Daily Archives: 22 November 2021

In Which VP Harris Has It Right

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Just not in the way she means. Following the acquittal of Kyle Rittenhouse of all charges in the Kenosha riot shooting case, the Kamala Harris (D) half of the Biden-Harris Presidency said this:

The verdict really speaks for itself[.]
As many of you know, I’ve spent the majority of my career working to make the criminal justice system more equitable, and clearly there’s a lot more to do[.]

She’s right, of course. The shootings wanted, as a matter of course, a careful and thorough investigation. Either that was not done—a lot more to do in our justice system—or the prosecutors ignored the results of a careful and thorough investigation and brought the case to trial, anyway—a lot more work to do in our justice system.

As the evidence brought to trial clearly showed, Rittenhouse was there in the middle of the riot to render first aid to those injured by the rioters; to fight fires set by the rioters; and to protect a business, at the behest of the business’ operators, from rioters bent on its physical destruction. As the evidence just as clearly showed, Rittenhouse was hounded, stalked, threatened with murder, chased, attacked, and threatened with a firearm aimed at him by his attackers. Ultimately, he was forced to defend himself, and sadly, lethally so regarding two of his attackers.

Yet the prosecutors brought their charges to trial anyway. And in the course of their presentation, they attacked Rittenhouse for daring to not speak publicly before the trial, to not answer their charges before the trial. In the course of their presentation, those prosecutors attempted to enter evidence that had been barred from entry by the judge. In the course of their presentation, those prosecutors withheld evidence from the defense until after the evidence presentation portion of the trial was closed and closing arguments begun.

The verdict really does speak for itself.

There really is a lot more work to do to make our criminal justice system more equitable.

Winning the War with the PRC

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Retired US Navy Captain and current Telemus Group Vice President Jerry Hendrix expresses considerable dismay over our Navy’s shrinking air combat reach, and it’s entirely justified.

In 1996 the range of the carrier’s air wing was about 800 nautical miles. By 2006 that figure had dropped to 500 miles. Meanwhile, China has developed antiship missiles like the Dong Feng-21, the “carrier killer,” with a range of 1,000 miles.

He concluded his op-ed with this:

[Absent] long-range, penetrating strike aircraft…carriers will be unable to make a meaningful contribution to deterring and, if necessary, winning a conventional conflict with China…. To avoid that unfortunate outcome, civilian leaders, including lawmakers and the Navy secretary, will need to step in to get naval aviation back on target.

He’s right up to a point. That’s a necessary step, but it’s not sufficient. The Navy needs also to expand and increase its capability with ship-launched land attack missiles (along with expanding its arsenal of air-launched land attack missiles and their range).

The PRC aims to overwhelm ship defenses with raw numbers of anti-ship missiles. We need to overwhelm PRC defenses with numbers of accurate, maneuvering, penetrating missiles to destroy PRC facilities. We have the core of this, already—as we do for an expanded naval aviation facility. That core is in the ship-launched anti-ship missile weapons in inventory and in the submarine-launched cruise missiles in inventory. Those need, badly, to be expanded: the anti-ship weapons on board augmented with long-range land-attack missiles, and the SLCMs on board augmented with long-range cruise missiles. Along with getting long-range air-launched land attack missiles into the inventory.

Absent these, the outcome of a war with the PRC will be catastrophic: we’ll be swept from the Western Pacific, and there’s no reason to believe the PRC wouldn’t follow up that success in the way Japan could not 80 years ago.