Do we ever learn from history?

Sir, airpower is not employed today because of it's effectiveness (or lack of it). Airpower is employed because it's politically expedient and relatively low risk. It's much easier and less risky (both in safety to the SM and politically to the politician) to drop a bomb on a tent and say "look, I'm doing something!" than to deploy a company of Soldiers or Marines to assault that tent and say "look, I'm doing something!"

If we want to win their hearts, we must first grab 'em by the ****s! It's rather difficult to make that reach from 10,000' above the ground.

I think we thought our air power and their soldiers would be enough to fight and win. But their, Iraqi, forces can't take advantage of the success of the air strikes. The Iraqi Army expect the air strikes to kill all of the enemy. That isn't going to happen. You aren't going to show up after the fight is over and came victory. I just think we didn't think they were that much of cowards as they are.

COL Charles Williams, some do (or did) understand, and utilized previous lessons learned. Here are GEN George Patton's thoughts on the subject, all penned some 65-70 years ago!

"It’s the unconquerable soul of man, not the nature of the weapon he uses, that insures victory."
"The soldier is the army."
"Wars might be fought with weapons, but they are won by men. It is the spirit of the men who leads that gains the victory."
"... many, who should know better, think that wars can be decided by soulless machines, rather than by the blood and anguish of brave men."

Short answer is no, we do not. As a nation, voters and politicians alike are more focused on the issue-du-jour rather than the fact that history repeats itself, and that those who do not study the failures of the past are apt to repeat the same failures.

I keep hearing "75% of the bombers come back with their payloads because they couldn't identify where the ordinance was needed. (paraphrased)" Well, DUH! But there are other history lessons that seem to have been forgotten, like thinking that Americans on the ground in Muslim countries will ever be seen as "a peacekeeping endeavor."

No matter what the lessons are from history, if are our leaders ignore those and follow some other path of idiocy, all we can do is follow orders as we are required to.

"Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it."
-- George Santayana
"Those who study history are doomed to watch others repeat it"
-- Randy Bartlett
“What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.”
--Ecclesiastes 1:9 (NIV)

The question is not so much “Do we ever learn from history?”, but rather WHY don’t we ever learn? If we could answer that question, then solutions to “novel” problems – especially with regard to human relations – might stand a better chance of actually working.

With regard to WHY, there are at least THREE contributing factors to our overall failures (in general). The first is human conceit which believes that mankind is perfectible, that we somehow evolve beyond our base human instincts…or may somehow have them trained out of us. We believe that we will naturally do things better than the previous generations – without a firm or comprehensive first-hand knowledge of what they had to deal with. The Framers of our Constitution – recognizing this self-serving conceit – sought to put in place control measures to prevent abuse and repetition of errors made in every previous human experience with government. Bottom line: we tend to believe the very best in everyone,

“The [human] heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?” Jeremiah 17:9

Another reason we seem to miss the mark is the sheer amount of interactive complexity that exceeds our human mind’s capacity -- individual or collective -- to grasp. Therefore, we tend to oversimplify the problems and fail to consider unintended consequences of their “obvious” solutions.

Thirdly, we (some more than others...just ask my wife) get pigheaded that OUR solutions WILL work, and we do not like to be proven wrong (See Reason #1). Our tenacity to hold on to flawed solutions tends to grow the more of ourselves we devote to their success.

http://www.amazon.com/Logic-Failure-Recognizing-Avoiding-Situations/dp/ [login to see] /ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid= [login to see] &sr=1-1&keywords=logic+of+failure

I'd like to find the guy who said "air power alone can get the job done" and drive a pitot tube through his throat. It's like saying boots on the ground alone can get the job done. Who's saying this? And the article itself gets me beaked...if the strategy is "overwhelming air power delivering..." then what we're executing definitely is NOT the strategy. Overwhelming? Arrrgghhh!

Well... My second marriage is better than my first....

But, no. Politicians and the public are eternally enamored of the idea of war without human cost. As such "Airpower alone" will never die.

Colonel you are absolutely correct! Without boots on the ground all the bombing is for not. All we will be doing with air strikes is chasing the enemy all over. You need boots on the ground in order try and keep them from running all over like a bunch of cockroaches when you turn the lights on.

Sir,

I think one part of the issue is that we assumed the local fighters, who we trained and equipped, would be more effective. We keep hearing of Iraqi soldiers throwing down arms and running away, even though they largely outnumber the ISIS fighters. I think we were hoping that our air power would be the supplement to the local trained army.

You'd think those that make these decisions (politicians) would eventually figure this out....but then again there is a lot you'd think that they (politicians) would figure out that just never seems to come to pass.

It's obvious that Santayana isn't required reading these days (or for the last 6 decades for that matter).

I spoke about ISIS at my Holocaust Memorial service. Just as the world mostly shrugged as Hitler gained control of Europe, the world is mostly shrugging right now, with ISIS. The reality that ISIS has Boko Haram, AQ, Taliban and other terrorists groups paying fealty to them, meaning that much of Africa and the Middle East is in their reach. Because they have groups in the Sinai at Rafa, and in Libya, it's just a short hop to Europe now.

If the UN/NATO/US/etc don't start acting soon, this world will get ugly really quickly.

Like it or not, as a country we created this mess, so, imho, we bear a moral obligation to clean it up. I know that's easy for me to say, since I am undeployable, but I'm sure that many on this list would agree...

Unless one is prepared to exercise a nuclear option with a commitment towards the total extermination of one's adversary and ensuring the adversary's territory remains uninhabitable for generations, then Airpower alone can NEVER and WILL NEVER win a war...

Pape makes the compelling case...

http://www.amazon.com/Bombing-Win-Coercion-Cornell-Security/dp/ [login to see] /ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid= [login to see] &sr=1-1&keywords=bombing+to+win+air+power+and+coercion+in+war

The way the world is rolling currently, then I would have to say that most people in charge have a massive brain-fart/brain-dump when it comes to history. This usually happens when they enter a close relationship with the Good Idea Fairy

Emails, phone calls, press conferences from the comforts of a plush golf course aint gonna cut it....I have one thing very much in common with those we are fighting, I don't play golf....

You ever hear of the adage "its the old men that go and declare war but the young men that must go and die".....well too few of our elected officials have skin in the game today - maybe they'd act differently if we had more veterans in the seats, with that being said, I agree with you COL Charles Williams, an air campaign alone aint the answer here.

The same folks running operations released five Taliban guys for one deserter and now we may have to fight these dudes again. That is an example of how things are done.

COL Williams, you are entirely correct! After visiting with both the PRTs and the Imbedded PRTs returning from Iraq in DC and later a combat division and their commanders from Afghanistan I came to an undeniable conclusion. Force alone is not the answer. Without an infused strategic and diplomatic solution, the war games will only continue as often...or possibly more often...than they do currently. Somehow the DOD and the DOS have to sit down at the table as co-dependent strategists and the political leaders accept that winning battles alone does not transfer into winning the war...period! Prosecution is easy....strategic justice and weighing them at the cost of redeployment back to a war zone without pragmatism is not.

Sir: Agree with your sentiment here, fahrenbach pegged this very well 50 some years ago.

But, strategically, if we look at big picture national strategic objectives, one can place air strikes against ISIS in their appropriate place, as just one of the means being employed to counter-ISIS (the others being coalitions, Special ops direct action, cyber, training Iraqi security forces, etc) to support the containment of ISIS (the "ways") so as to maintain the structure/territory/viability of a unified Iraqi government and state (the "ends").

And this counter-ISIS strategy is but part of broader regional strategy, the centerpiece of which is stopping Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon in the short-term (or defending Israel, depending on how you want to frame it).

So, in both cases (counter-ISIS strategy and regional strategy), let's not dumb this down to "we're only doing air strikes" because this is just inaccurate and because it is a perspective that ignores the strategy that exists and is evident to those who look for it.

Whether these strategies will work or are appropriate---that is a different matter.

But we are clearly doing substantially more than a few air strikes here and there.