>But they could do that since Hiroshima and Nagasaki, no? They did it in
>Vietnam and Cambodia, no? There were no lossess resulting from high
>altitude strategic bombing - but th eissue was not losses but effectiveness
>as these air raids did not produce the desired tactical impact.
Oh there were more than a few losses to anti-aircraft fire then.
A couple of points. One, while the snazzy smart weapons obviously don't spare civilians as advertised, they can do a shitload of damage. And two, while the bombing in Indochina didn't have the military effect desired at the time, in retrospect it's hard to argue the Vietnamese won that war. The U.S. military left the country a smoldering, poisoned ruin, and people are still suffering the consequences today. This is especially true when the bombing is followed by an economic embargo, which is, as a couple of Foreign Affairs authors argue, a true weapon of mass destruction.
Doug