J-Roc Insults Combat Aircrews

by W. THOMAS SMITH, JR. April 10, 2008

Democrat Sen. Jay Rockefeller, an outspoken supporter of Democrat presidential contender Barack Obama, said in an interview published this week in The Charleston (WV) Gazette:

"[Sen. John] McCain was a fighter pilot, who dropped laser-guided missiles from 35,000 feet. He was long gone when they hit.

"What happened when they [the missiles] get to the ground? He doesn't know. You have to care about the lives of people. McCain never gets into those issues."

Rockefeller's statement was idiotic to be sure. And, yes, after a public outcry over the comments, Rockefeller has apologized to his Republican counterpart.

"I made an inaccurate and wrong analogy, and I have extended my sincere apology to him [McCain]," Rockefeller said Tuesday.

Fine. But Rockefeller owes a sincere apology to a lot more Americans than simply McCain.

The West Virginia Democrat's comments were not only glaringly ignorant - I'll get to that in a moment - but insulting to every single American combat aircrewman who has served this country in the "wild blue yonder," clearly the most unforgiving of the three traditional battlespaces (land, sea, and air), for the past 90 years.

First of all, it is dangerous to fly military aircraft of any kind whether someone is shooting at you or not. Consequently, military aircrews must be both extremely skilled and courageous.

Second, the notion that a combat aircrewman has no idea or concern for what happens when his munitions strike ground targets is not only wrong, but suggests that air operations are nothing more than haphazardly planned and executed missions in which the crews have no connection to either the targets or collateral damage (to include civilian losses), both of which are always factored in to mission planning. And civilian losses, real or imagined, are losses which aircrews live with for the rest of their lives.

Third, Rockefeller's comments suggest that fighting in the air against enemy forces on the ground is somehow not as honorable as fighting from a ground position. But what could he possibly know about the dynamics of either ground or air combat? Rockefeller - one of the moneyed princes of great-granddaddy John D.'s dynasty - graduated from Harvard and served a few years in the Peace Corps before beginning his 40-plus-year career as a professional politician.

So here we have a United States Senator - who sits on the Senate Veterans Affairs committee - essentially damning military pilots as combatants who, and I'm paraphrasing, "don't know what happens" when their munitions strike their targets. In his words, McCain "was [which means all combat pilots are] long gone when they [the missiles] hit."

If that is not a subtle albeit callous expression of disrespect toward all combat aircrews and their operational responsibilities, I don't know what is.

Then there is the utter stupidity of the comment, which goes to the heart of both Rockefeller's honesty and competency.

Fact is laser-guided munitions did not appear on the scene until 1968 when a few U.S. Air Force units began battle-testing them over Vietnam. McCain, who was Navy, was shot down in 1967 and serving out the first year of his five-and-a-half year stint in a North Vietnamese POW camp.

Now, I mention Rockefeller's honesty because the West Virginia senator was publicly waxing philosophic about something of which he was obviously clueless - and he had to have known he didn't know what he was talking about - but hoped his constituents would buy into it regardless.

Regarding Rockefeller's competency: Here we have a man whose comments revealed a lack of basic military knowledge (that's actually understandable since he and so many of his ilk have zero military experience), and little if any grasp of 20th Century science or American history.

Yet this same man serves as chairman of both the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the Subcommittee on Aviation Operations, Safety, and Security. He also sits on the subcommittee of - and this is also hard to believe - Science, Technology, and Innovation. And let's not forget, he sits on the Veterans Affairs Committee.

There are many more than McCain deserving a Rockefeller apology: Rockefeller has skinned his own ignorance for sure. But he also attempted to propagate an untruth, and he insulted every American airman who has participated in air-to-ground combat since 1918. Moreover, he insulted the intelligence of every American by attempting to pass off his propaganda as an innocently "inaccurate" oops.

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FamilySecurityMatters.org contributing editor W. Thomas Smith Jr. is director of the Counterterrorism Research Center of the Family Security Foundation. A former U.S. Marine infantry leader and shipboard counterterrorism instructor, Smith writes about military/defense issues and has covered conflict in the Balkans, on the West Bank, in Iraq and Lebanon. He is the author of six books, and his articles have appeared in USA Today, George, U.S. News & World Report, BusinessWeek, National Review Online, CBS News, Townhall.com, The Washington Times, and others.

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