Or something. Close enough. TMZ:
We spoke with Dan Riker from Bayonet Inc. -- a leading military surplus outlet that specializes in bayonets -- who tells us he believes Obama's comment was "ignorant ... because our soldiers still use bayonets."A person who already knows everything is not going to be open to "getting educated" on anything.
He adds, “[Bayonets] are still distributed to the military all the time -- he should get educated on it”
But along those lines, have a graphic, via Pseud O'Nym:
Related post: Question for the President: Why no military rescue of Americans under siege in Benghazi?
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Update: Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell is not amused.
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Steyn: Cold Steel
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Charles C. W. Cooke on bayonets and submarines: CCWC 1, BO 0.
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Linked at MichelleMalkin.com -- many thanks!
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Most recent posts here. Follow us on Twitter here. Amazon store here.
I think the word you're searching for is 'hoisted'
ReplyDeleteAnd I I take your point, you're suggesting that modern soldiers use bayonette just as often these days? 'Cos that's just nuts.
Should we expect a post quoting an army groomsman objecting to the suggestion that the Army has less horses these days?
How silly are you trying to look?
-Sal
This comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteHey, Sal, it was about a 300-ship navy. President Corpseman's snark was childish, beneath the office, and wrong. We need to be able to police the sealanes, and we ain't gonna get that done with drones.
DeleteBayonets are still part of equipment, not at all obsolete. (They'll be so until rifles stop running out of ammo.)
What does "just as often" have to do with it?
Delete"Fewer," not "less," and what does "fewer" have to do with it?
Is that on a scale of 1-10? Adjectival? Comparative?
Typo in your link to Steyn's tune of the week, it's JOHN Barry.
ReplyDeleteWell, Sal, you seem -- much like the President -- quite sure of the obviously obvious things you know. But before you label as "silly" someone who presents information that is new to you, you might want to verify the accuracy of what you believe to be true. Pundette even left a link, so it's just not that hard to look it up.
ReplyDeleteYou might want to brush up your Shakespeare, too.
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/331392/bayonets-and-submarines-charles-c-w-cooke
Cathy - this is the kind of smallness that Jill is supposedly posting against.
ReplyDeleteThe point Romney was making is that "less ships than 1916 = less capability."
The president is pointing out comparing raw numbers of ships isn't terribly relevant when you're taking numbers that separated by a century.
Much like the pedantic types who want to count bayonets issued as evidence of its military relevance- despite the fact that our military hasn't actually used them in combat for over a half century. They are knives. YES- they can be attached to the front of a rifle, but they are an anachronism and their diminished use doesn't make us less safe as a nation.
The point remains the same - the number comparison is meaningless. The president was talking about military capability - something that has not diminished because we have less ships, bayonets or horses.
This comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteLook, fewer ships than 1916 DOES mean less capability, Romney was right. (It's not only American ships that are modernized - other countries have boats that go underwater, too.) The navy itself is concerned about the number of ships dropping below 300. Obama's snark about carriers, subs, bayonets and horses was either said out of complete ignorance of military affairs("corpseman"), or a cynical attempt to mislead. And his attitude and facial expression were unlovely, either way.
DeleteThere was a bayonet charge by American soldiers in Iraq during the surge, for cryin' out loud. They ran out of bullets, but happily their guns had those pointy things on the end - knives! It saved their lives.
Um, no. The Brits did a bayonet charge in Iraq - first time they'd done it in 22 years.
DeleteThe US ordered troops to fix bayonets, but unless there was a bayonet charge that never made the papers (highly unlikely) the one you describe exists only in your mind.
Bayonets are a weapon of last resort. i.e. you use them when all else goes totally wrong and you have nothing else. If a soldier has enough bullets, they're never reaching for the bayonet.
Yes, other navies are modernized - but nobody even comes close to our carrier battle group power. That's why the president brought them up.
Romney would have you believe that a ship is a ship and more ships = better than less ships.
But if we have 200 ships and 11 carrier battle groups and the next most powerful carrier nation has 1 - we are going to clean their clock.
A nation could have hundreds of coast defense ships, but if they can't cope with naval air, they are going to be wiped out.
Counting ships like they are points on the board is ignorant of military affairs.
"his facial expression..."
OhferGoshSakes... Why not just start counting eyeblinks or other meaningless trivia?
1.) You're right, it was the Tommies and the Jocks with the bayonet charge, not the Joes. (Should have followed Pundette's link to Steyn first.) "Um, no." "...only in your mind." Do you think this snark bolsters your argument? I guess it did in MEAN GIRLS.
Delete2.) "Bayonets are a weapon of last resort." Yes. That's why they're not obsolete.
3.) "...nobody even comes close to our carrier battle group power." We have eleven carrier battle groups - used to be more. A peewee nuke can take one out, and it would take us almost ten years and tens of billions to replace. "...we are going to clean their clock." Nukes are cheap and plentiful - and how would we retaliate, nuke a foreign city?
4.) "Counting...is ignorant..." You seem ignorant of Romney's plan. Bob Owens at PJM spells it out:
"What Mitt Romney has proposed is a shift in our way of thinking about the military that a community organizer simply can’t grasp.
"Romney has proposed a Navy of lighter, more numerous, less expensive, and more deployable multiple-role ships that can be better geographically dispersed around the globe to more quickly respond to need, instead of having less than a dozen carrier strike groups chasing problems around the world."
Read the whole thing:
http://pjmedia.com/blog/why-romneys-right-many-cheap-ships-safer-than-few-expensive-ones/
5.) "OhferGoshSakes...meaningless trivia?" This was a job interview, dude. Sit up straight, put a pleasant expression on your face - and try to avoid sneering and snarking.
The point being made is that counting weapon systems is less important that measuring capability. The fact that there are situations in which a weapon can come in handy in rare situations does nothing to the overall point that counting bayonets or ships is (at best) an incomplete piece of data. All the bayonets in our arsenal could vanish tomorrow and the nation would not be at risk.
DeleteMore cheaper ships is a valid strategy - one I do agree with. What I object to - and what the President was rightly smacking down - is Romney's talking point for simpletons that says "the navy has less ships than it did last century and that's bad."
Romney then follows up his remark by saying he's opposed to the proposed defense cuts and throws in the red herring about sequestration so he can create a big, scary number for people who cannot think.
Romney could have tried to lay out a more complex vision of what he wanted, but then he'd be agreeing with the President again: The Navy should do their job more efficiently.
Nuking a carrier: even if this were a remote possibility (which is being generous) - having more ships would not prevent it. A moot point.
"try to avoid sneering and snarking."
"...I guess it did in MEAN GIRLS."
Whatever you say, Ms. Lohan.
-S
The best way to determine the size of the navy is to count the ships. (I remember during Reagan the Navy Secretary talking about a 500-ship navy.) We have fewer ships than we did before we were a super-power? Maybe somebody doesn't want us to be a super-power.
DeleteThe point about bayonets is that Obama was wrong, they're not obsolete. The president threw it out there to condescend to, and therefore embarrass, Romney - but the jerk got it wrong, so he's the one with egg on his face.
Sequestration is a red herring? If it goes through, we'll have fewer than 200 - is that an important number? I guess Obama thinks so, because he assured us at the debate that sequestration won't happen. Right after the debate Carney came out to say it "shouldn't" happen - so I guess Obama lied in the heat of the moment. He lied about it being a Congress thing, too - his administration proposed sequestration, and he signed it with his own hand.
Obama wants the navy to do what job more efficiently? Sit in the Med and twiddle thumbs while our ambassador is raped, tortured, and murdered? No wonder numbers mean nothing - 200 can twiddle as efficiently as 500.
"Nuking a carrier: even if this were a remote possibility (which is being generous) - having more ships would not prevent it. A moot point." A carrier group's a group - they're all grouped together to protect the carrier, and so they're an attractive target for a really big bomb. Remote? It's war plan #1 or #2 for all nuclear powers considering how to win against us. You're in a trend bubble - "It's never happened before, why should it ever happen?" It's no argument. Again, imagine the scenario, and tell me how Obama, Biden, or any Dem would be likely to retaliate.
And I wasn't snarking when I recommended not sneering and snarking in a job interview. Was all this stuff about horses, bayonets, and ships that go underwater not condescension, and said with a sneer? Did you find that attractive?
"The best way to determine the size of the navy is to count the ships...We have fewer ships than we did before we were a super-power? Maybe somebody doesn't want us to be a super-power."
DeleteThis is exactly the fallacy of Romney's comment that the President was taking issue with. The best way to determine the *number* of ships is to count them. Determining what that number needs to be in order to defend the nation is going to take more data. You can count the army's horses and notice a steep decline as well, but it tells you nothing about whether there has been a commensurate decline in military force.
And (I'll paraphrase here): when your rebuttal depends on arguing that bayonets and horses are militarily relevant - you've pretty much lost.
Sequestration *is* a red herring. Romney's throwing out the worst case scenario to be alarmist. "If we cut defense by $500 billion dollars, the fleet will shrink!" No, kidding genius. But sequestration is hardly the only option ahead of the military and both parties have reason to prevent it from happening. Romney's misleading his audience by suggesting that it is going to happen - when he knows full well that Congress is going to come with some deal that avoids killing sacred cows like defense.
The president wants the navy to do its job more efficiently- namely protecting us from external attack and projecting power to support our interests. If you think more missile frigates or carrier groups would have prevented the Benghazi attack- congratulations, you've fallen for Romney's BS hook, line and sinker.
I made the same point to archer below- but it's worth repeating. Naval battle groups are awesome weapons of war, but they are beyond useless at preventing ambushes by terrorists. We can spend billions to station a carrier group off Libya's coast, but they can *still* truck bomb/mortar/ambush our personnel before it can deliver marines and air cover. Benghazi was a F$#* up of the first order, but the failures there are failures of station security, intelligence and communications. All of which need to be addressed and *none* of which have anything to do with building more ships.
Nuking a carrier: When you said a peewee nuke, I took that to mean a terrorist strike while one of them was at port. And yes, that is a moot point when it comes to the size of our navy. Having more ships will not make this scenario less likely. And it's plenty unlikely. If you were referring to the possibility that a foreign power would be able to detonate a nuclear device on a carrier group that is at sea - you are moving into the realm of fantasy. First off, that would be a nuclear power taking an irrevocable step that would absolutely lead to war with the US. Even if you accept this premise (ha!) they still have to get the bomb to the battle group. Whether or not the nuke is coming by air or by sea, the carrier group will have: Sat intell, airborne EWR, interceptors, missile defense and surface escorts. If you're ignoring all that, you are questioning the validity of having any battle group, not just how many ships we have. It is not a serious reason to add ships to the navy.
You absolutely were snarking - in exactly the same way, in case you've forgotten, I'll quote your first post: "but happily their guns had those pointy things on the end - knives!" The same kind of condescension there as in "ships that go underwater."
And before you pretend that there's no place for that in a presidential debate - you need to go back and watch some presidential debates - because any candidate is looking to land a memorable "zinger." Romney bragged before the second debate that he had a number of them prepared. His bit of trivia was his attempt at a zinger - and the President hit him over the head with one of his. The right is trying to undo the hit by counting knives, but the point is valid - counting ships is just as invalid as counting horses or knives.
-S
Looks like we're going to have to agree to disagree, I can't seem to persuade you a bit.
DeleteFirst let me acknowledge one of your points - I was indeed snarky in that first comment with the "pointy things" jape. I just found it ridiculous that you pointed out that bayonets are only knives, and that they're obsolete. (What do you use to chop onions, a ray gun? Oops, more snark.)
Yes, horses are obsolete, although they're not completely useless in the back of beyond, like Afghanistan. Comparing ships to horses was cynical and wrong, though. Sail-powered ships might be compared to horses, but cruisers and destroyers are not at all obsolete, and we need more of them.
Sequestration's a red herring because it's somehow distracting to talk about a worst case scenario? That Congress will somehow save the day? Obama lied about it - that it won't happen, that it wasn't his admin, but Congress. (And the very next day he was crowing about having the sequestration to the Des Moines Register as a great tool for fixing deficits. Your guy just says anything, and it's fine with you.)
"If you think more missile frigates or carrier groups would have prevented the Benghazi attack-" You're putting words in my mouth - and that's not straight-shooting. We could have done a flyover with the F-18s we had there to discourage them - but the prez couldn't muster the will even for that. But you want four more years of "F$#* up of the first order" because of your partisanship, I suppose.
Nuking a carrier group at sea would be difficult? Nuking a carrier group at sea would mean war? Maybe you're right.
"The 1980s called, they want their...back!" What a memorable zinger, especially if you roll your eyes like a teenager.
Go with God, Anonymous.
"...but cruisers and destroyers are not at all obsolete, and we need more of them..."
DeleteI'll say to you the same thing I said to archer: the Navy had 282 ships at the end of 2008. At the end of 2011 it had 285.
Mitt's telling you that Obama's cutting the Navy when the ship count has gone up.
To complete the scare tactic, he offers sequestration that will take us into the low 200s. So, a congressional maneuver has created a looming consequence that neither party wants - but Romney's trying to make that look like a presidential attempt to cut the fleet.
Which is total crap.
"...And the very next day he was crowing about having the sequestration to the Des Moines Register as a great tool for fixing deficits. Your guy just says anything, and it's fine with you..."
I'll quote you as rebuttal: "You're putting words in my mouth - and that's not straight-shooting."
The president is saying two things: First - the sequestration as it is spelled out now, is not going to happen. Neither party wants it, so talking about it as a likely scenario is (to put it mildly) misleading.
The House armed services committee chair was saying back in November of 2011 that he would not let this happen - a host of Republican senators have been making loud objections to the sequestration cuts since last year. Saying the automatic cuts will not happen is not lying - it is describing the current political reality.
Second - the president is saying that the looming threat of sequestration will be useful in motivating both sides to actually make a deal. This is not controversial - this is why they passed the sequestration deal in the first place. Congress routinely misses deadlines when they have no teeth and that is why the supercommittee failed last year - they'd much rather kick the can down the road so they can fight over it in an election year and then (each side hopes) reap the rewards in an election before moving to beat the true deadline in 2013.
"We could have done a flyover with the F-18s we had there to discourage them..."
Oh dear lord, we're going to scramble a jet to fly over the area and discourage them? Even if we can ignore the risk that Libyan air defense won't start shooting at our plane the fact is, an F-18 is an empty threat. It's not going to bomb or strafe our own consulate- and even if the pilot was crazy enough to try - they'd need good info so they didn't end up killing our own people.
"But you want four more years of "F$#* up of the first order" because of your partisanship, I suppose."
Partisainship is buying into stupid because it comes from your team. Romney is spewing stupid all over the place, his debate comment is only a small example of this. Benghazi was a total F#$* up - but since this is an election year, we will be treated to Congressional hearings where partisans demand answers to why the message management was so bad and the sad reality why a US ambassador died will be lost in the noise.
-S
What I disliked most of all in Obama's lecture was his demeanor. Watch it again if you don't know what I mean. The contempt he shows for the supposed ignorance of others, and his blindness toward his own ignorance, is remarkable. (And no, I didn't mean "hoisted.")
ReplyDeleteThanks -- fixed the John Barry thing.
"his demeanor..."
ReplyDeleteWay to focus on the big stuff.
Romney's talking point is worthy of contempt.
"...our Navy is smaller now than at any time since 1917. The Navy said they needed 313 ships to carry out their mission. We're now at under 285. We're headed down to the low 200s if we go through a sequestration. That's unacceptable to me.
I want to make sure that we have the ships that are required by our Navy. Our Air Force is older and smaller than at any time since it was founded in 1947."
Romney is not a stupid guy, but this is a stupid thing to say. "We have less ships!" Yes, we do, but as the President rightly points out, a modern aircraft carrier or submarine is many times more effective than their 1917 counterpart.
And yes, we have less planes than immediately after WWII, I wonder why that might be? Never mind if that matters - considering that a modern bomber is easily capable of wiping out multiple cities. We just need more.
Is Romney stupid? No, he thinks YOU are. So he's saying something he hopes will stick in people's mind. "We're going to have less than 200 ships soon... unless we elect Romney!"
Does anyone know if 313 is a magic number that will make us safe? Does anyone seriously believe that we face a naval threat that our current force cannot overwhelm without more ships?
For gosh sakes, we are a nuclear power - we do not face a continental threat due to our lack of a navy patrolling our waters.
But let's pick 313 as a target because... well just because.
*ugh*
The problem with your argument is the same problem facing our troops in Afghanistan after the "surge". The military asked or 100,000 troops and got 33,000 or so. Those are gone but the PACE of the operation has not slowed. That means smaller amount of troops doing the job of units twice their size. It burns out the troops.
DeleteAs it would the Navy ships. Where Romney is right is about having the ability to fight two areas of operation at one time. Pacific fleet Atlantic fleet if you will.
The truth is there are only so many fuel ships, supply ships, repair ships to support the fleet. There are only so many ships that carry Marine units on them for rapid deployment. You can't be here AND there at the same time if there aren't enough ships to go around.
Further, you have to be aware of the losses of ships during any battle. Especially nowadays with such weapons as surface to surface Silkworms and worse. So let's say we go into a battle situation with one carrier and its knocked out. And we don't have another to send. Then the battle is over. Not really a good option.
Same with aircraft.
Now if your long range defense plan is like Obama's where he doesn't want to engage a lot, then a smaller fleet will do.
However, as we pare back, China is growing. It is just a sad fact of life that we will always be challenged. Sooner or later, China will quietly- or not so quietly- claim the Pacific Rim as theirs. Sooner if they have double the ships we do.
Your choice as a citizen of this nation is clear. One man wants to bring us down a peg or two, thinking our past was one of offending and not helping. The other realize whether we like it or not, we are the last Superpower on the good guy's side. It sucks for those who aren't willing to stand up and take on the role, but it is what it is and there are millions of the world's citizens who will suffer if we give up that responsibility.
In the years to come, we'll see the Middle East slide into the Caliphate, our energy (your gas) skyrocket, women and children abused as a matter of religious law run by ignorant and brutal men. We'll see chaos NOT contained to that region as it spills into our part of the world.
It has to go that way because leaving a rabid dog to its own devices is a prescription for getting a lot of people bit.
There is a saying in the real world. "You have a choice to either go to their backyard and kill them and break their things or wait until they come to our backyard yard kill us and break our things, pick the former."
Bill Clinton refused that advice and allowed Bin Laden, KSM and the rest to build up enough energy and force to come here and break some pretty big things, and kill far too many of us.
GWB followed that advice and reversed the direction of battle convincing, in the end, Bin Laden that he had made a mistake in attacking. Which he admitted to his children.
GWB couldn't have done that without enough ships.
Bin Laden took the weakness of Bill Clinton to be the weakness of our nation. He thought he could cower us. Today, Obama shows that same kind of weakness and the despots and power brokers of the Middle East see it. Reducing our Navy is signaling that we are pulling out of the business of responding to not only war but disasters (The Tsunami in Indochina for example).
I'd streamline the Navy, but I would make sure we can fight two battles on opposite sides of the world AND one small dust up somewhere. And do it effectively and as safely for our people as possible.
We have what is probably Mitt Romney's best ad so far... "Apology Tour":
ReplyDeletehttp://www.commoncts.blogspot.com/2012/10/best-romney-ad-yet-apology-tour.html
One last comment. After reading that Obama watched in real time his people being overrun and not asking for one of the carrier thingys he talked about to have one of their planes fly over that consulate to take out the terrorists killing HIS men, I think I understand why he thinks a smaller Navy is a good idea.
ReplyDeleteJeezz... Should have figured.
Heck, he isn't going to use them to save US citizens anyway. BUT he will make them use biofuel for something like five times the cost.
I mean, really. You can't get how out of whack he and his people are?
There's so much fail in what you've said - I'll hit the highlights.
ReplyDelete"..blah...blah...blah two areas at one time..."
We have 11 carrier battle groups. Even in the most pessimistic of scenarios, our navy can project power in more than two places at the same time.
"...blah...blah...blah Silkworm."
Yes, surface to air missiles pose a grave threat to ships. They are useless against strike aircraft - which can attack land targets from well beyond the range of surface to surface missiles. Yet another reason that discussing unit capabilities is more important than simply counting ships.
"...there are only so many fuel ships, supply ships, repair ships to support the fleet..."
Yes, and whatever number of support ships we have, this statement will be true. If Romney was citing a report that claimed that our support fleet was inadequate, this might be a relevant remark - but he's talking about the number of warships, or he doesn't realize that support ships would put our fleet at well over 300 ships.
"...same with aircraft..."
No, but we're talking about naval capability here - and how Romney is tritely suggesting that *his* navy would be bigger than the president's - Ignoring that unit capability counts a hell of a lot more than numbers of ships.
"...blah...blah...blah...Clinton made UBL attack the US...blah...blah...blah...GWB made UBL admit it was a mistake (using ships somehow) and then left UBL alone to plan more attacks because he'd rather invade Iraq (or something)..."
You forgot this part: GWB ignored warnings and let UBL kill 1,000s of Americans. Later, President Obama had UBL killed (without using ships).
"I'd streamline the Navy, but I would make sure we can fight two battles on opposite sides of the world AND one small dust up somewhere. And do it effectively and as safely for our people as possible."
So, you think Romney is wrong for suggesting we need more ships? I'm glad we agree.
Thirty years ago, the Navy was asking for 600 ships. They even wanted battleships because they were running out of ways to waste money. We have the most dominant naval force on the globe right now. People who think China is about to eclipse our naval power just enjoy being afraid of something. China is nowhere close to us. We should replace and upgrade aging ships - but we need to re-examine traditional ways of looking at the navy because the dynamics of missiles and aircraft have changed what fleet ships are capable of doing. Just making more ships doesn't make us safer, but Romney would rather pander to folks who will unthinkingly accept that a smaller number of fleet ships means that China is about to invade.
-S
".blah...blah...blah...Clinton made UBL attack the US...blah...blah...blah...GWB made UBL admit it was a mistake (using ships somehow) and then left UBL alone to plan more attacks because he'd rather invade Iraq (or something)..." "
ReplyDeleteSomehow? I don't know, like launching fighter/bomber air cover missions from the deck of aircraft carriers in the waters off the coast of Pakistan? Or how about sending in B52 (an old but reliable aircraft)from bases in the Middle East and B2's from the States for bombing missions. All of their ammo and bombs probably shipped in over the water.
As far as GWB ignoring warning. Sure, and I'll bet you think what really brought down the WTC towers was a CIA plot. It is easy to see people like GWB, Condi Rice, Colin Powell and Rumseld openly ignoring a well developed plot to kill ten thousand Americans because it would?? serve them how?? Because they are Satan incarnate? They wanted to gain power? (Of which GWB gave up after 8 yrs so that cant be it) Oh, yeah, Halliburton. Killing 10,000 makes Cheney rich. GWB was less than a year into a presidency that was delayed by two months because some AGW yahoo wouldn't go away. I have always wondered how much was missed in the transition from Clinton to Bush. Did they miss it? Did they dismiss it? I'm sure they didn't get how close Bin Laden was in pulling off 9/11.
But as I am a serious believer in the theory that everything in life is connected, if you want to blame GWB for missing Bin Laden's plan, you have to blame Clinton for missing Bin Laden altogether.
If GWB or, surprisingly, Obama had been President in the mid nineties and knew that Bin Laden's group was blowing stuff up (as we did), I'm pretty sure his demise would have been quick. But he didn't get killed, and then Bin Laden met KSM and his tribal family (do the research on KSM and you'll realize he was the operations man, Bin Laden the money/PR man) and the plots to attack across the globe began. Imagine if Bin Laden was dead. No OBL, no money, no money, no funding and KSM is still sitting in southern Afghanistan plotting and the WTC would be standing.
Jeezz....
Yes we have the dominant naval force, but that IS kinda the point isn't it. How did we get there, with fairy dust and clicking our red ruby shoes' heels while saying "If I only had a carrier. If I only had a carrier" in the last couple of years? No, we had to develop, build and deploy them over DECADES- against the wishes of many people, and you might be one. So don't take credit for past failures to stop the Naval growth in order to support the Navy's size. Sounds silly.
However, you do make kind of a sideways point. We had 600 ships and now we are down to 300. Is that good? Isn't that Romney's complaint? Is it 300 high tech ships on the front line or some older ones like the Enterprise which is approaching fifty years old and due to retire?
Your problem with your argument is a classic one. On one hand we want to develop a military that is designed to fight the battle WE want to fight. On the other hand, we are having to predict what battles we may be forced to fight by others and that will also weigh heavy on what we develop. The Navy is different. It still has to steam from one place to the other, be resupplied and repaired. It has down time for boats that can last for months, etc. Worse, on the surface they are vulnerable to surface to surface stuff. You saw what happened in the Falklands with one missile. Imagine China or even piss-ant Iran launching fifty? Suddenly you have 250 ships instead of 300 and none functioning in your battle area. You can't always be out of range in a battle.
I also wonder if someone will one day ask themselves if we never had a Navy to project our force into the world, which conflicts would have ended differently. Which nation would have fallen, which bad guys would have won. Like I said, being the last big good guy on the block is a pain, but it is our pain.
"Somehow? I don't know-"
ReplyDeleteYes. Just stop there because you don't know. UBL admitted a mistake because of these things *in your head.* The fact that we have ships and planes and have used both doesn't establish that UBL admitted a mistake because of them. The rebuke to Romney was directed towards his suggestions that we need more ships because less ships = weak.
Your point is what? That having a bigger navy is necessary because we can make our enemies second guess themselves AFTER they've killed thousands of our citizens?
Pretty weak.
"...I'll bet you think what really brought down the WTC towers was a CIA plot..."
No, I leave crazy to the crazies. My comment was a rejoinder to your hilarous selective reading of what surrounded the WTC attack. On this very blog, there are posts comments and links that scathingly denounce the President for failing to protect our Ambassador in Libya - but there's this impressive blind spot among conservative types when they discuss GWB's record of "keeping us safe (since September 12)!"
"Yes we have the dominant naval force, but..."
Yes, we do. And it's good to remember this everytime some pol stands up and cries about how the military is going to suffer under the policies of my opponent. What's silly about this particular debate squabble is that Obama and Romney likely agree that the Navy will have to be more efficient.
Romney tries to insert a soundbite that says we have less ships under Obama than a century ago so we're less safe, and the President slapped him around for it. It's great fodder for pundits and it clearly has the right all up in a snarl because their boy got dinged on national television - but it all adds up to a hill of nothing.
Size of the Navy "Ruby slippers...blah...blah...blah"
It took a long time to get our dominant carrier force - but the point is WE HAVE IT NOW. A few ships up or down doesn't mean the reds are kicking down the door. The Chinese menace has ONE, count it, ONE carrier - and they (ha!) bought it second hand from a private outfit that bought it from Russia after they demilitarized it.
They're using it to learn how to have a carrier. We've been using operationally for decades. And even if the Chinese make great strides in the next few years the answer is going to be better planes/missiles/anti-air and radar - not more destroyers. All of that will cost money and none of it will make it into Romney's trite little ship count.
The 600 ship plan was something the Navy *wanted* back in the Reagan era - back when we were toe to toe with the Soviets every day. Since they've decided to collapse, we're not in the same ballgame - and the Navy has scaled back- Way back. The battleships they re-commissioned was just another example of stupid masquerading as a plan. As if 16 inch guns have a role in modern naval warfare. I'm glad Romney didn't complain that we don't have any battleships anymore.
What's especially stupid about Romney's remark is that the Navy had 282 ships at the end of 2008. At the end of 2011 it had 285. My God, what a rollback! Everyone call your Congressman. By this metric, Obama's a hawk and GWB took his 2000 fleet of 318 and savaged it down to 282. GWB even let it get as low as 278!
This is why I think Romney's remark is so foolish. And I'm glad to see the President took him off at the knees - Romney, being Romney, just sat there and took it.
There are all kinds of ways to run a Navy, and reasonable people can disagree over them, but ship counts is a meaningless metric. And down into the details, the two candidates are probably closer than any partisan would like to admit. The defense budget will stay large, and the Navy will carve out a huge slice of it.
And we will still have a navy that is many times more powerful than any rival.
You make some good points but don't answer the real question every President faces- "Are we the big guys on the block willing to respond to threats. IF we are, then you have a problem in figuring out how. The Navy, and I looked it up, has a number of ships, but not a bunch if you spread them out across the globe. Remember, this isn't a trip across New York Harbor. This is a trip across oceans.
ReplyDeleteWe have eleven carriers. One is going offline- at the insistence of Obama and Congress in 2009 along with six cruisers with no replacements even being built (here is a link to a current article that may help - http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/331448/obama-s-unready-navy-harold-hutchison#)
Now think about space for a second, not outer space but space between hotspots and what tools the President has to react to them, like in Benghazi for example. If he had a carrier sitting off the coast, his planes could have been overhead in less than an hour, if only to buzz the attackers and break the attack up.
It takes six or more days to cross the Atlantic, weeks to cross the Pacific. If for some reason the Suez Canal is closed, lets say by the sunken remnants of the last carrier or cruiser,or Egypt refuses passage, another force in the Med would have to go around the Horn to get to the other side. So it would be smart to have one somewhere around the Indian Ocean. That's three- just in one area of the world- double that for down time of the fleet (and its sailors- ships are personnel intensive and you can't rotate a crew like you can an Army unit.) That is six. Add Eastern Atlantic and Pacific and you have four more, even if we don't keep one close at home. So you have ten carrier groups and you barely cover the area.
What does that mean to you the President. When the phone rings and you need to respond, you have to be able to call up forces. Army, Marine, SF's need time, sometimes months, to get up and running, a way to deploy AND a safe base to return to. A Navy task force IS that safe base. So no Navy task force, no immediate response and then what? We do what the Brits do, the French do, the Germans do, we take it in the teeth and blather about the injustice of it, while our people or our allies get run over.
Like Benghazi- except much bigger.
Heck I'd like to turn all of them into museums and will WHEN the crazies who want to run the world and destroy us quit.
Until then, I want them to worry as they stare out over the water's horizon if somewhere out there is a ship filled with trained and dedicated sailors and Marines looking to shorten the life of his ninth century backward thinking, radical terrorist rear end.
archer, you just don't get it.
ReplyDeleteThe Navy is not a preventative measure for terrorism.
On 9/11 - they flew our planes into our buildings.
At Benghazi they used trucks and man portable weapons.
You cannot dissuade suicide bombers with the threat of death. That's what they're after.
And if we spend billions to counter threats that our enemy can stage for a few thousand dollars, they will bleed us dry.
We will prevent terrorism by eroding their local support and beefing up our intelligence arm - not by building more ships.
-S
Two points here to make.
ReplyDelete1. I was in intelligence. I could gather everything about you from where you lived, who you hung with, your girlfriend, where you went, your phone, facebook and everything down to your credit card and what you did with it. I knew everything about you. I could identify the type of crime you committed and where you did it.
BUT all that information meant nothing unless there was an operational arm to act on that information. The Navy is part of that operational arm. We sent Tomahawk missiles from submarines and cruisers to first strike the Taliban and Iraq in 1991 and 2003. We used long range aircraft to support our men on the ground carrying out operations that came from the collection of intelligence.
Knowing and acting are two different things needing two different sets of tools.
That said, your second point is good. You can't dissuade a person intent on killing themselves for a cause. If that were true the Russians wouldn't have a problem with their Islamic terrorists.
However, and this is a bouncing ball moment, if you kill the terrorist once, he cannot continue to act over and act. He's done. And if given the chance, killing him early will prevent a long effort of terrorist acts. In my old job, it was estimated that a felon committed a felony every other day, 180 a year. You could give up thinking there were too many to deal with. But if you locked up that one felon for a year you saved 180 victims, ten years 1800 victims. In a way, terrorists should be dealt with the same way.
Further, the people in terrorism are not all suicidal. Many, MANY are political, cowardly, and smart enough to send the dumb ones to their death. During the Iran/Iraq war you didn't see the mullahs, the politicians or the military brass walking with the young teens they sent out to clear minefield by walking through them.
So your argument is correct at one level and wrong at another. You cannot generalize terrorist as all suicidal.
The final tally from GWB's war in Iraq was between 40,000 and 80,000 fighters killed by our people. That is about eight divisions of soldiers. Now think about how devastating that would be to any army, standard or terrorist. Which was part of the plan that evolved during the war. Remember, kill them in their backyards.
To your second point. Your argument about eroding support. It is a good plan, but it may be an impossible plan. Stevens believed he could, he's dead. The Yemeni we recruited for security was killed.(http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/10/11/us-yemen-assassination-idUSBRE89A0F820121011)
Where we have trouble in the Middle East is we think like Americans (the rule of law,good guys/bad guys, justice, woman's rights, etc.), they think like ninth century throwbacks who are ruled by their tribal alliances and self interests far more than what is right or wrong or just.
So we'll worry about whether or not we have enough evidence to arrest someone, if we can prove it, yada yada. They'll just kill the guy AND HIS FAMILY and say Allah approves.
You can't beat that. All you can do is hope to contain it, weaken it and hope it dies out, which it won't. Certain sects of Islam gives cretins an upper hand by simplifying their lives and easing their mental strain. There are a lot of cretins out there.
Lastly, I have friends who spent time in Afghanistan. One training Afghan police. What he said about their mindset goes against your hopes. They are tribal, incurious, distrustful and not that bright. He said it would take generations to change them. We are targeting the eight and ten year old kids trying to show them a better life. The adults are quite content to be exactly what they are. Those who want change get murdered by those who don't. How do you win that?
archer,
ReplyDeleteWe absolutely need an operational arm to act on intelligence - but a larger surface navy doesn't make or break that equation.
We shot tomahawks at Bin Laden from ships - and missed because the intelligence was bad. More ships won't fix that.
And I agree that there are two kinds of terrorists - the the hidden ringleaders who ask others to die for jihad, and the fools who listen to them. We should be going after both - the ringleaders should be ferreted out with intelligence and eliminated. Since they don't have a navy, there's not a lot of point in upping our ship count to do this work.
The straw man about arresting people is irrelevant to a discussion about ship counts. But for the record, our country should be killing the ringleaders. If we can grab one and get intell out of them, bonus. But they are combatants and therefore are targets for lethal force. Their ringleaders are decidedly *not* from the 9th century as UBL demonstrated with his communication security.
When we go after their support bases - we can do it with a host of tactics - financial, diplomatic, informational - but really the tipping point will have arrived when the masses on the street view the terrorists as a threat to them rather than their champions. Showing them the truth of that will be more effective than building another destroyer.
-S
Not to scare you, but you sound like GWB's policy. It was his hope to get people to rise up and be free. He did it with force because frankly your way would take a hundred years if at all. Don't forget what the Middle East looked like BEFORE the West got involved and colonized the region. It was frozen in time for the most part. Until oil came along what did that area offer that would drive its economy forward at a pace equal to the West?
ReplyDeleteIn a sense, when we try to introduce Western values into the Middle East we are trying, in a large part of the population, to dress monkeys in tuxedos and we are frustrated when they rip the clothes off at the first opportunity.
The "straw man" is a point I was making about removing a terrorist from the fight. I would not imprison him. I would get what I could out of him and then kill him. One less combatant. This is their game, their rules. They won't change. They won't see the light. They can't. Not their nature. Kill enough thus removing them from the game and you'll see more peace.
Back to the Navy. We move around the world and the Navy is the offshore base near hostile shores that allows us to be operational. Do we need fifty carriers? NO of course not, but we need enough to be operational and on site within a day or two no matter where the problem arises.
The Navy offshore element allows for units to defend, attack and return to a safe base. It just is what it is. Whatever the amount it takes to have that capability is the number of ships we need, however do not build ships to create "busy work" for some Senators constituency. I get that. We don't have the money. BUT again, if we are going to be able to respond, we need the Navy. Nothing else works as well.
Understand this, the bad guys can use commercial flights or commercial boats to get here and do damage. On the other hand, we can't move an Marine MEU to a hostile location via United or Royal Caribbean.
As for financial, diplomatic informational- again would probably work real quickly on a Western nation. Not so much over there. How can financial hurt them if they are broke? Diplomatic if there is no functional RATIONAL government? Informational if the populace is illiterate? (Think Afghanistan to build your model on how to change minds and hearts)
These are the guys who kill their wives for alleged disrespect, plot to kill daughters who dare to date against the father's desires, shoot a 14yr old girl in the head because she said women should be given the chance to be educated. All under the approval of Allah- or as they've been told by educated religious leaders.
What would be your first step to get through to these people. And also remember, these people live in an environment as foreign to ours as ours is to Mars. My buddy told me stories about these people. He was a police officer like me. We've seen some rude stuff over the years. He told me I had no concept what bad was compared to what he saw all the time. He did come to the conclusion that most of the smart Afghans left with the Russians and those who are born smart try to get out as soon as possible, only leaving behind the type that likes to be told what to do, who to marry (hoping its a twelve year old), and their role in the tribe.
Trust me, not a lot to work with.
Thanks for the back and forth. Someday we'll either win this or lose this. But it won't go away, not for a generation or more.
Evil persists. Which is why they say “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” Or not have a big enough Navy.
Anchors away.
Good luck, take care and be safe.