by Jeff Huber
It was only a matter of time before Long Bill Kristol and his scurvy dogs of war used piracy as an excuse to goad young Mr. Bush into invading one last country before the door hits him. In the latest gurgitation of the Weekly Standard, Bill suggests that the best thing young Mr. Bush can do in his final days as commander in chief is send the Marines into Somalia to deep six those pesky buccaneers. Now: if we can’t identify and capture pirates while they’re plundering ships on the bounding main, I’d like to know how the yo-ho-ho Bill thinks the Marines can tell the pirates from the rest of the poor starving Somalis once they go ashore.
Bill also remarks how Bush can do the nation a service “by reminding Americans of our successes fighting the war on terror.” One wonders if Bill is no fooling unaware that terrorists are on the verge of a sparking war between two nuclear powers, or that a congressionally mandated task force has reported that “it is more likely than not that a weapon of mass destruction will be used in a terrorist attack somewhere in the world by the end of 2013,” or that, according to the respected analysts at the Rand Corporation, Mr. Bush’s pursuit of a military-centric counter-terror strategy “has not undermined al Qaeda” and that the terrorist group “has remained a strong and competent organization.”
One would hope that given the enormous influence he wields, Bill is at least partially cognizant of the world around him, that he just talks that way because he’s a master of Socratic dialectic* who recites gibberish until people agree with him so he shuts up.
But then, if you’ve ever seen him talk on John Stewart’s show, you’ve probably concluded that Bill is dumber than a quarry. The only thing he has going for him as a spokesmodel of the neocon agenda is that his looks don’t break TV cameras. If the mongers sent somebody like surge architect Fred Kagan on The Daily Show, the kids in Stewart’s audience might vomit (Eugh, gross!) or maybe even cry (Please don’t let him sit on us!).
Unnamed officials assure me that the cadets used to react that way whenever Fred gave lectures at West Point.
War and B’gar
Seemingly aware of his limitations, Long Bill normally delegates the hardcore humbuggery required of any given subject to one of his more gifted mateys, and the pirate issue is no exception. Seth Cropsey’s “To the Shores of Tripoli…” is a standard neocon compendium of fuzzy premises and fear and loathing and the sort of logic that insists ear is to hearing as nose is to face.
The first thing that struck me about the piece was Cropsey’s apparent alarm over the estimated $30 million ransom money the Somali pirates raked in this year. Cropsey must have shared a cryogenic chamber with Dr. Evil. We’re chaffing $10 freaking billion into Iraq every month, which isn’t a pismire compared to the $7 freaking trillion we’re going to spend trying to fix the freaking economy, and Cropsey wants to send the Marines ashore for $30 measly million that didn’t even belong to us?
Only slightly less ludicrous is Cropsey’s admonition that “Americans ought to know the limits of relying on naval power alone to stop piracy as a result of the nation’s experience in the Barbary Coast wars.” Comparing the present Somali pirate situation to our Barbary Coast wars of the early nineteenth century is as tidy an apples-to-elephants analogy as you’ll ever find. Thomas Jefferson’s America hadn’t expanded much beyond the eastern seaboard, it didn’t have the world’s largest economy, it hadn’t won two hot world wars and a cold one, or lost any dirty little third world wars in Asia; it didn’t spend more on defense than the rest of the world combined, or have a nuclear arsenal that could destroy the planet between lunch and happy hour, etc., etc., etc.
Thomas Jefferson’s America also didn’t possess a couple fistfuls of fixed wing aircraft carrier strike groups, two of which, with their E-2 Hawkeye surveillance aircraft and the rest of their air wings, could turn the whole Indian Ocean into a no-pirate zone faster than you can say “Avast.” Yeah, at first blush it’s overkill to use more than $10 billion worth of carrier and air wing and escorts to stop a few measly millions worth of piracy, but what else do the carrier groups have to do right now: bomb Muslim weddings in the Bananastans? Heck, the Navy’s got cruise missile equipped nuclear submarines to bomb Muslim weddings with.
And if it ever happens that the nuclear submarines can’t bomb Muslim weddings any more because, oh, what…because they run out of fuel when the Iranians go and gobble up the whole world’s supply of uranium, say, well we have a whole separate service branch that pick up the Muslim wedding bombing slack. It’s called the Air Force, which has these really, really expensive things called, oddly enough, bombers.
Cropsey doesn’t mention anything about that in his article. He was deputy undersecretary of the Navy in the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations, so there’s an excellent chance he knows nothing whatsoever about naval warfare or U.S. naval capabilities. Then again, he could be protecting the phony baloney defense budget. If he came right out and said the Navy hasn’t been doing what it should because its been doing what the Air Force should be doing but isn’t, people might start to ask why the hell we have either one of them.
Plus, if the Navy can solve the pirate problem, there’s no need to get our land forces tangled up in another pointless quagmire, which Cropsey admits a Somali invasion would be. “Somalia’s descent into turmoil began almost two decades ago,” he writes, and is “unlikely to be reversed” by military intervention.
But that doesn’t matter, Cropsey admonishes. We should rely on the Marines and not the Navy to tackle the pirate challenge because “The reference in the Marine hymn is to ‘the shores of Tripoli,’ not to its bays or littoral or coastal estuaries.”
And as if the article weren’t already sufficiently stunning, Cropsey closes with the neocons’ favorite propaganda ploy, the taunt. Failing to hit the beaches of North Africa “will increase the jihadists’ contempt for us.” Psst. Ahmed over there just called you a booger nose. What are you going to do about it??
Thanks for the info, Crops. Oh, did Ahmed tell you your fly is open?
It’s well and good to have a good laugh at Kristol’s unholy crew of blobs, buffoons and bull feather merchants. They not only deserve ridicule, they demand it. It is vital to the continued health of our nation that we lay bare the absurdities inherent in the neoconservative philosophy early and often and forever.
But it’s also imperative to remember that this collection of ideological sideshow amusements steered our ship of state and dictated the fates of nations for eight years, and that some of the people in Barack Obama’s national security team still take them seriously.
Scary, huh Jim Boy?
*In Book VII of Republic, Plato’s Socrates describes “the hymn of dialectic” as “the discovery of the absolute by light of reason only, and without any assistance of sense,” i.e., superior logic is thinking that’s totally divorced from reality. Now you know why some folks call Plato “the first neocon.”
Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes at Pen and Sword . Jeff’s novel Bathtub Admirals (Kunati Books), a lampoon on America’s rise to global dominance, is on sale now. Also catch Scott Horton’s interview with Jeff at Antiwar Radio.
A lot of guys at work are quoting somebody on TV saying that the Navy can’t track pirates over 700 square miles of trackless Ocean. My idea is this: Civilian vessel under attack gives mayday with GPS coordinates using a cheap commercial locater. One of those spy satellites we have that can read a license plate on a car in the pentagon parking lot shifts focus to the coordinates and begins streaming video to CENTCOM. CENTCOM, through the appropriate chain of command, vectors a Navy attack plane to the scene or wherever the pirates went to (the satellite is tracking them) and it blows the rubber boats into floating debris with about one round per square foot of rubber (as I recall that’s a gatling gun’s effect). My first thought was to send a destroyer, but an ex-first class that I work with doubts that the target would offer enough resistance to trigger the fuse on a five-inch shell, so an attack plane is better as well as quicker.
As a professional do you see anything wrong with my scenario. Except maybe for the pilot being diverted by a naked Somali babe on a rooftop (yes, I read your book).
Somebody on TV is full of shit. 700 square miles is nothing if you have competent AEW/C2.
.
You can still sign up for the conference.
Eh, piracy … what’s new? Read A Dark Passage or about the Dutch Golden Age, buccaneers and Spanish galleons.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."
I know…it would mean having to deal on a face-to-face level with a whole shitload of assholes… but really, wouldn’t your sheer common sense coupled with your naval experience and fine sense of humor make you incredibly electable in these hard times?
Senator Jeff Huber…there’s a nice ring to it, isn’t there?
I’d work for you.
Bet on it.
AG
If a wanker like Al Franken can get this close to being a Senator…and believe it, that whole election in Minnesota between Franken and Senator Normie Boy has about as much depth as an SNL Mr. Bill vs. Sluggo action figure skit…you would be a shoo-in.
I mean…you’re actually funny.
From Webb’s website
Webb and Virginia Leaders Call Navy’s Proposal for New Aircraft Carrier Homeport “Strategically Flawed, Fiscally Irresponsible”
Washington, DC – On Thursday, November 20, Senators John Warner (R-VA) and Jim Webb (D-VA), Senator-elect Mark Warner (D-VA), and Virginia Governor Timothy M. Kaine called the Navy’s announced preference to create a second East Coast homeport for a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier at Mayport, Fla. “strategically flawed and fiscally irresponsible.” They called on the Navy to delay its decision until a new administration is allowed to analyze the proposal’s strategic and fiscal considerations.
At a press conference in the U.S. Capitol, the four Virginia leaders cited the “fiscal irresponsibility” of creating a new homeport for the carrier in Mayport-a move that the Navy estimates will cost at least $600 million to complete. Additionally, Senators Warner and Webb sent a letter to Defense Secretary Gates requesting that the Navy hold its decision, “until a new administration is able to evaluate the decision with greater rigor than the Navy has demonstrated.”
(Hit the wrong button above. Sorry. To continue…)
_______________________
If a wanker like Al Franken can get this close to being a Senator…and believe it, that whole election in Minnesota between Franken and Senator Normie Boy has about as much depth as an SNL Mr. Bill vs. Sluggo action figure skit…you would be a shoo-in.
I mean…you’re actually funny.
You live in Virginia, right?
Here is where “politics” in VA are at right now. (From Senator Jim Webb’s website.):
Now…I do not even have to research that thing to know that it is just another “More pork for our state!!!” boondoggle of some sort. An Encounter of the Senamatorial Kind, just more of the lame business as usual that has gotten us in this mess in the first place.
Run for office against the next VA Senator at risk. That’d be that sad sack of shit Warner, right? Either sad sack of shit Warner? Or would it be Jim Webb? That would be harder, but I’m not all that impressed with his centrist tightrope act either. He would have been better off decking Bush when the Decider mouthed off to him about Webb’s Marine son in Iraq. I’ll betcha Joe Bageant…another sometime VA resident…would leave his current hut home in Belize and come work for you as well.
Am I joking?
Only if you are.
Later…
AG
I’m glad you brought that up. In my previous life, I was an actor and did quite a bit of stand up comedy. It’s tough.
Now, Al Franken has been a professional commedian for decades, and in all the times I’ve seen him on TV, he’s never been funny. I mean, ever. He always bombs. I hear it’s the same when he does clubs.
So how in the hell has he been getting by all these decades as a comedy “star?”
He’s like the prequel to Jack Black.
Jeff
“So how in the hell has he been getting by all these decades as a comedy ‘star’?”
In a devolved culture…and bet on it, this culture is as devolved as it gets, considering how evolved it has been in the past…the honest people are the criminals, the bad players are the musicians, the unfunny make comedy…YOU know.
So it goes.
Saturday Night Live…after its first burst of brilliance…turned into a mediocre skit cemetery. And if you think that Franken was writing “comedy” for crazed motherfuckers like John Belusihi?
Naaaaahhhhhh….
He probably had his nose so far up Lorne Michaels’ ass that it got prostatitis.
He was unlistenable on Air America. That voice!!! It was so smarmy that when he went for smarmy no one knew.
And now he couldn’t even beat that wooden stick Norm Coleman.
Why…even John “Small K” kerry could have beaten that load of prolapsed asshole.
So it goes…
AG
Whenever I see a no talent like that persevere in a tough profession, I think two words: rich kid.
I don’t know. Lately, when I see a no-talent like that persevere in a tough profession, I think: Ah, Jeez. Another freakin’ David Eckstein.
Solidly middle class, I believe. Maybe even upper-middle class.
His act was…and remains…almost a parody of the “rich kid”.
It’s not a very good parody and it is a one-note song as well, but there it is.
He’s a wannabe rich kid.
The worst kind of asshole, really.
However…he would have fit right in had he made it to the Senate.
So many of them share the same characteristics.
I mean…what is Norm Coleman but Al Franken without the gift of gab?
Why didn’t Franken win?
Why elect a parody when you can have the real thing?
Later…
AG