re: #208 Gus

Hilarious line of the night comes from Sean Hannity: “Marines still use bayonets, so maybe somebody should educate the president about how the military works.” Seriously? Apparently so. Later on Hannity was crowing about the Marines using horses in Afghanistan too. This just reeks of desperation.

Well, to be fair, Romney didn’t complain about Obama cutting the budget for horses and bayonets. Obama, by bringing up horses and bayonets in response to Romney’s point that the Navy was being scaled down to fewer ships, implicitly made the analogy that ships, for the Navy, were the equivalent of horses and bayonets. And he made it in the most insulting way possible: geez, how could you not know that warships are obsolete? Where have you been? Do you even realize that horse cavalry is obsolete?

I tend to agree partway—-submarines are about the only warship that’s survivable beyond a few minutes in the event of a “real” war. But almost everything we want our military for is for lesser disasters. And for fights with opponents who don’t have their own modern air force or submarines, a surface navy comes in handy. Ships are not horses and bayonets. They’re not chariots. They’re relevant for modern gunboat diplomacy.