<< ... the German bombing of Rotterdam and the blitz of London as well as other English cities; the Japanese bombings of Shanghai and other Chinese cities; the Allied fire-bombing of German and Japanese cities; the US atomic destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; the Cold War-era of mutually assured destruction in which two superpowers threatened to use the ultimate in airborne explosives to incinerate the planet; the massive, years-long US bombing campaigns against North Korea and later North and South Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia; the American air power "victories" of the first Gulf War and Afghanistan (2001); and the Bush administration's shock-and-awe, air-and-cruise-missile assault on Bag...

<< ... the German bombing of Rotterdam and the blitz of London as well as other English cities; the Japanese bombings of Shanghai and other Chinese cities; the Allied fire-bombing of German and Japanese cities; the US atomic destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; the Cold War-era of mutually assured destruction in which two superpowers threatened to use the ultimate in airborne explosives to incinerate the planet; the massive, years-long US bombing campaigns against North Korea and later North and South Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia; the American air power "victories" of the first Gulf War and Afghanistan (2001); and the Bush administration's shock-and-awe, air-and-cruise-missile assault on Baghdad in March 2003. The latter, though meant to "decapitate" the regime of Saddam Hussein, killed not a single Iraqi governmental or Ba'ath party figure, only Iraqi civilians. In those seven decades, the death toll and damage caused by war - on the ground and from the air - has increasingly been delivered to civilian populations, while the United States has come to rely on its air force to impose its will in war.>>