American Power Moves Beyond the Mere Super

New York Times ^ | April 27, 2003 | GREGG EASTERBROOK

[The_Media_never_lie]

For years to come, no other nation is likely even to try to rival American might.

Despite what the liberals say, let's keep it that way.

[Billy_bob_bob]

Mexican Navy? What possible political advantage could be obtained from attacking the Mexican Navy? That's like going down to the local pre-school and picking on the little kids. Ooooh, big man. Picking on little kids. You'd just end up with everybody hating you. That's no fun.

Sometimes there is a tactical advantage in being the weak player on the board. For example, there are no status point to be gained from pushing you around.

[Savage Beast]

The two greatest threats to the United States--and consequently the world--are hubris and decadence.

"Liberalism" is the prevalent form of decadence.

Oh--and in a leader, character is of utmost importance.

[Renfield]

It is worth noting here that American aircraft carriers are not the CAUSE of American military might; rather, they are the RESULT of same. An aircraft carrier could be easily defeated by a supersonic missile with a low-yield nuclear warhead (e.g., Russian A.S. 15, etc); the reason that other nations have not used such missiles against our carriers is that they know that to do so, would invite an American nuclear response. Our carriers are, in a sense, a luxury, an artifact of our nuclear superiority.

[Tacis]

Well, maybe not. The Chinese didn't pay Clinton all that money to buy American technology just to give up the challange.

I, too, was looking for the hook, whatever it was that the Times was setting us up for. It may be a major cut in military spending so we can afford to buy all the minority kids in the country whatever the Times determines they should have to become useful members of society. But, I don't think its the military budget.

I think it is StarWars. The Times, the dems, and all America-haters know that, once we have a missle shield, we are truly the super power. They don't want this to happen and I believe we have heard the first of the drumbeat that says, "We are so far ahead, that we don't need an expensive new toy." Mark this article. It will be cited as we move toward the election. Bush will want StarWars and Tommie the Commie will whine that even the Times says we don't need it.

[Eaker]

You make a fantastic argument.

Thank you.

Do you think that there is a chance that this could happen? As an old warrior I hope so.

TomEaker.com

[blam]

Excellent

"the United States is working on unmanned, remote-piloted drone fighter planes that will be both relatively low-cost and extremely hard to shoot down, and small drone attack helicopters that will precede troops into battle."

These are the next generation of "Brilliant" weapons. Flip the 'go' switch and they will seek out and destroy targets by themselves.

[PGalt]

Foreign enemies take notice. Now...about them domestic enemies...

[Williams]

It is the rationalization of NK's plans to be able to kill millions of Americans. Further, I would quote Harvey Keitel in Pulp Fiction, but to paraphrase "Let's not start patting each other on the back just yet." A lot of our capability is to PROJECT power on the other side of the globe, because we need to. Our opponents are regional threats and get to fight in their own backyards.

I am sure we can beat any nation, but I wouldn't look forward to a conventional or nuclear war with China.

Finally, does everyone remember when George Foreman fought 3 (or 5) other heavyweights one after the other in one 15 round tournament? He was disgraced because he had to contend with 5 different attackers. They each had to take just a little bit out of his one hide.

Just a cautionary note. We have to be very careful to pick our fights. My next pick would be a serious wiping up of NK. They are a deadly threat.

[eddie willers]

Ultra Super-Duper Hyper-Power.

[konaice]

"I think they ought to follow my proposal: CREATE a 6th military branch for border patrol purposes, but have reduced physical standards and age limits to allow former military or people not quite tough enough for mobile warfare to take part in it."

I think you are right.
Take the Coast guard and Border Patrol as the heart of that new Branch, and militarize them to a higher degree. Let them operate within 50 miles either side of the border (as needed)
and tell the Canadians and Mexicans they can either HELP us, in which case we will Help them, or we will essentially close the border and cut them off from their largest market.

Give the land element Fast Lightly Armored all terrain vehicles (Bradleys), and area survielance aircraft (like GlobalHawk), and give the Coast Guard some cutters that were at least made sometime in the last 50 years, and fast interdiction boatss with enough firepower to do the job.

We have the core of the 6th branch by merging the Border Patrol with the 5th Branch.

[Servant of the Nine]

Most of the World figured this out in 1991.
It has take Iraq, North Korea and the wizards of the NY Times a dozen years longer.

Amazing.

So9

[LibKill]

We could conquer the world if we wanted to, but we don't want to.

[Servant of the Nine]

Does this mean that we are now a hyperpower?

No, it means we are The Hyperpower

So9

[bvw]

Not only air, sea, land, space but underground too. The counters to our level of military might are hard to realistically imagine, but might include lasers, quantum-communications, vey-smart-mines. Maybe a twenty-year period.

[konaice]

"Just a cautionary note. We have to be very careful to pick our fights. My next pick would be a serious wiping up of NK. They are a deadly threat."

I just wish we were another year along in our anti-balistic missile program before we bust the NK chops.

They claim the have the banger, and we know they have the launcher to reach Anchorage, Tokyo, Guam, and maybe Seattle.

Unless we can get some Patriot batteries close enough to get them in the boost phase all they need is ONE nuke to re-distribute the landscape in Alaska (where I live).

As far as I know, they have no mobile launchers that can reach us with nukes, and their fixed test tites for their Long Dong or what ever they call that missile is an easy target, our guys could take it out with no problem. But they have Scads of Scuds which can carry a fairly good payload about 400 miles, which makes most of South Korea ground zero.

We need to do this in a totally different way than we did Afganistan or Iraq, and I'm confident we have something totally unexpected up our sleve.

[Tribune7]

It's the New York Times. They merely wish us to become complacent. We must not. We must continue to build. We must use genetics to develop a radioactive fire-breathing Godzilla monster to terrorize our adversaries.

But even that's not enough.

We must clone Justin Timberlake and create an army of giant, mutant Justin Timberlakes to strike fear into our enemies and make them understand there is no hope. When they see the giant mutant Timberlakes rising from the sea dancing onto their beaches, impervious to shell, impervious to shot, impervious to flame, they will know there is no hope.

We must not sleep.

[geedee]

God, it's great to be an American.

I know I'm expecting a bit much . . . but wouldn't it be great if more of us just sometimes pushed back from all the daily BS bombarding us and just said out loud to ourselves what you wrote?

"God, it's great to be an American."

I can remember when dirt was invented and I've never been prouder to be an American than I am right now.

[fourdeuce82d]

The American military is now the strongest the world has ever known, both in absolute terms and relative to other nations; stronger than the Wehrmacht in 1940, stronger than the legions at the height of Roman power. For years to come, no other nation is likely even to try to rival American might.

This makes me very nervous. Remember "victory disease?" I hope the folks in charge of worrying about things think the same way.

Confidence in one's abilities is a good thing- overconfidence is a killer.

[Nick Danger]

I, too, was looking for the hook, whatever it was that the Times was setting us up for. It may be a major cut in military spending

I thought I saw that coming too, but they didn't do it. We can only hope that some Congressional Democrat like Daschle or Pelosi sees this and is moved to call for defense cuts. That oughta just about do 'em in.

In the absence of a "let's cut spending" close, I decided that this was more Quagmirology from the New York Times, a way to tag Bush with, "A fine mess you've gotten us into this time... now they're all going nuclear!"

If it becomes generally believed that possession of even a few nuclear munitions is enough to render North Korea immune from American military force, other nations -- Iran is an obvious next candidate -- may place renewed emphasis on building them.

This is left hanging by the author, as if it's a quagmire, but it is so true that it cannot be allowed to become a quagmire. Instead we must arrange for it to be "generally believed" that if you pull a stunt like Kim Jong Il just did, some really Bad Things happen.

If Kim Jong Il was paying attention, he will have noticed that we don't just have a bunch of bombs. We have delivery vehicles -- enough of them so that at some points during the Iraq war, there were six or seven hundred munitions going off in different areas around the country in the space of 30 or 40 seconds. Does he want nukes with that?