Airstrikes in Afghanistan

This is one of the problems with relying upon targeted air strikes in the fighting of a guerilla war:

President Hamid Karzai ordered an inquiry Tuesday into a U.S. bombing that killed at least 16 civilians, including some at a religious school, and called for a meeting with the commander of American forces in Afghanistan.

U.S. warplanes targeted the southern village overnight Sunday because Taliban fighters were hiding there, and dozens of the militants were killed. It was one of the deadliest U.S. attacks since the American-led invasion in 2001.

Local officials said 17 civilians died in the bombings of an Islamic school and mud-brick homes, and the U.S.-led coalition said at least 20 _ and perhaps as many as 80 _ militants were killed.

This isn't the first time for this sort of thing:

Just last month, Karzai complained about coalition attacks that killed seven civilians in eastern Kunar province. Karzai ordered an investigation and demanded the coalition use restraint.

I'm not condemning outright the value of carefully targeted airstrikes. And I don't believe for an instant that these deaths are the result of bloodthirsty pilots and planners who don't care who they bomb. But airstrikes, no matter how carefully planned and executed, do not mesh well with guerilla war-fighting. For one, it doesn't make much difference how precise your targeting is if your intelligence is bad and you drop a 2,000-lb. bomb on a house full of civilians. Second, you cannot carefully calibrate the destructive power of a bomb. A team of soldiers on the ground can be wantonly destructive, or they can be very precise. But a bomb will always blow up with a certain amount of killing force in a certain area, and if there are civilians in that area they'll probably die, even if your target is just the combatants. Unlike a soldier with a rifle or a tank, bombs are pretty stupid.

There are two reasons our military tends to prefer bombs to boots on the ground. One is that it spares us casualties. The truth of the matter is that Americans would much rather read about 17 dead Afghan or Iraqi civilians than 3 or 4 or more dead American soldiers. Secondly, bombs are cheaper and easier to use, and unlike troops, you have as many as you're willing to make. Our present manpower shortages are excuse enough alone to rely upon air power.

The problem is that no one who knows anything about guerilla war recommends that you fight it by dropping bombs on your enemy, even if they're laser-guided, robotic, whatever. Dropping a bomb on the heads of some women and children is a pretty good way to lose a war.