You do NOT need boots on the ground to win all wars

I am still trying to get the answer to what is the specific mechanism the prevents a military from winning a war solely by air. I keep getting sweeping generalities and philosophy. I want the specifics. We bomb a target area. Why is it not over? What specifically is there left that requires boots?

I am aware that our D-Day and Pacific Islands bombardments looked like they wiped out all life, then we hit very heavy enemy fire when we hit the beaches.

That was 70 years ago.

On D-Day, we missed. The USAAC bombs fell behind the German bunkers harmlessly because the Navy demanded too much avoidance of hitting the Navy ships off shore. And the Navy guns similarly missed the bunkers falling behind them. Not a problem today.

With regard to Pacific shore bombardments like Iwo and Okinawa: unnecessary. Just take the non-mountainous, tiny islands and atolls with no fresh water by starving them out, not gun fire or contested landings.

IS is in the desert, like Desert Storm, not the jungle of Vietnam or China Burma India. Trying to fight from the desert when your enemy has air supremacy strikes me as game over. Mountains and jungle are another matter, but desert!? The only reason for boots on the ground is to comply with outrageous rules of engagement like avoiding hurting civilians or environment or dolphins. If that is the kind of “war” you are fighting, get Green Peace to do it, not the U.S. military.

I say this mantra that you can’t win a war from the air and need boots on the ground, now recited by everyone including Hillary, is false. People have not thought it through. The hardest hard core marines and infantry don’t want to hear it because it obsoletes them in that terrain.

Let me back test another war: Rommel in North Africa. We had broken their codes and were able to sink each and every one of their supply ships. That’s it. Rommel’s Afrika Korps is nothing without fuel, food, ammo. Just sink their ships, shoot down their planes until they run out of fuel, and fold your arms and wait for the white flag. Much of this you must have boots stuff is you must let us be brave and get our medals. No, we do not have to do that. We can be smart as well as brave, and just starve the SOBs. Let ’em eat sand.

Timothy C Brosnan Some Pacific Islands, and parts of New Guinea were bypassed. We cut them off and let them starve.

No attempt was made to try to recapture Wake Island. The Navy cut it off and shelled it, the Army Air Corp bombed it. We simply went ashore on Sept. 4th 1945 after the surrender.

A naval blockade, plus threat of full out nuclear retaliation, made an invasion of Cuba unnecessary in 1962.

The North Vietnamese were forced back to the negotiating table in December 1972, due to massive B-52 strikes.

Seems to me that oil is a glass house from which you cannot throw stones. Few things on earth are easier to put out of commission from the air than pipes and refineries. And what makes IS powerful to the degree that they could threaten us? Oil wells, pipes and refineries.