The Myth Of The Bombing Induced Coup

As a headline "Allies Are Split on Goal and Exit Strategy in Libya" seems a bit overblown to me. Any time you have a bunch of people cooperating you'll have some disagreement. But I get worried when I read this reporting:

The United States has all but called for Colonel Qaddafi's overthrow from within — with American commanders on Thursday openly calling on the Libyan military to stop following orders — even as administration officials insist that is not the explicit objective of the bombing, and that their immediate goal is more narrowly defined.

There's nothing wrong with hoping for the best, but this particular form of hope—that if you bomb a country's military enough, the generals will rise up and overthrow the government—seems like a perennial myth of air power. It didn't work in Iraq either time, it didn't work against Serbia in 1999, and I'd be very surprised if it works in Libya. Air power can achieve a lot. A man on foot with a gun can't beat a tank, but if the man on foot is assisted by an airplane that can drop a bomb that blows the tank up, then he's in much better shape. Important elements of the American military and political culture, however, can seem to let go of the hope that you can achieve broader strategic objectives just by bombing. If that were true, then it would give the technologically advanced United States a relatively cheap means of achieving worldwide military hegemony. But it's not true. If bombing Libya results in regime change it will be because tactical air support makes it possible for rebels on the ground to win.