President Obama needs to brush up on his recent history. In the third debate, Governor Romney deplored the relative paucity of battleships available to the Navy at present, and Obama mockingly replied along the lines that worrying about the dwindling of battleships in the Navy is like worrying about the dwindling of horses and bayonets in the modern Army.
Just by chance, on Tuesday I happened upon the America’s Response Monument down at the World Trade Center (which, by the way, still looks like a disaster site, bookended by two large, slick, unfinished buildings that manage to be both oppressive and unremarkable). The America’s Response Monument is an equestrian statue honoring the military forces who responded to the 9/11 attacks. It depicts a modern-technology-equipped Special Ops Green Beret on a stallion with traditional Afghani tack leading the invasion into Afghanistan.
A nice touch — the soldier is wearing a wedding ring, honoring those on the homefront. It turns out horses were very important to a couple of battles in Afghanistan in which Special Ops participated. The Americans rode in cavalry charges reminiscent of 19th-century battles and, as one commander described it, “You expected Cecil B. DeMille to be filming and Charlton Heston to walk out.”