Bombing at the Pentagon

FOR Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld, it was his own personal equivalent of the U.S.’s apology to China earlier this year: a way to placate a hectoring adversary after doing nothing wrong. In Rumsfeld’s case, the adversary was a “discouraged, frustrated, and angry” Kansas Sen. Pat Roberts (as he described himself). The Republican senator blamed Rumsfeld at a hearing for the work of, in the senator’s golden words, a “doofus over at the Air Force.” What the doofus had proposed was eliminating 33 B-l bombers.

The B-l has a two-decade history of failure that many in Congress hope to stretch into a three-decade history. The Air Force didn’t dare fly it during the Gulf War, and flew it in the Kosovo war only after Serbian air defenses had been suppressed. But in places like Kansas and Georgia, permanent communities have grown up around B-l bases, with children of Air National Guardsmen sometimes joining their fathers in B-l units (it’s a warplane that brings people together’). Hence, Rumsfeld’s apology. For Sen. Roberts, as for so many others in Congress, the comfort of his constituents trumps the idea of building a rational, modernized American military.

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Rich Lowry

Rich Lowry is the editor in chief of National Review.

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FOR Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld, it was his own personal equivalent of the U.S.’s apology to China earlier this year: a way to placate a hectoring adversary after doing nothing wrong. In Rumsfeld’s case, the adversary was a “discouraged, frustrated, and angry” Kansas Sen. Pat Roberts (as he described himself). The Republican senator blamed Rumsfeld at a hearing for the work of, in the senator’s golden words, a “doofus over at the Air Force.” What the doofus had proposed was eliminating 33 B-l bombers.

The B-l has a two-decade history of failure that many in Congress hope to stretch into a three-decade history. The Air Force didn’t dare fly it during the Gulf War, and flew it in the Kosovo war only after Serbian air defenses had been suppressed. But in places like Kansas and Georgia, permanent communities have grown up around B-l bases, with children of Air National Guardsmen sometimes joining their fathers in B-l units (it’s a warplane that brings people together’). Hence, Rumsfeld’s apology. For Sen. Roberts, as for so many others in Congress, the comfort of his constituents trumps the idea of building a rational, modernized American military.