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Home Who Really Stands Up for America?

Who Really Stands Up for America?

On October 1962, destroyers from the Second Fleet streamed out to intercept Russian vessels suspected of delivering missiles to Cuba. Under the shadow of DEFCON 2, Vice Admiral Alfred Ward, commander of the Second Fleet, watched over a blockade of Cuba. The Navy men putting Russian ships under their guns knew that they were the tip of the spear in what might at any moment become the next world war.

The Russians had ordered their ships to keep going. It was up to the Second Fleet to hold the line.

"Admiral, it looks as though this is up to the Navy," President Kennedy told Admiral Anderson.

“Mr. President,” the admiral replied, “the Navy will not let you down.”

On September 2011, under the leftist politico whose admirers tried to sell him as another JFK, the flag of the Second Fleet was taken down. The fleet that had taken point against the Russians was no more.

The justification for the disestablishment of the Second Fleet was the diminished threat from Russia. The Navy was being cut to pieces while Obama focused on boondoggles like the “Green Fleet”.

“Our Navy is smaller now than any time since 1917,” Mitt Romney had objected next year during a presidential debate. "We also have fewer horses and bayonets," Obama sneered, to the cheers of the media. "The question is not a game of Battleship where we're counting ships."

When Romney brought up the Russian threat, Obama sneered some more. "The 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back because, you know, the Cold War's been over for 20 years."

These days, Obama’s party is mired in a haze of Russian paranoia. But it was their leader who dismantled our first lines of defense and Trump who is restoring our military deterrence.

Seven years after Obama shuttered the Second Fleet, its flag is flying again. The fleet isn’t green any more, it is mean. And it will watch over the East Coast and the Atlantic to checkmate Russian subs.

The shutdown of the Second Fleet was part of Obama’s failed pivot to Asia which ended with a humiliating apology to China for flying a plane too close to one of the Communist dictatorship’s fake South China Sea islands. (Trump has since dispatched B-52s, outraging China, with no apology.)

That was December 2015.

On January 2016, the complete collapse of naval credibility led Iran to seize two United States Navy boats, steal classified information, hold their crews hostage and humiliate them on television.

Obama had forced the Navy to grovel to China. Why not Iran?

Instead of taking decisive action against this second Iran hostage crisis, the appeasement administration instead used it to spin the success of the Iran Deal. The humiliation of the Navy was complete.

But the humiliation of the United States Navy and the United States of America ended on Jan 20, 2017.

The restoration of the Second Fleet is an important step in the revival of America’s Navy. But the full scope of the harm Obama inflicted on our readiness will take generations of hard work to repair.

The USS Enterprise, the descendant of a fabled history stretching back to the American Revolution, which took part in the Cuban blockade, was scrapped by Obama. The Enterprise was one of six carriers scrapped by Obama who wasn’t interested in counting ships or horses and bayonets.

Or in fulfilling the congressional mandate to maintain at least eleven aircraft carriers at all times. Scrapping the USS Enterprise took us to ten even though 10 U.S. Code § 5062 specifically states, "The naval combat forces of the Navy shall include not less than 11 operational aircraft carriers."

Obama broke the law. He undermined our national security. And once again, he got away with it.

The great dismantling of our military fueled Chinese, Russian and Islamic aggressive expansionism. But now the Second Fleet will be headquartered in Norfolk along with NATO’s Joint Force Command for the Atlantic. While media pundits wailed about Trump’s commitment to NATO, Norfolk sends a clear and direct message to the Russians and to NATO about American capabilities and determination.

Under Obama, Russian attack subs and spy ships showed up on our coastlines, approaching naval bases, coming close to our waters, occasionally passing undetected, testing our capabilities and our nerve. While Obama did nothing about the threat to our naval forces, Trump shut down the Russian consulate in Seattle to stop its spying on Naval Base Kitsap, one of the homes of our underwater nuclear arsenal.

Our capabilities have room to regrow, but no matter how much the media lies, our nerve is not lacking.

President Trump nominated Vice Admiral Andrew "Woody" Lewis, a former fighter pilot, who had served on the Enterprise, the Truman, and the Roosevelt, to head the Second Fleet. The Lewis pick demonstrates the administration’s commitment to projecting naval and air power in the Atlantic.

There are no horses and bayonets here. Just Trump’s vision for restoring carrier power. While Obama scrapped carriers in his own game of Battleship, Trump wants 12 supercarriers and a fleet of 350 ships.

"American ships will sail the seas, American planes will soar the skies, American workers will build our fleets," President Trump had declared at the dedication of the USS Gerald R. Ford.

Ford brings the Navy up to 11 carriers. Obama took the Navy below its mandated minimum strength. Now for the first time since those terrible years of appeasement, American naval power is recovering.

By the time Trump is ready to leave office, the Navy should be back up to twelve carriers again. A few years later, the People’s Republic of China expects to have four carriers. Its advanced new vessels will likely rely on stolen technology ripped off by Chinese hackers in the weak and feckless Obama years.

These include the Littoral Combat Ship and Aegis system designs.

The Democrats and the media howling about the national security threat from Russian hackers remain uninterested in the Chinese hacks that stole some of our most vital and advanced national security secrets. They expect us to believe that hacking John Podesta and Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s emails, and posting spam on Facebook, was a bigger threat than China making off with the F-35 plans.

China’s ambitious new supercarrier designs take advantage of our failures during the Obama era. These carriers show that the People’s Republic is thinking of projecting force beyond its territories and islands.

And China has worked closely together with Russia. Its first carrier is an unfinished Russian model. Russian and Chinese vessels are also participating in joint naval maneuvers because they know that seapower hasn’t, despite Obama’s assertions, gone the way of the era of horses and bayonets.

Not a day goes by without Democrat politicians and media ranting that President Trump is failing to protect us from Russian attacks. The return of the Second Fleet is an example of how Trump is doing just that. It doesn’t take the military to protect Democrat email accounts from hackers. The DNC could have spent 20 bucks on physical security keys for its people, instead of on lavish dresses for Debbie.

A single one of Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s dresses would have paid for 200 security keys.

Or the Democrats could have spent the money to maintain the military and deter foreign enemies instead of believing that empty speechifying and diplomacy could take the place of aircraft carriers.

While Obama cut the US Navy, the Russians added warships with cruise missiles. They’re adding an amphibious assault ship capable of carrying 13 tanks. Their missile patrol boats are being hailed for their innovative designs. Putin has announced 26 new ships will be added to the Russian Navy this year.

Where are all the Democrats who shout about how we need to challenge Russia? Nowhere.

In 2016, a Russian warship made it to within 300 yards of the USS Gravely. The Gravely was protecting the USS Harry S. Truman. The warship pointed at the Truman. As usual, Obama did nothing.

These days, the Harry S. Truman Carrier Group is already sending a message to Russian subs in the Atlantic. If the Democrats want to see Trump standing up to Russia, they can look to the waves.

Before long, they will see the flag of the Second Fleet flying once more over the Atlantic Ocean. Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine.

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Comments

  1. Anonymous7/8/18

    And as has been pointed out, bayonets - and to some extent horses (mostly for ceremonial purposes) are still in the inventory.

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  2. Anonymous8/8/18

    Yup.

    ReplyDelete
  3. If I could enlist again, I would. #GONAVY

    ReplyDelete
  4. As to China stealing American technology, you are not paying attention.

    A majority of the graduate students enrolled in our science, math and engineering graduate programs are foreigners, and most of them are Chinese nationals. In some STEM departments, the Chinese are a majority of all graduate students.

    Graduate education is an apprenticeship program in which graduate students conduct research under the guidance of an expert. Graduate students invent theories and methods and publish them. Much of our cutting edge technology was produced by Chinese graduate students in our universities.

    The Chinese and other foreigners are officially banned from participating in classified research, but graduate students like to talk about their work.

    Almost all the Chinese go home, and they take their technical knowledge and research results with them. So much of Chinese military technology is home grown.

    That isn't to say they don't steal; they do. But they are highly competent engineers and scientists in their own right.

    Complaints about Chinese stealing our ideas are dangerously close to the pre-WW II racist claims that that Japanese were half-blind yellow monkeys whose ships tipped over in tight turns.

    Today, the Chinese manufacturing economy is larger than ours and much more comprehensive: socks to supercomputers, with a manned space program. In a shooting war in the South China Sea, they would win.

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    Replies
    1. I could be mistaken, but it seems you consider China as an allied country that means us no harm, when the balloon does go up(I'm told it might sooner than later)it would be interesting to know how many Chinese that are interwoven into our defense mechanism(R&D ,university and private companies ie.silicon valley)and maintain a low key exsistance,yet still serve their masters in Beijing, in this day of political correctness , this question might be perceived as racist , so be it

      Delete
    2. I could be mistaken, but it seems you consider China as an allied country that means us no harm, when the balloon does go up(I'm told it might sooner than later)it would be interesting to know how many Chinese that are interwoven into our defense mechanism(R&D ,university and private companies ie.silicon valley)and maintain a low key exsistance,yet still serve their masters in Beijing, in this day of political correctness , this question might be perceived as racist , so be it

      Delete
  5. I've passed the link to this important article to Navy contacts on active service on aircraft carriers in the Pacific.

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  6. Anonymous8/8/18

    Who is standing up for America?

    Certainly NOT the democrat party.

    The left can't wait to see America go down the drain. The unlamented ex Caliph-in-Chief was on the march to do just that.

    And then Trump came along and said we should make America great again and thwarted the community organizer's agenda.

    No wonder the left if foaming at the mouth with rage and frustration. And if I ever needed another reason to support Trump and reelect him, that would be a good one.

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  7. They can have the LCS. They absolutely useless, capable of neither offensive, not defensive action, other than acting as a missile sponge.

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  8. With regard to the 2nd Fleet, it never went anywhere. The ships stayed in their homeports along the Atlantic seaboard, deployed to the 6th and 5th Fleet areas of operation (MED and PG) and generally the only thing that happened was one (1) Vice Admiral could no longer call himself Commander, 2nd Fleet. The rest of the staff stayed right there in Norfolk doing what Fleet staffs that close to the Pentagon do. Not one billet went away. It was, like everything else Obama did, just a scam.

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  9. Anonymous10/8/18

    As to China stealing Western technology, some of us pay plenty of attention and have done so for a very long time.

    It is true greedy US universities continue to populate their STEM (science, technology, engineering, maths) departments with Chinese students, many of whom have their fees paid, directly or indirectly, by the Chinese Government. In 2014, a $100 million donation, from Chinese nationals, to pay for “poor” Chinese student enrolments, was made to Harvard. It is no co-incidence that, by 2014, 25% of all foreign students in the US were from China. (AFP•July 24, 2014).

    Chinese students abroad, wishing to fly under the radar, do not openly take risks in lectures. Presenting as quiet, introverted or self contained, unlike many western students, they do not openly question group narratives or consensus. Americans who observe and comment on these Chinese cultural traits are labelled racist. Since all racial groups, including the Chinese, are racist in some form, the implied epithet is being increasingly ignored as nonsensical.

    Graduates from China may very well contribute to graduate research and be published. However, being banned from classified work does not mean their observance and knowledge of others classified work is not relayed to their masters in China. Nor can it be assumed that most graduates return to China, either temporarily or permanently. How many, exactly, remain on temporary visas (leading to full citizenship) to work in Silicon Valley, the Health Industry, Electronics, Pharmaceuticals, and other industries? Their allegiances are not investigated further on application for citizenship.
    Today, the US is China’s biggest customer. They cannot win a trade war with the US. They have underestimated President Trump’s determination to defend America by rebuilding essential service industries, which Clinton, Bush and Obama allowed to be shipped overseas. For starters, US steel mills, manned by US workers, are once again rolling out quality steel needed to rebuild the US Second Fleet. The rapid turnaround from shuttered mills to operating mills was sensational.
    Pretending ignorance of Chinese espionage and imperial hegemony in many, many spheres, (for simple fear of being considered racist) was Obama’s lame, passive response to aggression. Chinese imperialism is now being stalled and hopefully halted by the actions of US President Donald J. Trump. In a shooting war in the South China Sea, China would lose.

    ReplyDelete

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