Chaos Manor View, Thursday, September 03, 2015
Managed a three mile walk this morning, on the flat of course, but close to the daily walks I took before the stroke. The walker with four seven inch wheels was a little tricky to learn, but now I have confidence in it, and it was easy and comfortable. I hope to do at least two mile a day, five days a week, in future, weather permitting. I still don’t have any confidence in night walking, which I used to do a lot; my internal gyroscope doesn’t work at all, and while our streets are lighted, there are dark stretches with not enough – or might not be enough – visual cues. I might try driving tonight: Michael will drive me to my club in my car, and nearby is a big well lighted city parking lot nearly empty in the evenings but open all night: the perfect venue for that kind of test. If that works well and I expect it to, then I can contemplate short trips to the store in the daytime. I doubt I’d do many. Ray Bradbury got on all his life owning cars he couldn’t drive, and did rather well…
Later: it was still daylight when we reached the very empty lot, and I found I can steer accurately and stop where I want to. One more goal accomplished.
Obama Secures 34 Senators’ Support for Iran Nuclear Deal
Number guarantees deal can advance despite opposition in Congress
http://www.wsj.com/articles/obama-secures-34-senate-democrats-support-for-iran-nuclear-deal-1441203473
It is now assured that the Iran “deal” – not a Constitutional Treaty but the President has assured us that unless 60% of the Senate votes to close debate, it is the Law of the land – will be agreed to. This means that the only thing keeping Iran from acquiring a nuclear force of at least some magnitude will be the will of the Ayatollah who is Supreme Leader under their Constitution. They will have the ability not long after they have the will, and they can keep that secret given the nature of the inspections, some of which not only require 28 day’s notice but have provisions restricting the nationality of the inspectors.
I do not know what, if any, plans we have for the war fighting forces need to deter Iran, and act if deterrence fails. The current Supreme Leader Ayatollah has been explicit in stating the deal does not change his enmity of the United States, whom he considers the great Satan, but then the Soviets under Khrushchev threatened to bury us, and we are not yet interred: but we did have SAC, an elite force dedicated to preventing The Big War (“Peace is our profession” ) but capable of fighting it and possibly winning it if deterrence failed.
As Herman Kahn said of Khrushchev, possibly he’s crazy, but is he that crazy? It was our job as cold warriors to make it clear that launching the first strike was really crazy, beginning with the basic plans. The big Project 75 survey of basing schemes, and finally strategic defense: a policy of assured survival to replace Mutual Assured Destruction – MAD – which we inherited from Kennedy/Johnson. Kennedy himself approved the first efforts, such as Bennie Schriever’s Project Forecast (Conducted by the late Col. Francis X. Kane, my co-author) and Project 75 directed by Bill Dorrance of Aerospace and edited by me. The best way to survive a nuclear war was not to have one; but the best way not to have one was to make sure the other guy would lose big, whatever he did to us.Our weapons would survive his best strike, and there would be enough to finish off his offensive forces while striking a terrible vengeance on anything he held dear. We had the weapons and the warriors to accomplish that no matter what he did. We can do that now; but give Iran a few years, and can we?
Israel has an even bigger problem.
We will be discussing nuclear strategy here; I hope to God there is some group somewhere in the Pentagon discussing that also. But we no longer have SAC. We no longer have the SIOP’s (Single Integrated Operational Plan). We no longer have DEFCON states. We have disbanded SAC.
And we do not have all that long to construct, recruit, train, and build the nuclear fighting force to face a nuclear Iran.
We may hope the Supreme Leader of Iraq believes in truce with the Infidels; he is not permitted to believe in peace. A deterrent force might make truce more attractive. We had best hurry to build one.
We no longer have a nuclear force that believes that Peace is our profession.
God help us.
We will look at principles of basing, problems of morale – how do you attract bright and responsible young men and women to serve for years at the duty of making sure nothing happens, while sitting on boring alert underground, waiting for calls that with luck will never come – learning little about military life and leadership or practicing skills that have little outside value? What is the career path? You don’t get to fly. You don’t zoom around in the wild blue yonder. You sit in a hole in the ground listening for EWO EWO Emergency War Orders, Emergency War Orders, I have a message in five parts. Message begins. Tango. X-ray. Alpha…
The logic of deterrence is unforgiving. We knew how to do it once. We had SAC. It is gone. LeMay went to his tomb having seen his beloved SAC accomplish its mission: End the Soviet Union without dropping any atomic bombs. Building SAC was no easy task. Building another will not be easier, and we are not even beginning. We are not even thinking about the requirements.
We need SIOPs, Single Integrated Operational Plans, to deal with possible developments, ranging from strikes at weapons only to vengeance and Armageddon. We do not have them. And soon we will see the old cries go up. Better to live on your knees than die on your feet. It is coming. It is inevitable.
Or, Iran will acquire a Supreme Leader who wants peace in direct violation of the explicit instructions that there can be no peace outside the House of Submission; there can be only truce with those outside the House of Islam. Perhaps such a Supreme Leader will come forward and be appointed by the Council that selects such. And perhaps not.
In which case we need forces that make it plain that truce is better than immediate war, today, tomorrow, on Christmas Eve and the Fourth of July, on Maundy Thursday and Rosh Hashanah, year after year. Will it be easier to build such forces than to build weapons? Will it take less or more time? But if we do not start, we will not have them at all. The alternative is to pray that the Ayatollah chooses truce.
Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.
