Bombs Away!

Is this not getting just a tad ridiculous?

NATO launched a number of missile strikes against targets in the Tripoli area on Tuesday that appeared to include Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi's compound, witnesses said.

Libyan officials said four children were wounded, two of them seriously, by flying glass caused by blasts from NATO strikes in the Tripoli area overnight.

I have no problem decrying Gaddafi, in all his myriad spellings as a real bastard, but really, does it make the West look a lot better to keep trying to blow him up and get kids in the process? How many times have we tried to do this now all the way back to Reagan's raid in 1986?

In the Second World War, even when the heads of government included Hitler, Tojo and Stalin, this sort of targeting was not commonly practiced (highest profile Admiral Yamamoto, and he was in a real military uniform, not one he put together from a TJ Maxx catalog).

Yet in our more "civilized" era of smart bombs it has become de rigueur. But, when has it actually worked? We bombed Saddam in two wars, multiple times, and it did not work, we spent months leading up to Tora Bora imagining bin Laden cooped up in a Bond-villains cave-complex dropping MOABs and it did not work. How many predator drones have been aimed against "high-profile" targets successfully? Now we've made various efforts against Gaddafi, and accomplished what exactly? I suppose the argument is "it will help reduce civilian casualties", but really who can make that argument honestly when we have actually seen it in practice?

I know it is "easy" to drop bombs when you are so "militarily" superior, but is it very smart?

[cross-posted at Firedoglake]