Tomahawk Economics

Mr. Obama, after weeks of dithering that allowed Col. Qadaffi to slaughter untold numbers of his own countrymen, has responded to the recent UN resolution authorizing a no-fly zone over Libya by a tried and true Clintonian military strategy: Chucking 112 Tomahawk cruise missiles into Libya from ships off shore.

The Tomahawk is a subsonic, long range land attack missile programmed to strike specific targets with a high degree of accuracy. It commonly carries a 1000 pound conventional high explosive warhead and costs between $600 thousand dollars and $1 million dollars per shot (I’d bet on the higher number) It is used by our Navy and the British Navy and media reports indicate that both have fired Tomahawks on Libya.

This is a particularly interesting development completely in line with Mr. Obama’s past practice. Because he is unable to make timely decisions and is risk-averse, the primary thrust of Mr. Obama’s war on terror has been through Predator drone-fired Hellfire anti-tank missiles. Simultaneously our troops on the ground in Iraq, and particularly Afghanistan, are saddled with rules of engagement so restrictive that they have actually cost the lives of American soldiers. In addition, where a bullet or a few inexpensive bombs would do, Mr. Obama prefers much more expensive, higher tech applications of taxpayer dollars.

So while French pilots successfully attack Qadaffi’s ground forces inside Libya with relatively inexpensive munitions, our air assets are grounded and we lob less effective, far more expensive--and rare--hi-tech cruise missiles at military assets that can and should be destroyed by the application of relatively inexpensive JDAM equipped or laser guided bombs, weapons that can have substantially greater explosive capacity than the pricey Tomahawk. That ought to help balance the budget.

Oh well. At least we’re not looking like a second string, second rate military power struggling to keep pace with the French. Are we? I’m tempted to say that Mr. Obama is looking more Carteresque every day, but he’d have to man up considerably to reach even that abysmal standard.

Update, 03-20-11: Thanks to our readers for their pertinent points. Such issues are difficult, not least because we don't have the intelligence information those making command decisions hopefully have. That said, Tomahawks have their limitations. They're absolutely great against targets that are not capable of moving, or are very unlikely to move, but they are essentially fire and forget weapons. An F/A-18, say loaded with four bombs, is far more flexible. The pilot can make targeting decisions on site, and has the capability to destroy multiple targets with precision rather than one.

Indeed, the Tomahawk is a good weapon for taking out fixed missile and radar sites, though in the Persian Gulf War, that task was in part assigned to Apache helicopters (I know that option is likely unavailable here; just making the case for alternatives). An additional consideration is that if a Tomahawk lacks the explosive capacity to completely do the job, or if its intended target moved before the Tomahawk arrived, another strike, likely by manned aircraft, will be necessary to complete what could and should have been done in the first place. Manned strikes do expose our people to danger, but they understand and accept this.

We should never expose our people to unreasonable risks when there are viable alternatives, but the French are flying, apparently successfully. Are we less capable? My worry continues to be that Mr. Obama, because of his inability to make timely decisions, and his reluctance to use American force for any reason, is falling back on the tried and true Democrat dodge of using very expensive missiles when other, more effective and less expensive alternatives might do the job--militarily speaking--more effectively. Let's not even get into the argument about America's leadership in the world, at least not in this post.

The New McCarthyism

An arresting poster making the rounds of the Internet depicts American soldiers shielding an Afghan man and child above the legend “HONOR” (view it here). The point being that the dishonorable make others involuntary human shields while the honorable voluntarily make themselves human shields. This concept is apparently far too common and crude for the elite who imagine themselves, in the exclusive company of like-minded souls, to be the epitome of courage for denigrating the truly honorable.

Comes now Colman McCarthy, billed as ”a former Post columnist” who “directs the Center for Teaching Peace in Washington and teaches courses on nonviolence at four area universities and two high schools,” writing in the Washington Post what he and those like him no doubt consider a very courageous denunciation of ROTC, apparently in the hope of establishing new, compelling justifications for keeping ROTC at arm’s length. McCarthy’s article may be accessed here.

Mr. McCarthy opens with a charming tale of lunch with Father Theodore Hesburgh who served as Notre Dame’s president for 35 years. Fr. Hesburgh, in McCarthy’s telling, was proud of Notre Dame’s long relationship with ROTC, with patriotism, and with the university’s role in preparing capable, Christian officers for service in the military. McCarthy is clearly one of those progressives who is absolutely certain of their intellectual and moral superiority, and he boldly flounces in where angels fear to tread. To wit:

“I asked if he actually believed there could be a Christian method of slaughtering people in combat, or a Christian way of firebombing cities, or a way to kill civilians in the name of Jesus. Did he think that if enough Notre Dame graduates became soldiers that the military would eventually embrace Christ's teaching of loving one's enemies?

The interview quickly slid downhill.”

No doubt.

Let us, for the moment, put aside the juvenile presumption of accepting the hospitality of such an accomplished man, a man of God, and crudely insulting him and all for which he has labored in a life of distinguished, selfless service, the like of which McCarthy can’t possibly imagine or equal should he live ten thousand lifetimes. For one supposedly versed in issues of peace, he shows a revealing lack of understanding of history, just war theory, scripture, theology, rhetoric, common sense and simple good manners.

Fr. Hesburgh is a priest, a man who has dedicated his life to the service of God and of God’s creation. In this, he shares many qualities in common with the lowest ranking enlisted man or woman, for they too have voluntarily dedicated their lives to the service of others and are willing to give their lives in that service. Fr. Hesburgh and our Soldiers, Sailors and Marines create peace every day. Untold millions live today because of them and because of all they have followed on the martial path. McCarthy and those like him create ephemeral utopias that have never existed and never will. In this, they perpetuate the fundamental progressive failing: The studious ignorance of the realities of human nature. Fr. Hesburgh surely recognized that he was in the presence, not only of a boor, but of a fool, a man who could not be reached through reason, kindness or fact. No wonder the interview “slid downhill.”

As one who “teaches peace,” what might McCarthy believe? “It should not be forgotten that schools have legitimate and moral reasons for keeping the military at bay, regardless of the repeal of ‘don't ask, don't tell.’ They can stand with those who for reasons of conscience reject military solutions to conflicts.” McCarthy goes on to argue that maintaining a military is costly and impractical and that some colleges “teach alternatives to violence.” Hmm. This has to be formally taught? On the college level? Don't most people have mothers?

And what, according to Mr. McCarthy, constitutes academic, institutional greatness? “ Only one of the eight Ivy League schools - Cornell - offers a degree in peace studies. Their pride in running programs in women's studies, black studies, and gay and lesbian studies is well-founded, but schools have small claims to greatness so long as the study of peace is not equal to the other departments when it comes to size and funding.”

One might roam the halls of the Pentagon for many years before finding a member of the military who would prefer to go to war rather than first exhausting all other reasonable avenues toward peace. Ronald Reagan was prescient in observing that none of the major wars in his lifetime occurred because America was too strong. Again, understanding human nature provides an inconvenient--for the Progressive--reminder that the strong will inevitably attempt to prey upon the weak unless restrained.

And of what, pray tell, might an undergraduate degree in “peace studies” consist? Heaven forbid that a graduate degree might be offered in such ephemera. No doubt it is of the same academic rigor as “women’s studies, black studies, and gay and lesbian studies,” in which Mr. McCarthy takes ill-founded pride. Do such courses of study teach one to be more feminine? More black? More gay or lesbian? Perhaps they teach those enrolled to appreciate peace? Do they primarily produce lobbyists for those causes? Should a given university elevate the study of “peace” to the same exalted level of the study of gays, lesbians, blacks and women, that is a mark of greatness in higher education? Why? Diversity? Inclusiveness? Elevating the oppressed over the oppressors? Being invited to the right parties?

An honest man would, upon careful--yet easily accessible--study, have to conclude that few institutions in history have done more good than the American military. The military was one of the first major institutions to abolish racism and to give minorities the opportunity to succeed on merit, and this certainly includes women. Throughout more than two centuries, when the weak have been oppressed, when tyrants have murdered millions, the US Military did not talk about peace, but made it happen by stopping those who wanted to impose the peace of the grave on sensitive souls like Mr. McCarthy, and in so doing, have always paid an enormous price. When disaster struck in Indonesia and New Orleans, the U.S. Military was first on the scene, saving lives from the first possible moment while UN bureaucrats spent weeks securing first class accommodations and feckless politicians wildly tossed blame. But of course, Mr. McCarthy cannot acknowledge this and must denigrate such self-sacrificing, real accomplishments while exalting victim-group navel gazing cloaked in the “greatness” of higher education.

Like Senator John Kerry who believes that if one isn’t Ivy League, they end up in Iraq like all the weak-minded, little people in fly-over country, McCarthy deigns to gaze down from his peaceful, Olympian heights to cluck his tongue at the great unwashed: “At Notre Dame, on that 1989 visit and several following, I learned that the ROTC academics were laughably weak. They were softie courses. The many students I interviewed were candid about their reasons for signing up: free tuition and monthly stipends, plus the guarantee of a job in the military after college. With some exceptions, they were mainly from families that couldn't afford ever-rising college tabs.”

Ah. Considering what Mr. McCarthy sees as laudable academic rigor, he may be somewhat less than uniquely qualified to pass judgement on the academic rigor of an ROTC curriculum, but allow that to pass. Mr. McCarthy reveals the lack of depth of his character by sneering at the lowly, the stupid, the unenlightened who might wish to jump on the military gravy train for “free tuition and monthly stipends, plus the guarantee of a job in the military after college.” Oh yes, and they were tricked, perhaps forced into ROTC because they were poor and couldn’t afford ever-increasing tuition.

Is it not a contemporary progressive article of faith that everyone should go to college, and on the public tab? How then does Mr. McCarthy justify sneering at someone who is accepting government money to attend college? But more, is Mr. McCarthy really so dense as to fail to realize that in return for such “free” tuition and stipends, each officer candidate is willingly giving up months of their time in college, time that might be otherwise spent in important college pursuits such as various “studies” classes, or waking up in pools of their own vomit after nights of high-minded debauchery? Doesn’t he know that in return, each ROTC student is being guaranteed a government job, a job that will consume six years of active duty service and might very well cost their life and that will, day in and day out, require that they willingly surrender the kinds of liberties and choices with which Mr. McCarthy would never voluntarily part? Indeed, ROTC students get financial aid, but the nation is getting, by far, the better part of the bargain. Surely Mr. McCarthy knows this, or does he merely think the public too stupid to understand the true nature of the ROTC and the military? Surely no enlightened being would think so poorly of his fellow citizens?

Ah, but Mr. McCarthy is not anti-soldier, no. He admires “those who join armies, whether America's or the Taliban's: for their discipline, for their loyalty to their buddies and to their principles, for their sacrifices to be away from home.” There apparently is, in Mr. McCarthy’s moral universe, absolute moral equivalence. There is no difference between our warriors and the Taliban, the Taliban who recognize no laws of war and torture (the real thing, not progressive imaginings) and murder prisoners and innocents, who murder women for being women, who murder gays and lesbians for being gay and lesbian, who wantonly destroy priceless treasures of antiquity, who seek to murder all infidels--that’s you, Mr. McCarthy--and who even murder other Muslims when it suits them as it often does. The American Military and the Taliban are equally worthy of Mr. McCarthy's esteem and respect. Is one who does not understand that evil exists worth anything? Is one who recognizes that evil exists, yet ignores it and attempts to convince others that it does not exist worth even less?

Mr. McCarthy admires the Taliban for their loyalty to their principals. The principal of absolute, perverse, deranged, blood-thirsty, unrestrained evil? Perhaps it is this that Mr. McCarthy wishes elite universities to study? Perhaps this will elevate them to greatness? And yes it’s a sacrifice to be away from home, as so many American soldiers wish to return to their families so that they can love and support them, and see that their wives and daughters have every opportunity for education and self-actualization. And the Taliban, in Mr. McCarthy’s imagining, want the same: To return home, to beat their wives and to mutilate the genitals of their wives and daughters, to keep them covered, to never allow them out of the presence of a male relative, to keep their daughters equally terrorized and uneducated, and to reserve the right to murder any female relative who, in their fevered brains, brings the slightest dishonor to the family. Such is the peace of the Taliban, 7th century barbarians all.

Even so, Mr McCarthy’s appreciation for the ethic of the warrior remains undiminished: “In recent years, I've had several Iraq and Afghanistan combat veterans in my college classes. If only the peace movement were as populated by people of such resolve and daring.” Hmm. Perhaps Mr. McCarthy might want to consider that those who are truly resolved and daring tend to involved themselves in callings and endeavors where resolve and daring are required and appreciated, endeavors such as actually fighting for peace rather than talking about it. Could this be why Mr. McCarthy finds himself surrounded by weak-minded milquetoasts?

Mr. McCarthy saves his big guns--please pardon the military metaphor; I can’t help myself--for last: “ROTC and its warrior ethic taint the intellectual purity of a school, if by purity we mean trying to rise above the foul idea that nations can kill and destroy their way to peace.”

“The intellectual purity of a school?!” No. That’s too easy. Readers who wish to discover the level of intellectual purity on contemporary “elite” campuses have only to research names such as Bill Ayers, Cornel West or Ward Churchill.

No, Mr. McCarthy, nations can’t kill and destroy their way to peace. They can kill and destroy their way to conquest, misery and subjugation. There have always been tyrants whose imagined destiny was doing just that; such men will always exist. America is based on a different hope, that all men deserve what God has intended for them: The ability to live in peace and to enjoy the blessings of liberty.

History teaches us that peace is not Man’s natural state. Mankind has never enjoyed universal peace for there will always be those who seek the subjugation, even the extermination, of others. Such men are evil, and evil must be destroyed, person to person, institution to institution and nation to nation. It cannot be reasoned with, enticed or dissuaded, bought off, or changed through “smart diplomacy,” hope, change, "engagement" or good intentions. It must be destroyed, so that peace has a chance. That is why the U.S. Military exists and why its support is money well spent. That is why ROTC exists. In the most down and dirty sense, our military is the last, best hope of the last, best hope on Earth. Without those willing to give their lives for the hope of peace for millions they will never know, without those willing to sacrifice to lead them, there will be only death, destruction and abject misery, a state of nature where life is, as Thomas Hobbes put it, "nasty, brutish and short."

In his unfortunate dealing with Mr. McCarthy, Fr. Hesburgh surely knew this. Mr. McCarthy will never acknowledge it, for this simple fact of human nature utterly undermines his field of "study." But you know it, and now you know where the study of "peace," as Mr. McCarthy would have it, inevitably leads.

Unfounded Fears

I got into a couple of arguments about "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" earlier today on Twitter. Quite frankly, they weren't really much in the way of arguments, just what I thought were logical reactions to rather hysteric fears of several people that seemed to be of the opinion that if they gay folks currently serving in the military were now free to admit who they are, they it would lead to them compulsively attempting to shag every soldier they see every waking moment.

I wish I was kidding, but some people seem to think that way:

The armies of other nations have allowed gays to serve openly in the military. The reason they could afford to do this is simple: they could allow homosexuals to serve in their military because we didn’t allow them to serve in ours.

They knew they could count on the strength, might, power, and cohesion of the U.S. military to intervene whenever and wherever necessary to pull their fannies out of the fire and squash the forces of tyranny wherever they raised their ugly heads around the world.

Those days are now gone. We will no longer be able to bail out these other emasculated armies because ours will now be feminized and neutered beyond repair, and there is no one left to bail us out. We have been permanently weakened as a military and as a nation by these misguided and treasonous Republican senators, and the world is now a more dangerous place for us all.

It’s past time for a litmus test for Republican candidates. This debacle shows what happens when party leaders are careless about the allegiance of candidates to the fundamental conservative principles expressed in the party’s own platform.

Character-driven officers and chaplains will eventually be forced out of the military en masse, potential recruits will stay away in droves, and re-enlistments will eventually drop like a rock.

The draft will return with a vengeance and out of necessity. What young man wants to voluntarily join an outfit that will force him to shower naked with males who have a sexual interest in him and just might molest him while he sleeps in his bunk?

Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association wrote that, either fearing that the most combat-hardened military in world history is ripe for the picking, or perhaps, he's just guilty of a little fantasizing of his own.

His is an absurd position, one that portrays gay soldiers as uncontrollable rutting beasts, and our straight servicemen as docile sheep waiting to raped. Such a point of view is hysterical and illogical and shows that those holding such views think very little of the professionalism of all soldiers regardless of their sexual preference.

It also taps into a deep-seated phobia that some seem to have that homosexuality is a communicable disease, and that soldiers that serve with gay soldiers could be "turned gay."

I wish I was joking, but the folks who hold these views are dead serious. Some are borderline frantic, apparently unaware that tens of thousands of gays serve in the military right now. This kind of freakish paranoia brings out the worse in some people, and in some, it simply seems to be striking fears that their own sexuality isn't quite as black and white as they profess it to be.

I find a gay soldier willing to sacrifice his life for my family's safety to be on much firmer moral ground than a sputtering viper like Fischer the serves up division and fear.

Perhaps that is the greatest irony; a professed Christian, Fischer certainly seems to be batting for the other team.

MIKE'S UPDATE, 12/20: In the military, everyone knows who is and isn't gay, and there are regulations addressing public displays of affection and any kind of favoritism or misbehavior that might be likely to arise from this change in policy. Any additional regulations required should be relatively easy to identify and enact. Remember that the military has significant means of compelling proper behavior from its members that have no civilian analog. While I agree with Bob that the hoopla over this incident may well be overblown, it would be wise to keep a careful eye on things and not to allow this to become a camel's nose under the tent for additional "progressive" social engineering. Since the Progressives have had their noses whacked, and hard, in the civilian arena, they may well seek to implement on a captive audience--the military, members of which are not allowed to criticize Congress critters--what they can no longer easily do in the civilian world. And should this politically motivated change during wartime begin to clearly cost lives--no doubt there will be unintended consequences that cannot be easily foreseen; there always are--The Tea Party movement can perform another public service by running everyone who voted for this bit of political expediency during a lame duck session out of office once and for all. And while the "elite" colleges are now making noises about welcoming ROTC and recruiters, the depth and breadth of their understanding and implementation of honor remains to be conclusively demonstrated. Of course, the Obama Administration could simply enforce the law requiring fair treatment of the military at colleges that receive federal funds, but I haven't seen any flying pigs of late, nor is there snow in Hell's weather report when last I looked. There is much to watch out for in this situation.

Tomorrow We Honor a Hero

U.S. Army Staff Sergeant Sal Giunta will be presented with the Medal of Honor tomorrow.

Brad Manning, I Hope They Hang You High

A disgruntled Army specialist by the name of Brad Manning has been placed under arrest after a former hacker turned him in for bragging about breaching national security, having turned over hundreds of thousands of documents to Wikileaks:

SPC Bradley Manning, 22, of Potomac, Maryland, was stationed at Forward Operating Base Hammer, 40 miles east of Baghdad, where he was arrested nearly two weeks ago by the Army's Criminal Investigation Division. A family member says he's being held in custody in Kuwait, and has not been formally charged.

Manning was turned in late last month by a former computer hacker with whom he spoke online. In the course of their chats, Manning took credit for leaking a headline-making video of a helicopter attack that Wikileaks posted online in April. The video showed a deadly 2007 U.S. helicopter air strike in Baghdad that claimed the lives of several innocent civilians.

He said he also leaked three other items to Wikileaks: a separate video showing the notorious 2009 Garani air strike in Afghanistan that Wikileaks has previously acknowledged is in its possession; a classified Army document evaluating Wikileaks as a security threat, which the site posted in March; and a previously unreported breach consisting of 260,000 classified U.S. diplomatic cables that Manning described as exposing "almost criminal political back dealings."

"Hillary Clinton, and several thousand diplomats around the world are going to have a heart attack when they wake up one morning, and find an entire repository of classified foreign policy is available, in searchable format, to the public," Manning wrote.

In every instance cited above by Manning there are avenues to blow the whistle on corruption and illegality through channels that would bring wrongdoers to justice.

Instead, Manning decided to declare himself arbiter of his own brand of justice, leaking hundreds of thousand of classified documents and and two videos that leftist Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has used to smear the U.s. military. The more famous of these, July 12, 2007 gun camera footage from an Apache attack helicopter firing upon armed Medhi Army militants, has been thoroughly discredited.

I'm not a lawyer, and don't claim to be, but Manning's distribution of classified military and State Department information during an on-going conflict would seem to be the very definition of treason.

I don't know if they still hang spies from treason, but they should. If Brad Manning is guilty of the crimes of which he is accused, he should be executed as soon as his appeals are exhausted.

"He was in a war zone and basically trying to vacuum up as much classified information as he could, and just throwing it up into the air," said the hacker who turned him in, Adrian Lamo. Even worse than committing treason for a cause or for money, Manning apparent did it for kicks.

The Wired article also notes that Manning had "a keen interest in global politics."

Too bad he chose the wrong side.

Lets Send That Bombing Run to the Replay Official...

The Pentagon's cribbing a play from Monday Night Football, adopting the same instant replay technology used during games to improve analysis of war zone video feeds.

Harris Corporation, the company behind instant replay for professional football and baseball games, has teamed up with the military on an analysis system that’s already been deployed to several bases, reports Live Science.

The system, called Full-Motion Video Asset Management Engine (FAME) uses "metadata" tags to encode important details — time, date, camera location — into each video frame. In a football game, those tags would help broadcasters pick the best clip to re-air, then explain, a play. In a war-zone, they'd help analysts watch video in a richer, easier-to-grasp context. And additional tags could link a video clip to photographs, cell phone calls, databases or documents.

Source.

Don't Ask. Don't Tell. Don't Attend.

It seems Barack Obama and his liberal allies are all for accelerating the repeal of "don't ask, don't tell," allowing gays to openly serve in the military.

It's a matter of efficiency.

That way they can ignore both groups at once.

Third and Final SEAL Found Not Guilty of Terrorist Beating

Oh, how heartbroken our military-hating left must be:

A Virginia military jury found a Navy SEAL not guilty Thursday on all charges he punched an Iraqi suspected in the 2004 killings of four U.S. contractors in Fallujah.

"I'm really happy right now," Matthew McCabe, the Navy SEAL, told Fox News shortly after hearing the outcome of the court martial. "It's an amazing feeling. I'm on cloud nine right now."

McCabe, a special operations petty officer second class, called the proceedings "troubling at times," adding "having your career on the line is not an easy thing to handle.

McCabe was the third and final Navy SEAL to be prosecuted in the case. He had faced charges of assault, making a false official statement and dereliction of performance of duty for willfully failing to safeguard a detainee. McCabe was accused of punching last year is Ahmed Hashim Abed, the suspected mastermind of the grisly killings six years ago.

What an absurd and morally bankrupt country we live in that this even came to trial. Political correctness has run amok to the point that terrorists trained to lie are leant more credibility that the highly trained counter-terrorists that captured them.

Every time an asinine case like this is brought up, it simply ensures that good men will refuse terrorists the right to surrender. Weep not for the dead men to come. Weep only that our society's values have become so perverse that we have to kill those who would surrender so the good guys won't later be tired up in court when all they really desire is the honor of protecting those who do not appreciate their sacrifice.

Make Way For The Space Marines

I'm not expecting it anytime soon, but the concept is slick:

After decades of unsuccessful development, military space planes are finally getting some respect. On April 19 the U.S. Air Force plans to launch the X-37B, an unmanned space plane that will circle the planet a classified number of times before making an autonomous landing. (Popular Mechanics profiled the effort as the magazine's cover story in April.) The idea of a pop-up reconnaissance platform, to be used if a satellite is not available or is disabled, is an importantrationale for the Air Force's project.

The Marines' space plane takes the Corps' slogan of "first to fight" to the extreme: It could transport a squad of Marine riflemen to anyplace on earth within 2 hours, and then extract them after their mission is complete. Though the goal is appealing—imagine delivering well-armed Marines at hypersonic speed to a suspected Osama bin Laden hideout or besieged embassy—the concept seemed outlandish to many when it was first proposed.

Now, this sort of response time would be incredible, but think about the possibilities of how this hypersonic vehicle can be integrated with other technologies in development, such as micro-UAVs, load-bearing armored exoskeletons, ultra-high velocity kinetic weapons, and ever-shrinking smart weapons.

HALO vs. al Qaeda... could be interesting.

Update: More hyper-velocity future weapons at Ace of Spades.

Too Bad We're Not Building New Garbage Scows

Politicians—more than likely led by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi— have pressured the Navy into naming a new San Antonio-class amphibious ship after ex-Marine and Democratic pork champion John Murtha.

Once put to sea, the Murtha, a amphibious transport dock (LPD), will take part in landing Marines on hostile shores before then retreating to a safe distance to call a press conference to accuse them of intentionally killing women and children in cold blood.