Courtesy of American Thinker:
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2026/04/decapitation_and_bombing_the_little_people.html
Eighty-three years ago this month, sixteen U.S. Army fighter planes took off from Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands on a long-range mission of strategic assassination.
Their target: Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, the Japanese Combined Fleet commander who oversaw the Pearl Harbor attack.
Based on detailed intelligence, the Americans flew a near-perfect mission, intercepting Yamamoto’s flight as it descended toward Bougainville on an inspection trip.
I knew the mission commander, Colonel John Mitchell, who said, “I couldn’t navigate that well again if my life depended on it.” The fact was, Isoroku Yamamoto’s life did depend on it. The pilot who downed his plane was my fellow Oregonian, Colonel Rex Barber.
Despite its spectacular success, Operation Vengeance exerted little effect on the course of the war. Japan was bound to lose with or without Yamamoto.
Bombing the Little People
Airpower’s seminal prophet was Italian General Guilio Douhet, who influenced British and American airmen from World War I onward. All too aware of the massive bloodletting in the Great War, Douhet theorized that bombing enemy cities and production centers would cause the populace to force its leaders to capitulate with far less attrition.
He was wrong.
Germany tried to influence events with its aerial campaign against England 1915-1918. Though impressive technically, the Zeppelins and bombers achieved little, and losses forced an end to the effort.
Between 1940 and 1944 about 70,000 Britons died under German bombs, missiles, and rockets. London never came within shouting distance of calling a halt to the war.
However, bombing works both ways. Estimates vary widely, but probably between 300,000 and 500,000 Germans were killed by Allied bombing that destroyed dozens of cities. Yet Adolf Hitler never considered surrender, as he knew his likely fate. Instead, two years almost to the day after the Yamamoto mission, with his capital in ruins and surrounded by the Red Army, the Fuhrer shot himself. His successor, Admiral Karl Doenitz, surrendered a week later.
Returning to the Pacific:
One night in March 1945 General Curtis LeMay’s B-29 Superfortresses burned down one-sixth of Tokyo and killed more than 80,000 people. Emperor Hirohito saw what he saw and smelled what he smelled -- and the war continued another five months. In all, at least 300,000 Japanese perished from bombing, fire storms, and A-bombs. By then nearly two-thirds of the country’s urban-industrial area was incinerated.
But Tokyo’s doom-laden war cabinet was deadlocked that August, forcing Hirohito to intervene. He never explained his reasoning, though personal and family survival may have influenced him.
The record is crystal clear: despots simply do not care about the little people. Even though little people produce the weapons of war.
Governments are built to last. They perpetuate themselves with a hierarchy ensuring continuity when heads of state are removed. Four U.S. presidents (Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, and Kennedy) were assassinated by lone actors, and three others (Ford, Reagan, and Trump) survived their attacks.
Successors to slain presidents left a mixed record. Andrew Johnson’s Reconstruction era after the Civil War likely mirrored Lincoln’s intention while another Johnson -- LBJ -- succeeded JFK to mismanage the Vietnam morass.
Whether Iran was involved in the attempts on Donald Trump remains unknown, but statements from Tehran seem to support the concept.
Boots on the Ground
U.S. campaigns for regime change have succeeded when U.S. troops physically removed anti-American dictators. Prime examples are Reagan’s 1983 Grenada occupation with six Caribbean allies (the date is now a national holiday), and GHW Bush’s invasion of Panama in 1989 that deposed narco-lord Manuel Noriega.
This January a spectacular commando raid seized Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro for trial in the U.S. for his massive drug operations. Citizens danced in the street.
In 1986 the U.S. targeted Libyan dictator Muamar Gaddafi in retaliation for his terrorist actions. He escaped on that occasion but died in a 2011 coup supported by NATO aircraft.
Israel has routinely struck enemy leaders in Gaza, dating at least from 2004. In the past two years five Hamas figureheads have been killed in Gaza and one in Iran.
Ten or more Hezb’allah leaders have died under Israeli bombs in Lebanon since 2024. But as of last year, Western intelligence sources placed the group’s strength at perhaps 90,000. However, Israeli air strikes have inflicted thousands of casualties among civilians.
In 2020 Iran’s General Qasem Soleimani was killed in a drone strike directed by President Donald Trump. Soleimani, second only to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, was consulting with Iraqi officials in Baghdad. But mainly Trump’s first administration focused on the ISIS caliphate in Syria and Iraq, leading to the death of the emir Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in 2010. The organization declined in numbers and influence but still remained active.
In his two terms, President Barack Obama authorized more than 500 drone strikes that killed perhaps 4,000 people in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and Libya, including at least 320 civilians.
In 2011 President Obama approved the mission that slew 9/11 al-Qaeda mastermind Osama bin Laden in Pakistan.
Together, the U.S. and Israel executed eye-watering precision strikes against the Iranian leadership in 2026. Supreme Leader Khamenei, who escaped harm in the Soleimani strike, was killed with about 40 senior leaders. His son and successor reportedly was badly injured in another strike. The American campaign, Operation Epic Fury, began in February focusing on Iran’s missile capability while essentially destroying the air force and navy.
Today, Hezb’allah and Hamas remain intact while ISIS exists in a reduced status. How the current campaign against Iran will proceed remains to be seen. Regime change has been an open U.S. goal, but the hard-core Islamists in Tehran have no qualms about hanging or simply killing thousands of demonstrators. A frequently quoted number for the last massacre early this year is 30,000 or more -- a lesson on what can happen when government retains a monopoly on violence.
So where does that leave us?
Where From Here?
Deprived of its conventional military, Iran retains two means of fighting the war: its apparently dwindling stock of missiles, and its large inventory of sea mines. All the while, Tehran’s decades of terrorist funding and its determination to achieve a nuclear capability drives U.S. and Israeli policy. The image of such weapons in the hands of religious zealots who do not fear death remains a chilling concept.
