Bombing For Peace

As the saying goes, We're fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them over here.

“It’s an adrenaline rush,” said Oropeza. “You get excited when a jet you loaded comes back empty.” -- Senior Airman Jose Oropeza, 40th EMXS weapons loader

You know, as long as we keep bombing, it's going to be hard for people who hate us to muster a big effective counterattack. Of course, the $64,000 question is, Why do they hate us?

Fortunately, most members of the rank and file in the US military don't have to ask--or answer--such open-ended questions.

They're too busy doing their job.

“We build them (the bombs) on a munitions assembly conveyor,” said Yale. “With a good crew, we can build one bomb in about six to eight minutes.” ...

Yale said when building the bombs, he works with parts like fins, fuzzies, strakes, lanyards and fuses.

“It feels pretty good,” said Yale about putting together weapons that are used in real combat situations. “There’s some extra pride involved. We put the ‘power’ in air power.”

This air warfare has really been used intensively since WWII, when we moved from a policy of bombing only military targets to targeting civilian population centers in order to "demoralize" the enemy out of their will to carry on the war.

We had to stymie the Japanese government's attempts to negotiate a surrender after the firebombing of Tokyo and Osaka incinerated hundreds of thousands of old men, women and children.

They couldn't accept "unconditional surrender" because they couldn't risk anything happening to the Emperor.

The Emperor himself and some high ranking officers were trying to extend the olive branch through the Soviet Union, but Truman cut off their overtures.

The Congress had spent over $2 billion on research and development of the A-bomb. If we didn't use it with demonstrable success, and deter the Soviet Union from military conquest, Congress would be unlikely to approve large defense appropriations in the future.

Well, we didn't deter the Soviet Union, but we did incinerate more Japanese cities, force their surrender (even though they were already willing to surrender), and ensure approval of giant defense budgets for the indefinite future.

In fact, our military now has so much money that we not only have expert bomb-makers like Mr. Yale, above, waging our war, but we have glitzy websites to glorify it.