Our armed forces may be volunteers but we still think of them as fellow citizens, not hired hands. This makes the losses they sustain politically sensitive. When we lose servicemen and women in combat, policymakers need to have very convincing reasons to offer. All this has seemed to offer a way to use our power to support our purposes without risking the domestic repercussions that, say, dead U.S. Army Rangers in the alleys of Mogadishu had. The problem, alas, is that history offers little warrant for optimism about the results.
Air power can do much, but like every other weapon system ever devised, it has clear limits.
Victory without air power was not possible, but victory through air power alone proved chimerical. In the end, a determined opponent had to be confronted and beaten, expensively, on the ground. Even if they do, however, this will not be the last time we will confront such situations, and we need to think about how we wish to handle them. Perhaps we all need to think hard about this.