Israel Has Nuclear Weapons?
Sorry, Can't Comment On That
This morning, I went on “Judging Freedom” with Judge Napolitano to discuss the latest tomfoolery by the Trump administration.
Judge Napolitano showed a clip of a U.S. government official, a nuclear proliferation expert, explaining he could not comment on whether Israel had nuclear weapons.
WTF? Israel started working on nuclear weapons early in the 1960s. Everyone knows they have a nuclear arsenal of somewhere between 90 and 200 nuclear bombs (some estimates go as high as 300). Yet Trump administration officials can’t even acknowledge that Israel has nukes. Could you be more slavishly subservient to Israel than that?
(A lyric from Elton John/Bernie Taupin comes to mind: It’s a sad, sad situation—and it’s gettin’ more and more absurd.)
Meanwhile, Iran has zero nuclear weapons and did not have an active program to build one, so said America’s 18 (!) intelligence agencies. But Iran is the nuclear threat in the Middle East? I’m not buying it, and neither is any other sentient human.
One thing I mentioned on the show were reports on U.S. troop deployments to the region, including Marines and elements of the 82nd Airborne division. Those reports have been exaggerated, notes Ken Klippenstein, and I hope he’s right about this. Any U.S. ground invasion of Iran proper or Kharg Island would be a total Scheißesturm, to use a technical term.
The Judge and I also talked about airpower and its lack of decisiveness. Put simply, airpower can be effective at destroying specific targets, but it doesn’t control territory, it lacks persistence and staying power, and its effects can be counterproductive. Think here of the London Blitz in 1940, which united the British against the Nazis. Attacks from the air often serve to unite a people against a common foe, a result we’re witnessing in Iran right now.
Airpower proponents like to sell air attacks as decisive, but short of total annihilation with nuclear weapons, bombing from the air, in and of itself, isn’t war-winning. If it was, the USA would have won in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, and everywhere else it’s fought since 1945.
Meanwhile, as the USA denies any knowledge of Israeli nukes, Israel itself continues on a warpath to create a Greater Israel irrespective of the cost to America (and of course the peoples of the Middle East).
I hope the Judge didn't ruin your breakfast as he feared by having you listen to Chickenhawk Graham. Megalomania must be a communicable disease as he sounds just like Trump.
The war with Iran is exposing the many failures of US military strategy and technology in a world that has moved on from capital ships and high tech manned aircraft: F35s shot down by their infrared signatures; the USS Ford hit by a missile - Larry Johnson showed a photo yesterday that appears to show the stern torn up by something incoming versus a supposed laundry fire.
But this is America - our capitalists will convince politicians that everyone else is wrong, and the follow-on to the F35 and a future Trump-class aircraft carrier (in addition to the battleships) will be required.
I'm going to say something, Bill, that you probably won't like. For many years, I have claimed that we need an Army but we don't need an Air Force -- and we might not even need a Navy. (Truth in advertising: I'm a Navy puke, not Army and my service loyalties will always be with the Navy.)
The only things that win wars are the ground troops. Without boots on the ground, you cannot hold the land and you cannot win wars. The only purpose of airplanes is to support the ground troops, and if you are not supporting ground troops, you are just squandering resources. The last time air power helped win a war was in WWII. At that time it was the U.S.Army Air Corps and the Army dictated the priorities, the missions and the weapons systems needed to support the ground war. Since 1947 when the U.S.Air Force was established, air power hasn't won a single war. (Out of how many? I've lost count.)
The problem, as I see it, is that the Air Force has a different mission and a different set of priorities (and a separate political organization set up to argue for resources that, in most instances, don't support the land forces.) Close air support for the troops is a secondary and low priority mission. The priority missions are strategic bombing and air superiority. Fighter aircraft are cool. Supersonic and stealth bombers are cool. But the best aircraft for supporting the ground troops the Air force ever had was the A10 -- and they hated it. It was ugly. But the damned thing was effective.
As you point out, bombing the crap out of country doesn't win wars. Bombing only helps win wars when it's needed for the ground forces to hold the land.