Joe Guinan of openDemocracy discusses the repeated failures of bombing as a means of addressing conflict and argues that it’s time we invest in understanding the conditions for peace (“Bombs away! Air power as panacea,” openDemocracy, 2 October 2014):

So impoverished is the range of mainstream thinking on such matters that the choice is often presented as bombing or nothing. Never mind that, just a short while ago, we were being told that it was the other side in this conflict that we should be bombing. (‘Bomb both sides!’ comes the answering cry). ‘History teaches,’ wrote Gramsci, ‘but it has no pupils.’

[…]

We have not invested in understanding the conditions of peace. After a century of bombing, isn’t it about time that we did?

Read the full article here.

Photo credit: CC BY 2.0 image “Best of the U.S. Air Force – Department of Defense Image Collection – September 1998” courtesy of Expert Infantry on Flickr.