Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : America Under Siege: The End of Innocence -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Captain Jack who wrote (12249)	12/24/2001 11:40:49 AM
From: joseph krinsky	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 27720

Jack Kelly: Look up in the sky America is the Superman of the world's military Sunday, December 23, 2001 We own the sky. We own the night. We can strike anywhere in the world. Only we can stop us. Our enemies have come to appreciate this. We must, too, or we will squander a historic opportunity. As the curtain lowers on the first phase of the war on terror, one thing has been made clear: The U.S. military is -- absolutely and relatively -- the most powerful fighting force in the history of the world, and our relative superiority is likely to grow. The nation with the next best armed forces is Britain. But the British army, navy and air force put together are smaller than -- and not as good as -- the U.S. Marine Corps. World War I aviators Billy Mitchell and Giulio Douhet dreamed of a day when airplanes would be the decisive weapon in war. That day has come. Though they are smaller now, our Air Force and Navy air wings are much more capable than they were during the Gulf war, thanks to vastly improved aerial reconnaissance, and to precision-guided weapons. Because of satellites, and drones like the Predator, we can detect the movement of individual enemy soldiers, 24/7, in good weather or bad. What we see, we can kill. Only 6 percent of the bombs dropped in the Gulf war were "smart" munitions. More than 90 percent of those dropped in Afghanistan have been. The accuracy of these weapons, coupled with enhancements in the destructive power of conventional explosives, means we now can destroy heavily fortified targets which, in the recent past, would have been vulnerable only to nukes. Less heralded, but no less important, is our ability to move fighting forces to distant theaters, and to keep them supplied once they are there. Afghanistan is about as remote from the United States as any place on the planet. Yet within weeks we were able to bring substantial military force to bear. Many in the media wonder why the Muslim "street" did not explode with rage when military operations in Afghanistan commenced. The reason is simple. Muslim radicals are afraid we will kill them. They know we can if we choose to do so. Pundits who predicted we would fall into a "quagmire" in Afghanistan are now forecasting failure if the war on terror is extended to Iraq. Saddam Hussein has a big army, they warn. The anti-terror coalition would fall apart, they wail. There are none so blind as those who will not see. As Canadian writer David Warren noted in the Ottawa Citizen, U.S. military superiority is so great that even the most advanced of our allies are more of a bother than a help. "Except for the most elite British special forces . . . help would just get in the Yankees' way," Warren wrote. "The 2 percent or less of the West's Afghan campaign that was offloaded on the British (and a few French special forces) was essentially unnecessary. The help was accepted as a political favor, in answer to British and French supplications." "Offers of British and other NATO aircraft were politely declined," Warren said. "They have inferior equipment and pilots, and, as the United States learned over Serbia, you can't really fight a war while waiting for 19 different defense ministers to sign off on each target." While our military is stronger than it was in 1991, Saddam's is weaker. We can destroy every military base, every presidential palace, every suspected weapons plant, and as much of Iraq's industrial infrastructure as we choose, and there is nothing Saddam could do about it. The nattering nabobs of negativism note that there is not in Iraq a force comparable to the Northern Alliance. But all that is required to create one is an expression of American resolve. There is no love lost for Saddam among the people he has oppressed. And Arabs have a historic tendency to flow toward the winning side. The failure of our chattering classes to recognize the breathtaking extent of American power is in large part because they know absolutely nothing about matters military, and show little inclination to learn. But there is another reason. To recognize American power is also to recognize American forbearance. We could conquer the world if we chose to do so. Almost any other nation, put in our circumstances, would. That we haven't is proof of what galls our elites most: We're the good guys. post-gazette.com Jack Kelly is national affairs writer for the Post-Gazette and The Blade of Toledo, Ohio (jkelly@post-gazette.com).