Peace through superior firepower

By Fester:

Artillery and air strikes, no matter how precise are not an effective means of winning hearts and minds as the smallest munitions still produce area effects and will kill a significant number of innocents even if best efforts are taken to minimize civilian casualties while firing into high density urban areas.  The recent push into Sadr City had the US provide stand-off fire support for a six week stalemate that was resovlved politically and a significant chunk of that support was from air power; via Abu Muqawama:

The U.S. military has fired more than 200 Hellfire missiles in Baghdad since late March--just six were fired in the previous three months

American ROE require positive visual identification of "hostile act" or "hostile intent" before firing, and U.S. pilots are diligent about following these guidelines, and war is not a video game--real people, including innocent bystanders, die. Sadr City is a slum of 2 million souls stacked on top of one another...

the heavy reliance on airstrikes during the surge is evidence of the lingering attraction overwhelming firepower has for the U.S. military.

This attraction towards heavy firepower is not limited to air strikes.  One US brigade commander uses artillery as a psychological terror weapon by frequent H&I strikes (via Fabius Maximus)

 Well, that�s a great question and one I like talking about. Eleven thousand five hundred rounds, I still believe in the carrot and stick, based on the propensity of this culture to � how they deal with power and authority. And it goes back to � it serves a couple purposes, the whole terrain denial piece.

One, we deny terrain to insurgents, (movement ?) routes, IED placement, those types of things. But it also sends a significant message when we start concentrating on a particular area for four or five days at 75 to 100 rounds a day in a given area, it has a profound impact on the population. Just like if I would start shooting artillery around your neighborhood.

We always do the collateral damage assessments and we will not � we have mathematical formulas that we know the effect, the physical effect of the round going off on anything nearby. So that�s not an issue, but it�s just the psychological impact.

If I would start shooting artillery around your neighborhood, it would quickly get your attention and cause you to start asking questions. Why are they doing this? And most of the time, 99 percent of the time they know why we�re doing it. We just received a series of IEDs that damaged vehicles, hurt our soldiers, et cetera. So they quickly get the message.

Peace through superior firepower is a good bumper sticker but a horrendous method of COIN.