 am
“in the case of (for example) Syria it doesnt seem to be the case that they use indiscriminate methods because they dont have the technology not to, but because this is part of their strategy (to terrorise the population)”
There’s a misconception that Assad’s terrorises and the rebels are loved by the people. Assad’s very popular. People who politically opposed him were tortured and murdered, but the country was growing and had social and religious freedom, and was broadly secular and multiethnic and multifaith. If you stayed out of politics you could have a happy prosperous life and lots of people did well.
Much of Syria is now ruins run by people who will straight up kill you for your religion or ethnicity (and then upload the video to youtube to brag) and where there is no political or religious or social freedom. Assad doesn’t need to terrorise civilians in opposition areas to get support, the opposition do that themselves – IS, for example, cuts people’s fingers off for smoking. Most people in opposition areas would love to live under Assad. (Excluding the heroic YPG/J who notably Assad has a defacto truce with).
“By saying ‘we don’t need barrels we have real bombs’ Assad is practically boasting that his goal was to attack civilians”
No he’s not. If you read the interview he’s very clear (whether you believe him or not) that the SAA doesn’t target civilians and that he thinks civilian casualties are tragic. Assad’s an interesting guy, he was never supposed to be a dictator – he trained and planned and to spend his life as an eye doctor – he only became heir because his older brother died. He isn’t a Saddam or Gaddafi.
“(Also the role the regime played in creating the Islamist opposition that people now want to side with Assad to destroy)”
I think this is a smear spread around by people (Turkey, Saudi Arabia, US) who actually armed the Islamists. If it’s the prison release story, the other interpretation is that he was widely condemned for holding political prisoners (many of whom are for obvious reasons Islamist), so released them as a conciliatory measure without realising how much of a bad idea it was (or that his enemies are so belligerent and insincere they will condemn him for both holding political prisoners and for releasing them at their request). Assad has a habit of pissing his enemies off by doing what they ask, like allowing inspectors, or attending peace talks, or holding elections or ceasefires.
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