Bring on the B-52s.
The Pentagon has deployed an unspecified number of the Cold War-era strategic bombers to Qatar to take part in the fight against the Islamic State.
The brass says the aircraft bring “multi-platform” forms of firepower to rein down on the terrorists. The Air Force describes the weaponry as precise and finely tuned to hit military targets.
Good to hear!
The B-52 remains one of the U.S. Air Force’s most potent weapons. It went into operation in the 1950s and has gone through several upgrades over the decades.
It poured thousands of tons of ordnance on North Vietnamese and Viet Cong targets during the Vietnam War. The planes played a key role in softening up Iraqi troop positions during the Persian Gulf War in 1990-91.
Now the Islamic State is about to feel the wrath of a weapon that our nation’s enemies always have feared on the battlefield.
My very first visual sight of the Vietnam War occurred as I peered out the window of a jetliner en route to Bien Hoa, South Vietnam in the spring of 1969. I looked down and saw a flight of the big birds flying out over the ocean after, I presume, completing a bombing run over South Vietnam.
Once I settled in at our Army aviation base near Da Nang, I could hear the thunder to our west as the planes fulfilled their mission. It was music to our ears, but it meant something quite different to those on the receiving end.
I welcome the news of the B-52 coming back into active wartime duty. I’m quite certain the terrorists who are about to find themselves on the receiving end of some serious pain will not.
You talked quite a bit differently when Ted Cruz proposed this action. But if Obama does it, it must be great. I sometimes wonder whether this double standard might be because Cruz is Hispanic. I’m just wondering.
Cruz “talks a bit too brazenly about âcarpet bombingâ the Islamic State and putting.”
https://highplainsblogger.com/2016/02/nice-seeing-you-iowa-on-to-new-hampshire/
“And what about Sen. Ted Cruzâs pledge to âcarpet bombâ Islamic State targets? Hayden calls it âinhumaneâ and not in keeping with U.S. principles.”
https://highplainsblogger.com/2016/02/ex-cia-boss-trashes-trump-cruz/
“At one level, he might be the scariest candidate running for the White House. … (he) seems too quick to âcarpet bombâ Islamic State targets, which quite naturally is going to produce civilian casualties in direct contradiction to military policies established by two presidents.”
https://highplainsblogger.com/2016/04/whos-qualified-to-be-president/
The big birds have precision weapons that, I presume, will be deployed with the aim of avoiding civilian casualities.
B-52s are a big sledge hammer. I know they’ve been updated but the newest one rolled off the assembly line when the Soviets were stationing missiles in Cuba. They’re not being sent for their precision strike capabilities. They’re going to sent to send a message, Cruz’s message.
We’ll see.
BTW, that thunder you heard at Da Nang and are now cheering was not coming from precision guided bombing with no collateral damage. It came from more than 864,000 tons of bombs killing as many as 182,000 noncombatants. If that’s “music to your ears,” you have no business criticizing Cruz.
Yes I do have “business” criticizing Cruz. I was 19 years old, listening to bombs falling in defense of my fellow soldiers. Do I regret now — as an old man — that the bombs killed so many civilians? Of course I do.
And now you’re a retiree in his 60s with decades of experience commenting on government actions and you’re still giddy over the prospect of bringing these bombers back into action to again rain down hell on America’s enemies – actions certain to lead to civilian casualties. And you do this just days after ridiculing Cruz for proposing exactly the same thing. Didn’t you just write a whole blog posting about people with thin skins?
I have a thick skin. Don’t you think so?