The U.S. is an amazing superpower, one that most Americans simply take for granted.
When Stalin closed the land and rail approaches to Berlin, he hoped to choke the western part of the city into submission. The man who always seemed to be in the right place at the right time, General Curtis LeMay, was asked by General Lucius Clay if his transport planes could bring coal to the city. “General, we can haul anything,” was his famous reply. And with that began the Berlin Airlift, with 250,000 flights bringing 2.3 million tons of supplies into the blockaded city. Cows, flour, coal, fuel, machinery, and tons of chocolate dropped with handmade parachutes arrived every 60 seconds. Stalin blinked before the airlift stopped, and the road and rail approaches were opened again. This was one of many exercises of American power (with help from England, which was still a meaningful country at that time).
We take it for granted that B-1s, B-2s, and B-52s are flying routinely over Iran, bringing American destruction to the country that for nearly five decades bellowed, “Death to America!” Well, maybe it was a translation issue, but they should have been screaming, “Death from America!” My kids used to ask me why Israel has no real bombers. The attack on Hezbollah’s Nasrallah required 40 planes delivering 80 precision munitions, and the opening salvo of the current war involved 200 Israeli aircraft and 100 bombs to decimate the Iranian leadership. Israel actually had a few B-17s at the start of its modern journey, but for decades, it has relied on traditional fighters being decked out with a lot of bombs to do what a single U.S. bomber could do with its eyes closed. The brand new F-16s sent to blow up the Iraqi reactor had to be fueled until the moment they took off. They flew very heavy.
The U.S. is a power that is oftentimes hard to comprehend, especially if one lives in the U.S. and takes much of what the country does and can do for granted. While other countries may have more reliable internet or faster trains, nobody except possibly China can come close to the manufacturing potential of the U.S., and nobody comes close to the U.S. for innovation except maybe Israel. When General LeMay was leading the Eighth Air Force out of England, or the XXI Bomber Command charged with sending U.S. bombers to Japan, it was typical to put up hundreds of bombers on a single run. LeMay himself often sat in the lead bomber heading to Europe, so as to lead by example. He also threatened any air crew that did not get over the target with a court-martial. There is a story of him during his days as the head of Strategic Air Command (SAC) involving him smoking a cigar in the cockpit of one of his planes. The pilot suggested that the general might want to put out his smoke due to the heavy fumes of gasoline. “Why would I want to do that?” “The fuel might catch fire, sir.” “It wouldn’t dare!” Many of those B-52s and KC-135s busy over the skies of the Middle East today could probably tell a story or two about General LeMay.
Pete Hegseth understands the need for U.S. production muscle, and he and President Trump have been needling the defense contractors to make more weapons faster. Nobody is making a bomber every 63 minutes as was the case for the B-24 Liberator at the height of World War II. But Northrop just promised a 25 percent increase in production volume for the new B-21 Raider, which is scheduled to replace the aging B-2. The venerable B-52 is scheduled to be in service until its 90th birthday. When the Boeing engineers sat in a Dayton hotel room and made designs and a Balsa wood model of the proposed plane, they may have known that they had a winner. I doubt that they could have imagined that their great-grandchildren would be flying the plane they had just created.
On a trip to Utah for some snowmobiling, we needed to get back to Las Vegas to be with my father. I put his address into Waze and was told to drive 613 kilometers on US 15 and then make a right onto Nevada 95, which was less than 10 minutes from my dad’s place. We all kind of looked at the phone screen in disbelief. In Israel, we were used to going 30 or maybe 50 kilometers before having to make a turn or otherwise do something beyond going straight. From Jerusalem:
Beirut, Lebanon: 234 km
Amman, Jordan: 72 km
Damascus, Syria: 217 km
Cairo, Egypt: 423 km
If one were to drive from Jerusalem north through Lebanon and beyond, one would get the instruction to turn somewhere near the Turkish border. So a trivial trip between Utah and Nevada would be a region-conquering effort if one were to try it here. When we drove a couple of years ago from LA to Vegas, we stopped at Primm to freshen up. I showed our daughter-in-law how far we had traveled on a large map of the United States. Our nearly four hours of driving had barely moved from Point A to Point B and left a lot of the U.S. still to be seen.
There are very few countries where one can hear stories of people going from nothing to enormous success in just a few years. Mark Zuckerberg and Michael Dell started their respective businesses already in their college dorm rooms and within short order became multibillionaires. One rarely hears similar stories from other countries, including those in the West. As the U.S. once again flexes its manufacturing and military muscle, its former World War II allies are heading to the retirement home. England couldn’t be bothered to send one or both of its problem-plagued aircraft carriers. France seemed to treat its sole carrier as a yo-yo that could be sent and returned and sent again. Only 30 years ago, these countries were strong partners in Desert Storm. Now they are heading toward irrelevance. We’ll have to fight without the Brits! Even though they have American F-35s and Trident D5 submarine-based nuclear missiles, they are a shadow of their great former selves. They can tell us how they once ruled the seas and how the sun never set on the British Empire. The question today is whether the sun ever rises on the moral and economic basket case that is the U.K. today. They fight harder to catch someone badmouthing trans on Facebook than they do against the mullahs who want to vaporize their country. President Trump laughed at Keir Starmer needing to “talk to his team” to decide if to send ships to the Strait of Hormuz. He reminded the prime minister that he is the boss and should be able to make the decision himself. He probably cannot decide what to wear each morning without a formal committee recommendation.
Whereas most countries use their power and influence for their own advantage, much of what the U.S. does also benefits the locals. Venezuelans and Iranians longed for the U.S. to remove their despotic leadership. U.S. Navy ships ply major shipping lanes to keep oil and goods moving to countries throughout the globe. Donald Trump said that it would be an “honor” to protect the continued movement of oil to China, as 90 percent of their oil goes through the Strait of Hormuz. The U.S. is a country like no other, and when it is running on all cylinders, it is extraordinary. Our prayers are with the U.S. servicemen and women who are fighting for a better future for Iran, the Middle East, and the world.