April 29, 2015 "Information Clearing House" -  Debate over the nature and impact of civilian casualties from U.S. aerial attacks continues. “Are we creating more terrorists than we’re killing?,” Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld once asked of the U.S. invasion of Iraq.¹ The rise of Al Qaeda in Iraq and of its offshoot ISIS, suggests the answer there.² Reflecting in 2012 on U.S. drone strikes in Yemen, the former director of the CIA’s Counter-Terrorism Center, Robert Greiner, wrote: “One wonders how many Yemenis may be moved in future to violent extremism in reaction to carelessly targeted missile strikes, and how many Yemeni militants with strictly local agendas will become dedicated enemies of the West in response to US military actions against them.”³ That same month a Yemeni lawyer warned: “DEAR OBAMA, when a U.S. drone missile kills a child in Yemen, the father will go to war with you, guaranteed. Nothing to do with Al Qaeda.”⁴

In 2013 David Rohde of Reuters reported that “Drone strikes do kill senior militants at times, but using them excessively and keeping them secret sows anti-Americanism that jihadists use as a recruiting tool.”⁵ As discussion continued over “How Drones Create More Terrorists,” Hassan Abbas remarked that in targeted areas, “Public outrage against drone strikes circuitously empowers terrorists.”⁶ The humanitarian impact and the political “blowback” can be serious — even from relatively restricted tactical air campaigns.

What of sustained strategic carpet bombing? Is there any correlation between bomb tonnage and political blowback? During World War Two, United States aircraft dropped 1.6 million tons of bombs in the European theater and approximately 500,000 tons in the Pacific theater. Some 160,000 tons of bombs fell on Japan, nearly all of it in the final six months of the war. Much of it targeted civilian industrial areas, beginning with the March 10, 1945 firebombing of Tokyo and including the atomic bombs dropped that August on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Decisive victory proved more elusive in regional conflicts of the postwar era, even when the U.S. continued to deploy massive bomb tonnages. During the Korean War of 1950-53, the U.S. dropped 635,000 tons of bombs and 32,000 tons of napalm, mostly on North Korea.⁷ And from 1961 to 1972, American aircraft dropped approximately one million tons of bombs on North Vietnam, and much more on rural areas of South Vietnam — approximately 4 million tons of bombs, 400,000 tons of napalm, and 19 million gallons of herbicides.⁸

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