Some of the greatest blemishes on America’s military history come from 20th century carpet bombing campaigns. B-17s and B-29s over Dresden, Berlin, Tokyo, and Hiroshima likely shortened WWII and saved Americans, but no nation should beat their chest over killing perhaps a million civilians. Indiscriminate US bombing in Vietnam and Cambodia similarly cost tens of thousands and residual Agent Orange crippled a generation.
Yet, to sound tough on ISIS Ted Cruz has chosen to embrace this legacy. In a recent campaign speech, he promised to “carpet bomb [ISIS] into oblivion. I don’t know if sand can glow in the dark, but we’re going to find out.”
Perhaps he was just unaware of the term’s unsavory history? After a month of criticism, he doubled down on the term in the most recent Fox debate and promised to “apologize to nobody for the vigorousness with which” he would “carpet bomb” ISIS “into oblivion.” He went on to state that the US used carpet bombing during the first Persian Gulf War — in fact, laser-guided weapons played a starring role in America’s victory over Saddam.
Ted Cruz is incapable of ever admitting error even on a misstep as obvious as embracing a strategy that WWII Air Force General Curtis LeMay, who masterminded the Pacific front bombing campaigns, acknowledged could have had him hung as a war criminal. Like Cruz’s claims about his past stances on immigration, the senator would rather go so far as to rewrite history obvious even to Fox hosts than backtrack. He may have learned some of his tricks from Victoria Coates, one of his chief foreign policy advisers, an art history PhD who helped research and write the mendacious Donald Rumsfeld memoir. My only hope is that Cruz would just as willing to redefine words like “support” and “legalization” so that carpet bombing to him would result in a less horrific strategy. But I would rather not have to wait until his nomination to find out just how little Ted Cruz values innocent Syrian and Iraqi life.
Ted Cruz isn’t the only candidate with the capacity to disturb. In an echo of Sippenhaft, Trump has said that America “has to take out [ISIS fighters’] families.” Trump is so enamored of the “respect” Putin holds for him that he has gone so far as to defend him against charges of killing journalists and joke about how he would “never” do such a thing.
Trump like Cruz also flirts with war crimes and has no idea what he is talking about. Trump, born in 1946, lived through the Cold War in its entirety. During it, America developed a nuclear triad of long-range bombers, land based missiles, and nuclear-armed submarines. This meant to ensure that the Soviet Union could never achieve nuclear primacy, or the ability to wipe out America’s nuclear capability on a surprise first strike. No nuclear primacy meant that any use of nuclear weapons would result in mutually assured destruction. When asked about this central component of the nation’s defense policy, the self-proclaimed “best on the military” candidate was stumped. In his defense, a spokeswoman of his said, “what good does it do to have a good nuclear triad if you’re afraid to use it?”
Marco Rubio, thankfully, has heard of the triad. But the man who hopes to bridge the gap between the GOP establishment and insurgents is not above misguided and counterproductive pandering. In the past two debates he has tried to sound tough by bragging about how he would refill Guantanamo with US citizens.
American presidents without strong majorities in Congress often find themselves constrained to pursue their domestic policy priorities. But in foreign policy presidents have a truly shocking amount of leeway. As the recent comprehensive take on national security law Power Wars by NYT reporter Charlie Savage confirms, the new dynamics of war pushed even Obama, a president who came into office skeptical of executive power, towards amassing ever more unilateral authority.
I googled for three minutes to find a quote about fear to close on. Goodreads.com/quotes pointed me to George R. R. Martin who wrote:
Bran thought about it. ‘Can a man still be brave if he’s afraid?’
‘That is the only time a man can be brave,’ his father told him.
America should heed Eddard Stark. The average ISIS fighter just got a 50% paycut and has only has a few months to live. Like Obama said in the State of the Union:
The United States of America is the most powerful nation on Earth. Period. (Applause.) Period. It’s not even close. It’s not even close.
Two periods. It’s not even close, 2x. I sincerely hope this campaign cycle soon grows out of this ignorant, embarrassing, and dangerous scaremongering.