On October 8, 2021, the Soho Forum held a debate between well-known neoconservative Bill Kristol and libertarian writer Scott Horton. An audience member posed a question to Mr. Kristol:
“My question is for Mr. Bill Kristol. Clearly American foreign policies in the great pivot to China, you know, we have two major fighter jets being designed right now with China in mind. We have aircraft carriers being designed with China in mind. Right now, we sail often our Nimitz class carrier and to area that China considers their waters and there’s 6000 souls on board those Nimitz class carriers, and China has missiles that can strike them. If we were to lose one carrier that’d be 6000. Dead. That’s, that’s two 911’s in one afternoon. What would be our response if in current American foreign policy, and that response wouldn’t one of the things on the table be a nuclear exchange? And at that point, aren’t we rolling the dice on the great sword of Damocles over us?”
Mr. Kristol did not really answer well, but the real point is, we are truly facing the question posed to Bill with aircraft carriers in the near sea to a country with significant missile and drone assets.
And it could turn out to be existential.
The United States has launched Operation Epic Fury. Let us not mince words, The president did it at the behest of the leader of another country and its American supporters. There is no value for America in pursuing this foolishness, but it is done.
The question we pose here today, are the carriers in theater vulnerable, and to what extent. Is there a level of damage the Iranians can inflict.
In a not so recent National Interest article from October of 2024 national security writer Maya Carlin, wrote an article with the title The Unthinkable: A U.S. Navy Aircraft Carrier Could Be Sunk By Iran’s Missiles.
What if the article is correct and one of our carriers gets too close to one of their missiles, or even more than one, and the carrier cannot be saved.
Are any of the Beltway think tank sinecuristas asking that question?
Maybe, but so far not too loudly.
If a carrier takes a fatal hit and 6,000 souls, or even a significant number of them perish, it changes our nation. It is not just another $5.00 at the gas pump.
Also, it’s not just a couple of troops as happened in Syria last year. Thousands of corpses would haunt all of us. Or one would assume it would, as a nation that was not scarred to its soul would not possess one.
In his poem, Easter 1916, William Butler Yeats wrote how the events of that year changed him and his country. He referred to it as “A terrible beauty.”
What we shall have will only be terrible.
I fervently hope I am wrong.
Breaking, The USS Lincoln has been targeted.
Richard Morchoe is the author of She Searches For Monsters To Destroy: America and the Eternal Recurrence of Unnecessary Wars. His substack is The Long Hill Institute. His email is rmorchoe@ymail.com.
