Ergo the problem must be a nail. The military strategist and inventor of the 4th Generation Warfare concept points out that the methodology of the latest military efforts indicate that those efforts are doomed to failure:
Nothing could testify more powerfully to the failure of U.S. efforts on the ground in Iraq than a ramp-up in airstrikes. Calling in air is the last, desperate, and usually futile action of an army that is losing. If anyone still wonders whether the “surge” is working, the increase in air strikes offers a definitive answer: it isn’t.
Worse, the growing number of air strikes shows that, despite what the Marines have accomplished in Anbar province and Gen. Petraeus’ best efforts, our high command remains as incapable as ever of grasping Fourth Generation war. To put it bluntly, there is no surer or faster way to lose in 4GW than by calling in airstrikes. It is a disaster on every level. Physically, it inevitably kills far more civilians than enemies, enraging the population against us and driving them into the arms of our opponents. Mentally, it tells the insurgents we are cowards who only dare fight them from 20,000 feet in the air. Morally, it turns us into Goliath, a monster every real man has to fight. So negative are the results of air strikes in this kind of war that there is only one possible good number of them: zero (unless we are employing the “Hama model,” which we are not).
Kill them all or isolate them. Those are the only two strategic options and our moral justification for the invasion and occupation demands the latter. Simply widening the conflict by attacking Iran merely postpones the decision while increasing the risk of total failure.
Fortunately, there is some mordant humor to be found in all of this: “the U.S. Air Force recently announced it is developing its own counter-insurgency doctrine”. I, for one, very, very much look forward to learning precisely what this doctrine is.