The Navy used to boast that in a crisis, one of the first questions the president asks is, “Where are the carriers?” Or at least the companies that build and equip the ships did, and still do.
Maybe it was true once, but I don’t think it is now. I think what the president asks nowadays, based on the evidence of strikes in Iraq, Serbia, Sudan, Yugoslavia, Somalia, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Iraq, and Afghanistan over the last 27 years is, “Where are the cruise missiles?”
After I wrote that last sentence, I thought, “Boy, we’ve hit a lot of countries.”
