Putting Warheads on Foreheads

Reprinted from Bracing Views with the author’s permission.

I was reading an article from 2007 by an Air Force master sergeant, “We are called Airmen,” only to stumble on these lines:

You have to be able to understand what part you play in America’s defense. You have to be disciplined and willing to maintain your readiness to go wherever our enemy confronts us and to live up to the ideals of the core values of integrity, service and excellence.

As an Airman, you have to bring airpower to the battlespace effectively and ensure it is properly applied.

Your charge as an Airman of the 4th Fighter Wing is to deliver “combat airpower, on target, on time for America, or more simply, “put warheads on foreheads.”

Now, this article is featured on the Air Force’s official website, so I assume it captures important truths the AF wants its airmen to know. But are these “truths” really true? Is that all there is, my friend? Then let’s keep bombing.

Who is “our enemy”? What are the reasons why this enemy “confronts us”? Is America’s “defense” really safeguarded if the mission is everywhere and anywhere and “wherever” U.S. forces are “confronted”?

And how do you apply airpower “properly” in the “battlespace”? The author has the answer to that one: by putting “warheads on foreheads.” Or, as we said in my day, by putting bombs on target.

Of course, this is rah-rah stuff, military cheerleading, if you will. The article was posted during the Iraq War, when the Air Force was at pains to stress its relevance in what was largely a ground war. Which explains this passage:

We are doing so well [in the war on terror], we make it look too easy. Our weapons systems are so precise; we can deliver ordnance anywhere, any time. If [sic] fact, if ground troops chase the enemy into a house, our aircraft can drop a bomb that eradicates one mud hut, while leaving all the others in the neighborhood standing.

Now that’s what I call precision! The Air Force made it look too easy! We dropped warheads on the foreheads of evil-doers without any innocents being killed and wounded. It’s almost as if our bombs and warheads sang “Amazing Grace” as they slammed into the enemy (and only the enemy, whoever that might be and wherever they might live).

Naturally, this article also makes reference to the “Airman’s warrior ethos.” That old idea (and ideal) of the citizen-airman who serves to support and defend the U.S. Constitution isn’t even mentioned. We’re all “warriors” and “warfighters” now.

Ours not to reason why; ours but to drop warheads on foreheads; theirs but to scream and die.

What is it, exactly, that the U.S. military is making it look “too easy” to do? Having lost the Iraq and Afghan wars despite enormous amounts of munitions used, it seems “losing” is the answer here. That, and killing, of course. And not just the bad guys.

William J. Astore is a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF). He taught history for fifteen years at military and civilian schools. He writes at Bracing Views.