Arming for War - Losing our Hearts and Minds

America didn't always have the world's most powerful and best equipped military, and although Commodore Perry had forced the opening of Japan with a small force of steamships in the 1850's, the oceans definitely belonged to Old England. Global power shifts happen much quicker these days, primarily due to the fact that perceived power (that which is reported on by the media) has replaced steel and guns in the thinking of most leaders and intellectuals. It's an interesting outcome, that the power to utterly destroy one's opponents is held in low esteem as long as one is self-restrained from doing so on humanitarian grounds. What strikes me as particularly ironic is that the ideological basis of many of today's terrorists, destruction of the West's corrupt way of life, would have signed their death sentence in in the 1800's, had the the corrupt Western governments of that time been equipped with modern weaponry. The following is from the New York Daily Times of June 29, 1882 - 123 years ago today:

PROPOSITION FOR NEW CRUISERS

The Senate Committee on Naval Affairs to-day authorized Mr. Rollins to report favorably a bill authorizing the construction of a number of vessels of war for the Navy and appropriating $10,000,000 for that purpose. The bill provides for the construction of six open-hearth steel cruisers, two of them to be not less than 5,000 for more than 6,000 tons displacement, and to be armed with 4 breech-loading rifled cannon of not less than 8-inch calibre, and 21 breech-loading cannon of not less than 6-inch calibre; the remaining 4 to be of not less than 4,300 nor more than 4,700 tons displacement and to be armed with 4 breech-loading rifled cannon of not less than 8-inch calibre, and 15 breech-loading cannon of not less than 6-inch calibre. The bill also authorizes the construction of one steel ram of not more than 2,000 tons displacement, four steam cruising boats and four steam harbor torpedo boats. It further provides that the steel used in the construction of these vessels shall be of domestic manufacture, and that one-half of the number of vessels authorized to be constructed, including their engines and boilers, shall be built in the navy-yards of the United States, and that the others, in their whole or part by contract. The bill was reported to the Senate this afternoon and placed on the calendar to await further consideration.

That we've been building and deploying some pretty powerful weapons systems around the world since the ocean going Monitors of the post Civil War period is known to all. The subtle change in the balance of power is the growing obsession in the Western World with television images and collateral damage. Collateral damage wasn't always viewed as a bad thing, in fact, all damage inflicted on the opposition was once seen as good damage, because it had become apparent that modern wars couldn't be won by simply destroying a professional military group on the other side, it required destroying the opposing group's places to hide and will to fight. Our new morality demands that we play by a unilaterally imposed set of rules and wait until we destroy our own will to fight, at which point we lose. It seems we're doomed to become a fine bunch of humanitarians, damned for our humanity, and scheduled to be written out of history.