Tag Archives: Massachusetts

As thousands of foreign nationals were stranded in Libya, anxious governments mobilized their resources to effect the evacuation of their citizens. Some nations sent military or commercial aircraft. The Chinese diverted a warship that was patrolling the sea lanes near the pirate-laden seas off Somalia, half a world away, to evacuate Chinese nationals. That is a display of power projection.

The United States took a different approach: we hired a ferry boat. It carried about 200 people to a modicum of safety after waiting out bad weather in the harbor. What would have happened, I wonder, if Colonel Khadafy decided to block our efforts to extract our citizens? We might have had, and still might have, a hostage situation to rival the Iran crisis that brought down President Carter’s presidency in 1980.

And so I ask, “Where is the 6th Fleet?” Where are the carriers? They are so vital to US power projection that President Bill Clinton was famously quoted in a 1993 speech aboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt, “When word of a crisis breaks out in Washington, it’s no accident that the first question that comes to everyone’s lips is: Where’s the nearest carrier?”

An aircraft carrier is 4 ½ acres and 90,000 tons of sovereign US territory that projects power in the face of despotic regimes like no other instrument of foreign policy can.

So how did it come to pass that the best the US Navy had to offer in the Mediterranean these past weeks was a lonely destroyer?

The short answer is that the only US carrier in the Med departed through the Suez Canal to the North Arabian Sea to join two others already there. Three carriers were needed, I suppose, in the North Arabian Sea to prosecute the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. I am certain that one of the carriers needed to be relieved to head home after a long deployment.

And that is just the point: long deployments, quick turnarounds and a smaller fleet add up to one thing: in the face of astronomical defense budgets, the US Navy is stretched entirely too thin and its’ numbers are in decline. We have 11 carriers today but at any one time, perhaps only 4 are operationally ready and underway. Three are in overhaul; four are just back from a long deployment or getting ready for one. Right now, three of those four are tied to the Persian Gulf, leaving the rest of the globe far too vulnerable.

The United States is an island nation. Some 90% of commerce sails along the ocean: everything from Nike sneakers to Saudi Arabian crude comes by sea. The world grows more fragile and our fleet is in decline. Our fleet is as small as it has been in 100 years. As recently as a decade ago, on any given day, 60 ships of the line were underway, patrolling our own waters or defending the sea lanes against tyranny. Today, that number is merely 20.

Who would think that our world is less complicated than a decade ago? The US Navy can project power to 2/3rds of the world’s population. The Air Force, with its sophisticated stealth aircraft, is confined to bases mainly in the continental US, far from the stress points in the Mediterranean and the Gulf and the Pacific.

The era of Pax Americana is only defensible with a strong and capable Navy. We face peril on the seas. Our fleet will grant to us the privilege of taking the fight to the enemy where they live only so long as they can get and remain underway.

In Memory of Donna Kane

It seems that each week we start by saying, “Wow, what a week,” and this week is no exception. The world still spins on its axis but it does feel as if it is wobbling.

Geo-politics and Geo-economics are clashing with an intensity that I cannot recall in recent history. All across the Arab world and into the heartland of America itself anger ferments. For the first time, the term regime change seems to apply equally to despotic governments in the Middle East as it does to our own State governments in Wisconsin and Virginia. It is Facebook versus dictator; union versus governor.

On Monday Colonel Gaddafi fled Tripoli and is desperately hoping to hold on to the eastern part of his country and wage a war with his own people to hang onto the power he has had for 42 years. Hundreds of Libyans have been killed by his own troops with no end in sight. Foreign nationals are evacuated by civil and military air and naval forces while our American citizens wait patiently for a ferry to dock. And President Obama dances to Motown in the White House; a far different response than that of President Reagan and the Gulf of Sidra incident in 1981.

Tuesday saw oil increase 8 ½ percent in one day on the fear of oil interruption through Libya. And in Wisconsin, Tea Party and Union forces went chin to chin at the Statehouse while Democratic Party lawmakers remained outside of the State in order to avoid voting on limiting the collective bargaining power of public sector unions.

Four American Christian missionaries were killed by Somali pirates while negotiations for their release were being conducted on a nearby naval vessel.

U.S. Rep. David Wu (D-OR) apologized to his staff for his erratic behavior while wearing a tiger costume and taking prescription drugs given to him from a campaign contributor. Wu said on ABC’s “Good Morning America” that it was “unprofessional and inappropriate” for him to send pictures of himself wearing a tiger costume to staff members. I finally agree with a Democrat.

Oil hit $100 on Wednesday as speculators feared the worst in the Middle East, and why not? And our own Congressman Michael Capuano let loose with a remarkably insensitive and politically incorrect statement that the unions ought to get into the street and get bloody. This comment made just weeks after his own colleague Gabby Gifford was shot by a maniac in Tucson.

Citigroup economists reported on Friday that the US economy would fall behind China by the end of the decade and behind India by 2050. They identified Global Growth Indicators to watch for and noted countries such as Bangladesh, Egypt and Iraq as economies to watch. The United States was not among them.

And Newt Gingrich cautioned the President that even Barack Obama cannot suspend the Constitution and become a one-man Supreme Count as he decided not to challenge the Defense of Marriage Act, signed into law by President Clinton in 1996. He simply will ignore it. No, Mr. President, we have a procedure for that. It’s called the Judicial System, the third branch of government.

The world is on fire and the President dances to Motown. I heard that through the grapevine.

Press on.