Jim Bencivenga: Will U.S. Naval Power Sink?
[Jim Bencivenga is a former teacher and Monitor staffer.]
For most Americans, naval power is like gravity. They know it's there, they know it's forceful, but they don't really feel it or understand it. So they won't be thinking about the state of US fleet readiness when they vote in midterm elections....
The three great battles to establish and preserve Western civilization took place at sea:
(1) the battle of Salamis (480 BC), where the Athenian defeat of an overwhelmingly superior Persian fleet advanced a nascent democratic polity versus a despotic dynastic state;
(2) the Battle of Lepanto (1571), where Vatican, Venetian, and Spanish fleets combined to deny an Ottoman thrust at the underbelly of Europe, ending Turkish efforts to impose Islam on Christian Europe; and
(3) the Battle of Midway (1942), where US carriers destroyed four Japanese carriers (and more important, the pilots who flew the planes off those carriers). The victory secured the US West Coast from Japanese attack, permitting greater resources to defeat the Nazis and Fascists in Europe....
Read entire article at CS Monitor
For most Americans, naval power is like gravity. They know it's there, they know it's forceful, but they don't really feel it or understand it. So they won't be thinking about the state of US fleet readiness when they vote in midterm elections....
The three great battles to establish and preserve Western civilization took place at sea:
(1) the battle of Salamis (480 BC), where the Athenian defeat of an overwhelmingly superior Persian fleet advanced a nascent democratic polity versus a despotic dynastic state;
(2) the Battle of Lepanto (1571), where Vatican, Venetian, and Spanish fleets combined to deny an Ottoman thrust at the underbelly of Europe, ending Turkish efforts to impose Islam on Christian Europe; and
(3) the Battle of Midway (1942), where US carriers destroyed four Japanese carriers (and more important, the pilots who flew the planes off those carriers). The victory secured the US West Coast from Japanese attack, permitting greater resources to defeat the Nazis and Fascists in Europe....