“My first impulse was to dash forward and destroy the Bedouins. My second was to dash to the rear to see if there were any coming in that direction. I acted on the latter impulse. So did all the others. If any Bedouins had approached us, then, from that point of the compass, they would have paid dearly for their rashness.”
-Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad
TALK ABOUT leading from behind. First the folks putting together the budget at the Defense Department decided to phase out the A-10 Warthog. Those are today’s flying fortresses. They’re called in when our ground troops are in trouble, which tends to be regularly, war being war. If the grunts on the ground need a house full of snipers taken out of a grid square, the Warthog has been the one to do it.
Many a United States infantryman has thanked his God-and the U.S. Army’s firepower-when a pilot of one of those A-10s radios back, “We’re here. Tell the troopers to keep their heads down for a few.”
After the budgeteers at the Pentagon gave the Warthog its death sentence, (non-) Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel announced that he’d decided to reduce the number of troops in the Army by about 70,000, give or take 10,000 or so.
How reducing the United States Army to pre-World War II levels helps military readiness wasn’t explained. There’s a lot Secretary Hagel doesn’t deign to explain. Not satisfactorily.
Last month the papers reported that Secretary Hagel wants to reduce housing allowances for the troops, too, and even raise their health-care premiums. This administration has other priorities.
This week, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported that the subsidized groceries at the Little Rock Air Force Base are on the Expendable list, too. The military commissary’s subsidy there is to be phased out starting in 2015. Somebody’s got to pay for all the new spending in Washington. And this administration has chosen American servicemen and veterans for the honor.
What a pity this announcement wasn’t saved for Veterans Day. That’s the one thing that would have made it a perfect summation of this administration’s idea of honoring and supporting our troops.
NOW COMES still more cheering news out of the Pentagon: Dispatches indicate that the administration wants to phase out both the Tomahawk and Hellfire missiles. Yes, the Tomahawk, or, as it became known in news stories, the most advanced cruise missile the world had ever seen. Plus the Hellfire, which delivers just that to America’s enemies.
You might remember when cruise missiles were first used to overwhelm a menacing enemy unit on the battlefield. CNN’s cameras caught cruise missiles flying over the streets of Baghdad and homing in on Saddam Hussein’s tanks, bridges, aircraft, communication networks, anything that U.S. forces needed gone. And they were. In a flash.
But that’s so 1990.
Don’t forget: The Pentagon says it has enough Tomahawks to last until, oh, 2018. How anybody can make a guess like that is, well, anybody’s guess. Even if there are no wars between now and then-and who can guarantee that?-will there also be an absence of no-fly zones to enforce? Do we have a Department of Defense these days or a department of fortune tellers who can see the future clearly in their crystal balls?
Remember: The Tomahawk missile played a key role in enforcing the no fly zone over Libya a few years back. Which led directly to the ouster-and subsequent happy dispatch-of one Muammar Gadhafi.
Not to worry, our current administration says. Contractors are whipping up the newest gadget, this one called the Long Range Anti-Ship Missile, better known in the alphabet soup world of the military as the LRASM.
The LRASM is expected to come on line in, oh, another 10 years or so.
Hmmm.
Let’s see now. If you’ll forgive our crude attempt at math, if the current stock of cruise missiles lasts until 2018, and the new-fangled LRASM won’t come on line until 2024, does that mean the American military is supposed to go six unpredictable years with no cruise missiles or their successors?
This isn’t exactly leading. It’s not even leading from behind, our commander-in-chief’s preferred defense posture. It’s retreat-headlong, unthinking, completely irresponsible retreat. And if any Bedouins attack us from that point of the compass . . . . Pray. Then pray harder.
Meanwhile, this new Russian tsar’s legions-in overwhelming numbers-march. Ukrainian officers are hauled off by “pro-Russian” forces, that is, Russian forces that don’t wear military insignia. Which sounds all too much like the definition of a terrorist.
Comrade/Gospodin Putin isn’t threatening his neighbors any more, he’s annexing them. And who’s to stop him? An anemic West still dithering and dabbling and passing UN resolutions that show no resolve?
It’s the 1930s redux. Haile Selassie should be testifying at the League of Nations in Geneva any day now as his little country is overwhelmed by an aggressor. Or has John Kerry, our distinguished secretary of state, booked that venue so he can use it to negotiate Iran’s progress toward a Bomb of its own?
Meanwhile, Red China announces that its military budget will increase more than 12 percent this year-to $131.6 billion. The Chinese on the ever more militarized mainland have developed the habit of increasing their military spending by double-digit percentages annually, having done so almost every year for the past two decades, according to The Economist. Yes, Beijing’s military is now only about a third the size of this country’s, but if the trend continues-they arm, we disarm-that won’t be the case for long.
So let’s see:
Iran is on pace to build its Bomb.
Syria’s bloody dictator is still slaughtering his own people by the tens of thousands, and growing stronger and bloodier all the time.
North Korea has just launched more missiles into the drink.
Al-Qaida isn’t going anywhere, and is still in the market for another failed state to use as a base of operations against the Great Satan.
And the government of the United States of American cancels one weapons system after another. When it isn’t slashing the ranks of its military to 1930s levels.
But there may be some good news in those developments. If this country’s military estimates it has only enough high-tech missile weaponry to last until 2018, at least that’ll be two years after the presidential election of 2016. There’s still time to reverse this disastrous course. Because otherwise, there doesn’t seem any hope of that till January 20th, 2017.
Editorial, Pages 14 on 03/28/2014