"Kerry's Last Stand is 'Unbelievably Small'"

 

Kerry’s Last Stand is "Unbelievably Small"

      Recently I was astonished when, in London during a news conference, Secretary of State Kerry characterized the force that the Obama Administration was contemplating sending to Syria as “unbelievably small”. It sounded like America’s options amounted to seeding the clouds over Damascus in hopes of a surprise rain, letting a herd of camels loose in the President’s bedroom(a small herd … two or three … little … baby camels … in diapers), or sending the CIA in to the Syrian capitol in a cloak and dagger effort to stick used chewing gum wads under each of the benches in Saladin Park(Special Forces third graders from Mr. Rogers‘ Neighborhood would be assigned the task of masticating the “unbelievably small” plastic weapons, which would then be couriered to Istanbul and mule-packed through Kurdish Syria to the Park, thus avoiding sneakers on the ground.)
(Washington Post Postv, Sep. 9, 2013)

      He said the strike would be not only small, but “unbelievably” so. As it turns out, letting the Russians control the Syrian chemical weapons is indeed an “unbelievably small” use of the American military. So he did not misspeak. This is not to rag on Secretary Kerry, who probably would have made a better President than Secretary of State(especially under the current conditions), but it is to poke a little fun at the mistakes public figures sometimes make. In that spirit, I thought back over my American history and imagined what would have happened if some of its leaders had chosen to respond to challenges in “unbelievably small” ways.

       Secretary Kerry was in London when he made his verbal stumble, so I’ll start my survey with the redoubtable Admiral Nelson, who played an “unbelievably small” part in American history. At Trafalgar in 1805, the English commander attacked head-on the superior force of Napoleon’s navy, won, and lost no ships to a combined loss of twenty-two for the enemy. As a result, Napoleon’s invasion of Great Britain never took place. Had the Admiral chosen an “unbelievably small” effort -- such as blowing bubbles from surf boards -- Kerry might have begun his news conference with, “Mesdames and Messieurs”.(Wikipedia, “Trafalgar“)

       What would have happened at Lexington and Concord, in Kerry’s home state of Massachusetts, if the orders had been, “Let us bring to bear our ‘unbelievably small” arms on the Redcoats”. All the Minutemen had were small arms. What would constitute “unbelievably small arms”? Sling shots? Thumb-propelled cats’ eyes and aggies? The Massachusetts governor halting the British invasion by taxing the soldiers to death, as is reportedly happening to the indigenous population today?  “No taxation without an invasion” might have been the British soldiers’ response.

      Or what if this had been Pearl Harbor? Remember Jimmy Doolittle’s Raid on Tokyo in April of 1942? I doubt FDR had planned an “unbelievably small” bombing, as the Obama administration intended for Syria. In response to the sneak attack on December 7, 1941, Doolittle led a bombing raid on Japan’s capitol consisting of sixteen U.S. Army Air Forces B-25B Mitchell medium bombers launched from the deck of the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Hornet.(Wikipedia “Jimmy Doolittle“)

      But was that overkill(pardon the pun)?  What would an “unbelievably small” response have been today? Perhaps a comedian insulting the Emperor of Japan over Armed Forces radio:

      “Who is stronger, Chuck Norris or the Shinto Incarnate Deity, Emperor Hirohito of Japan? Chuck Norris, of course. He can chew a chimichanga and fart a frog.”[Chuck Norris was two years old in April 1942]

      So America now enters an age of “unbelievably small” “shots across the bow” when someone crosses a red line. I don’t know about you, but I remember drawing a line or two in the sandlots I shared with bullies when I was a kid. I don’t remember anything crossing those lines back at me that could reasonably be called “unbelievably small“. I think someone with an “unbelievably small” brain thought up this ploy. mm