Senator Ted Cruz (Texas -R) has taken much criticism for urging the United States to “carpet bomb” the Islamic State. The humanitarian consequences would be obvious. In a debate of the Republican candidates for president held January 28, reports NBC News, he said he would “apologize to nobody” for that.
“It is not tough talk, it is a different fundamental military strategy than what we’ve seen from Barack Obama,” Cruz said. Cruz appealed to the example of the 1991 Persian Gulf war, which he said featured a higher rate of air strikes.
In a February 18 article, also for NBC News, Jim Miklaszewski and Courtney Kube report:
Asked about the claims of Sen. Ted Cruz and other presidential candidates that they would carpet bomb ISIS, Lieutenant General Charles Brown said that, “carpet bombing is not effective for the operation we’re actually executing.”
ISIS “doesn’t actually mass itself where you could actually even use that kind of tactic, and that’s a tactic that is really not effective for the fight we’re actually executing today,” he said.
… He added that considering the law of armed conflict and the U.S. effort to minimize civilian casualties, “carpet-bombing is just, in my opinion, not the way to go.”
Still, after nearly 10,000 U.S.-led coalition airstrikes against the Islamic State, at least 500 civilians have died. For example, in just a two-day period — Feb. 16 to Feb. 18 — 38 civilians were killed in airstrikes on Syria.
The United States may not be executing carpet bombing attacks, but, if targeted airstrikes continue, the numbers will eventually add up to a carpet-bombing extent.