Military Review English Edition November-December 2015 | Page 146

GROUNDED: The Case for Abolishing the United
States Air Force
Robert M. Farley, University Press of Kentucky,
Lexington, Kentucky, 2014, 272 pages

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or nearly two centuries, On War, by Carl von
Clausewitz, has been considered the primer on
the interface of war and politics and the nature
of war itself. The basic argument of Grounded: The
Case for Abolishing the United States Air Force is that
the U.S. Air Force has never been effective in dealing
with the realities of war as described by Clausewitz.
Rather, from its outset as a component of the U.S.
Army, the Air Force has persisted in the delusion
that it could lift the fog of war, that it could win wars
without boots on the ground, and that technology
would inevitably bring improvement, supremacy, and
domination of a clearly understood battlefield from a
vantage point high in the air and even over the horizon. However, rather than over the horizon, the Air
Force was over the rainbow, according to this author.
And, the lure of technology and victory—without
mud or blood (on our side)—seduced politicians of
most persuasions during the century of airpower.
After laying out his argument that Clausewitz remains valid, Farley traces the development of airpower history from early in the twentieth century into the
twenty-first. He deals with the wars and the interwar
periods; with the creation of the United Kingdom’s
independent Royal Air Force; with Billy Mitchell,
Giulio Douhet, and other airpower-above-all advocates; and with the changes in aircraft technology
over time. He finds that advocates inside and outside
the service have consistently exaggerated the effectiveness of airpower, whether in the bombing campaigns
of World War II or in the drone forays of the current
era. Despite the myth, winning wars requires boots.
In fact, the delusional Air Force and its backers
have hampered, if not endangered, the efforts they
were to have supported. The belief in strategic airpower minimizes close-air support and general assistance
to ground forces. That is an immediate battlefield
problem. More serious is the way that the promises of
cheap and easy victories influence the civilian government, mostly nonveteran as it is, to venture into
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risky escapades that inevitably lead to introduction of
ground forces after the air effort prove inconclusive.
Farley contends that the Air Force is not useless—it is merely an overpriced attractor for those
who would throw around America’s weight with less
risk than using ground troops. He lays out a plan for
integrating air resources into the U.S. Army and the
U.S. Navy; cites instances where reintegration has
occurred, primarily in Canada; and argues forcefully,
if not convincingly, for the abolition of the free-standing air arm.
There is probably no real chance that any of the
author’s suggestions will come to fruition. The Air
Force lobby is quite strong, and its contractors are
spread throughout the myriad congressional districts.
Still, Grounded does raise interesting questions and
challenge the status quo, and it should give pause to
those who might be inclined to assume that the Army
of today is for now and always ideal and immutable.
Unstated is the question: If the Air Force can lose
independent status, why not the Army and Navy too?
John H. Barnhill, PhD, Houston, Texas

A LAND OF ACHING HEARTS: The Middle East
in the Great War
Leila Tarazi Fawaz, Harvard University Press,
Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2014, 416 pages

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eila Tarazi Fawaz’s sweeping synthesis of the
First World War in the Middle East explores
the social and cultural transformations
wrought by the war. Understanding the war’s influence, Fawaz argues, is essential to understanding the
social and political turmoil of today’s Middle East.
According to Fawaz—the Issam M. Fares professor
of Lebanese and Eastern Mediterranean studies at
Tufts University—World War I was the “foundational
experience of the modern Middle East.” The war was a
global conflict but generated very specific and lasting
effects on local identities and politics. As a result, a
central feature of Fawaz’s narrative is that the conflict resulted in tremendous political changes, such as
the breakup of the multifaith, multiethnic =