Do you agree with LT. Gen. MacFarland that carpet bombing is not the answer?

There are a bunch of great responses on here about why carpet bombing wouldn't be effective. I don't want to waste reiterating on what people have already said so, instead I would like to introduce different reason why it wouldn't be effective. Daesh (the name for ISIS CENTCOM uses and ISIS hates) has drawn the attention of the global community. There are so many key global powers getting involved in Iraq and Syria. Most countries have somewhat similar goals but some have ulterior motives. You have countries like Russia and Iran operating in the same battle space as the U.S. and our allies. These countries don't always play nice with the other countries that are operating there, as can be seen in the Russian fighter that flew into Turkish airspace. In Syria there is a lot more going on than just Daesh killing people, you have civil war going on at the same time. There are many different sides to the conflict there. If we went in and carpet bombed Iraq and Syria we could end up killing people other than Daesh, who might be involved in fighting Daesh. This could include Russia or Iran, who are fighting there but aren't really our allies. Since they aren't really our allies they aren't going to tell us about any secret operations that they are conducting which could lead to them being in an area that we are carpet bombing. This could then be considered a declaration of war by the United States and we are in WWIII fighting terrorist as well as other nuclear powers. Also if U.S. carpet bombing operations were successful, and the success was publicized, some of the other countries could be jealous that the U.S. is getting the spotlight for the success. This could cause Russia or Iran to do things to hinder our operations, such as target our aircraft with their air defense systems. This could allow them to do something that promotes themselves in the media, or at least down play the effectiveness of U.S. operations. Although the situation may seem black and white to politicians trying to win votes, but the actual environment in the Levant right now is very delicate. The politicians as well as many of their constituents think that we just need to kill a bunch of bad guys. That is only a small piece of what needs to be done, while at the same time preventing WWIII from starting up with Russian and Iran. As is stated in other responses, there needs to be a whole of government approach to defeat radicalized Islamic terrorist to include Daesh, al-Qaeda, and the affiliates of these global terrorist franchises.

I agree to some extent though I'm not sure it's completely for the same reasons.

My reasoning for thinking carpet bombing isn't the route to take is 1: as others have said there could and likely would be a high amount of civilian casualties and 2: it would overall just be a pointless waste of resources. Sending a bunch of bombers in to drop tens to hundreds of unguided bombs that only a few of which if any would actually hit a valid military target. We are better off sticking with coordinated and guided munitions so that we know what we are actually hitting.

LTG MacFarland is completely correct in asserting that carpet bombing is not a viable option against ISIS. ISIS is not a government, they don't have defined boarders, nor do they care about the civilian population the hide behind. Carpet bombing would do nothing but make feed their propaganda

No carpet bombing has worked to force civilians into quelling the antagonists since the beginning

That depends upon what is meant by carpet bombing. If you mean cells of B-52s dropping sticks of 105 500 lb. dumb bombs as we did in Viet Nam, the answer is no.

If you mean an aggressive bombing campaign like we used going into Iraq, the answer is that we certainly SHOULD have done it when we had them in open desert in convoys of captured US weapons.

And as it is today, we should still have an aggressive bombing campaign against them (not the P.R. bombing campaign this administration is conducting).

If a war is worth fighting it is worth fighting to win. Hard and fast.

Totally agree

I think people hear carpet bombing and have no idea what they are talking about. Saturation bombing does have it place and time but is not the desert or an insurgent army in a civilian population.

If they had entrenched troops or had factories pumping out arms and munitions sure - however I don't see it as the correct strategy in taking on ISIS. This is an asymmetric fight won by patience and persistence.