Strategic Terror: The Politics and Ethics of Aerial Bombardment

241 Pages·2006·0.78 MB·English

by  Beau Grosscup

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ABOUT THIS BOOK
Terrorism and the United States’ self-declared war on terrorism are the
defining leitmotifs of the times we live in. They are being used throughout
the Western world to justify widespread derogations of civil liberties and
the overwhelming use of force, increasingly via strategic bombing.
These aerial bombardments are aimed either explicitly at civilian
populations as a matter of strategy or deployed in circumstances where
extensive civilian deaths are guaranteed but are euphemistically written off
as collateral damage or accidental. In this important book, Professor Beau
Grosscup recounts the engrossing history of aerial bombardment of
civilian populations throughout the 20th century right up to the present
day in Afghanistan and Iraq.
He shows how certain European colonial powers, notably Britain,
initiated its use between the two World Wars; how wholesale bombard-
ment of civilians was an instrument of choice used by all the major
contestants of the Second World War. And how, since then, it has been
refined conceptually and practised extensively by the United States in
Korea, Vietnam and more recently in the Balkans, Afghanistan and Iraq.
Beau Grosscup exposes the labyrinth of rationalizations put forward, in
particular by the United States, that attempt to exclude strategic bombing
from being labelled state terrorism, and he further exposes the race, gender
and class biases that lie behind these justifications of aerial bombing of
‘other’ people.
This unique modern history of strategic bombing exposes the dirty
secret about the so-called ‘clean’ use of air power and aims to rally public
support against the politically motivated manipulations of the terrorism
issue by the Western bombing nations. The author asserts that if terrorism
is to be diminished in the future, the role United States aerial bombing
plays in sustaining the global cycle of violence must be recognized and
confronted.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Beau Grosscup is Professor of International Relations,
California State University, Chico. He has made a special study
of terrorism for many years, and is the author of Newest
Explosions of Terrorism, now in its 4th edition.
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B E A U G R O S S C U P
STRATEGIC
TERROR
THE POLITICS AND ETHICS
OF AERIAL BOMBARDMENT
SIRD
KUALA LUMPUR
Zed Books
LONDON AND NEW YORK
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Strategic Terror was first published in 2006 by
In Malaysia: Strategic Information Research Development (SIRD),
No. 11/4E, Petaling Jaya, 46200 Selangor
In the rest of the world: Zed Books Ltd,
7 Cynthia Street, London N1 9JF, UK and
Room 400, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010, USA.
www.zedbooks.co.uk
Copyright © Beau Grosscup, 2006
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic
or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
The right of Beau Grosscup to be identified as the author
of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with
the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988
Cover designed by Andrew Corbett
Set in 9/13 pt Georgia by Long House, Cumbria, UK
Printed and bound in Malta by Gutenberg Ltd
Distributed in the USA exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of
St Martin’s Press, LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
All rights reserved
A catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library
US Cataloging-in-Publication Data
is available from the Library of Congress
ISBN 1 84277 542 1 hb
ISBN 1 84277 543 X pb
ISBN 978 1 84277 542 4 hb
ISBN 978 1 84277 543 1 pb
ISBN 983 2535 832 (Malaysia)
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C
o
n
t
e
n
t
Acknowledgements viii s
List of Abbreviations ix
Prologue x
1 Shock and Awe!! Shock and Awe!! 1
‘Shock and Awe’ and Terrorism 3
The Political Culture of ‘Shock and Awe’ 4
Civilian Casualties: Whose Counting? 7
Iraqi Civilian Casualties: Blaming the Victims 11
2 The Origins of Strategic Bombing 15
The Great War and Strategic Bombing Theory 16
The Prophets Speak 19
Civilians in Warfare 25
3 Who Is to Be Bombed? The Self and Other
in Imperial Culture 28
The Rise of Imperial Culture 29
The Imperial Center: Bombing in the Great Wars
of the Future 36
The Militarized Prophets 43
Bombing Civilians To Win 47
Lives of the Prophets 51
4 Strategic Bombing Comes of Age 54
Bombs for the Colonial Masses 54
Total War in the Imperial Center: The Search for Rules 57
The Fascists Bomb Republican Spain 58
The United States Entry into Strategic Bombing 60
Strategic Bombing in World War Two 63
5 Cold War Strategic Bombing:
From Korea to Vietnam 70
US Cold War Bombing Doctrine 70
Total War: The Atomic Strategic Bombing Scenario 74
A Return to Conventional Strategic Bombing 75
The Bombing of Korea 77
Lessons of the Forgotten War 81
Bombing Indochina 84
Assessing the Civilian Carnage 87
Objectifying Indochina’s Victims 91
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6 Terrorists in the Bombsights 94
The Politics of Terrorism 94
The New World Order: Keeping Terrorism at a Distance 98
7 Strategic Bombing in the 1990s 105
The Persian Gulf War: Planning the Air Attack 107
The ‘Hyperwar’ 110
Hyperwar: Assessing the Carnage 111
Terrorizing the Environment 114
Counting the Hyperwar Dead 115
Playing the Terrorism Card 117
Race, Class and Gender in the New Terrorism 119
Bombing the Terrorists of the New World Order 121
Israeli and Russian Strategic Bombing 122
NATO’s ‘Humanitarian’ Bombing of Kosovo-Serbia 126
Bombing the Environment: Indirect Civilian Deaths 132
8 Bombing to Win: 9/11 and the War
on Terrorism 137
The Strategic Bombing of 9/11 138
Bush’s Post-9/11 War on Terrorism 139
The Revenge Bombing of Afghanistan 142
The New Precision War: How Accurate? 145
Counting Civilian Casualties: Business as Usual 148
The Pentagon Makes Civilian Casualties Disappear 151
9 Dodging the Terrorism Label 156
The Politics of Defining Terrorism 156
The Instrument of Political Socialization 157
Imaging Terrorism 159
The Politics and Ethics of Linguicide 160
How to Avoid the Terrorism Label When Bombing 165
10 Terror from the Skies 177
Is Strategic Bombing Terrorism? 179
Strategic Bombing as Terrorism 184
The Real Terrorism Divide 186
What Must Be Done? 187
Notes 191
Select Bibliography 213
Index 219
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For Cooper Grant
My treasure, my heart, my peace …
were that I could follow in your footsteps
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Acknowledgements
This book belongs to many people, especially those who have expressed
contempt for terrorism wherever it occurs, whoever the perpetrator is and
for whatever reason. Unknown to most of you, individually and collec-
tively you have been my mentors. May these pages give you more reason to
persevere?
My thanks go to all the students in my Politics of Terrorism classes at
California State University, Chico, with a special salute to those who, in the
post-11 September 2001 jingoistic climate, listened patiently to, thought
deeply about, and argued constructively with the ideas of this dissident
student of terrorism. The support from the CSU Chico Summer Scholars
Program, the insistence of my Department of Political Science and
California Faculty Association colleagues that sabbaticals are essential to
democratic intellectualism in an increasingly corporate academic culture,
and the many venues that invited me to test my ideas were all instrumental
to this project. Grateful appreciation goes to the editorial staff of Zed
Books, especially Robert Molteno and Anne Rodford for their patience,
hard work and encouragement, all of which made for a most constructive
professional experience. Professors Beverly Crawford, Mimi Riley, John
Martin, Miriam Monges, Joseph Russo and Scott Sibary, I am indebted to
your soul-filled friendship, first-rate intellect and considerable expertise. I
am particularly appreciative of your insistence that we sort through my
various confusions. Finally, I am deeply beholden to Richard ‘Ricky’
Nadeau for his incessant interest in and invaluable help with this project.
Besides epitomizing in theory and practice the true meaning of intellectual,
you are a magnificent person and public treasure.
George Charles ‘Beau’ Grosscup III
Cohasset, California
viii
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Abbreviations and Acronyms
ACTS Air Corps Tactical School
BBC British Broadcasting Corporation
CEP Circular Error Probable
CSIS Center for Strategic and International Security
DU Depleted Uranium
FBI Federal Bureau of Investigation
IRC International Red Cross
IRA Irish Republican Army
JCS Joint Chiefs of Staff
NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization
NLF National Liberation Front
OPEC Oil Producing Exporting Countries
PGM (Precision-Guided Missile)
PLO Palestinian Liberation Front
Psyops Psychological Operations
RAF Royal Air Force
SAC Strategic Air Command
SHAEF Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force
UNICEF United Nations International Children’s Education Fund
UNITA National Union for Total Independence of Angola
USAID United States Agency for International Development
USSBS United States Strategic Bombing Survey
9/11 September 11 2001
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