Big Swingers

Yesterday, May 1, 2003, George W. Bush, President of these United States, touched down on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln to make a speech to its crew, to the soon-to-return forces of Operation Iraqi Freedom, and to the country and the world.

The president debarked from his plane grinning broadly, relaxed, confident, and at his ease. He looked like a man reborn, after months of international tension and the trials of war. He chatted casually with his Navy pilot-companion as they strolled across Abe's deck. His walk held a hint of the swagger that has always characterized fighter pilots. It took but a moment to recall that the president was of that clan, having flown in the Texas Air National Guard as a young man.

Of all of America's warriors, our fighter jocks are the most glorified and envied, the creme de la creme, the ultimate Big Swingers against whom the lesser powers both yearn and fear to measure their strength. At the furthest reaches of that elite, the ultimate peak of the pyramid of courage and valor, are the naval aviators. Their every takeoff is a sneer at death. Their every landing is a crash. The cruel equations of maritime air combat, constrained by fuel, weather, and the peculiar hydrodynamics of air over water, allow them no mistakes.

Possibly the most hazardous thing a man might choose to do is to land a jet plane on the deck of a carrier. The velocity required to keep a military jet airborne is so high that a vector compatible with a carrier landing is barely attainable. The landing area itself, which looks so huge to the layman's eye, is only a few hundred yards, and strung with a miserable four steel cables to arrest the plane and keep it from rolling forward into the ocean. Worst of all, the pilot must surrender his judgment to that of the Landing Signal Officer, who alone determines whether the plane can land safely. If all the conditions are perfect for the event, there's still a huge chance of a disaster that will cost the crew its lives.

You have to be confident to the point of insanity to believe you can land a fighter on a carrier.

Presidents travel with huge protective entourages. The Secret Service likes to enfold our chief of state as thickly as it can. It didn't get to do that, this time; Bush was alone in that jet with only Navy pilot John "Skip" Lussier for company.

The president arrived at his destination in the most terrifying, hazardous, sheerly insane way that anyone has ever come to rest: by hooking an arrestor cable with a steel appendage that protruded from the back of that Viking jet. That hook decelerated the president from 150 miles per hour to 0 in a space of 400 feet: an effective deceleration of two gravities. And lest we forget, a fighter jet is, in the words of F. Lee Bailey, "a flying gas tank powered by a blowtorch," which settles most of its disagreements with the material world by exploding.

Your Curmudgeon wouldn't be surprised to hear that there were several coronary incidents among the Secret Service yesterday.

Of course, reporters wanted to know whether Lt. Lussier or President Bush had landed the plane. It was assumed that Lt. Lussier had done so. At least, no one said Dubya had landed the plane... but no one said he didn't.

One of the most thrilling of recent movies was Harrison Ford's star vehicle Air Force One. Surely you've seen it. No? Well, in a nutshell, the President of the United States, played by Ford, singlehandedly defeats an attempt by a squad of Russian terrorists to kidnap him by taking control of Air Force One.

Absurd, isn't it? A president is usually an older man, mid-forties to sixty, who'd never dream of having to try himself in combat against a young ruffian for whom lethal violence is the routine of existence. And to take on a dozen of them! Viewed realistically, the whole premise is unacceptable. If the opening gambit, the takeover of Air Force One by armed terrorists, were ever to succeed, the thing would play out in the lowest of low keys. Washington would probably give the terrorists whatever they wanted to ransom back the Commander-In-Chief.

Well, the movie didn't play out that way. Ford, as President Jim Marshall, personally went toe-to-toe with the terrorists and killed them all, despite the odds and despite treason within his own Secret Service detachment! And the moviegoing crowds loved it. That cinematic president was the epitome, the archetype of a hero. Several pundits opined that Bill Clinton had to be profoundly glad that he wouldn't have to face Harrison Ford at the polls.

More than any other people of the West, Americans love, yearn for, and celebrate their heroes. We have such a passion for heroism that we manufacture heroes out of movie stars and sports celebrities. Racer Dale Earnhardt, who died not long ago in a crash, was celebrated for his "heroism"... a characterization your Curmudgeon would dispute, but finds useful for illustrating his current point.

We know what we want our heroes to be: strong, fearless, and morally unambiguous. We want them to be confident that they can recognize evil, and defeat it when they close with it. We'll gloss over their other failings if we can just bring ourselves to see those essentials in them.

The ultimate test of heroism in the popular conception is the embrace of single combat. A hero will go to battle alone, if need be; his clarity of vision would not permit him any other course. No matter the odds, he'll stand forth with determination and unshakable confidence, secure that he's on the side of the angels and that right must ultimately prevail. David versus Goliath. Horatius at the bridge. Aragorn versus Sauron.

Our political class doesn't produce many candidates for hero status. But now and then, we'll see one. The contrast he'll make with other public men can be too vivid for words. And the public, rightly or wrongly, will want to see him grapple personally with the forces of darkness, confident that he could throw them over the horizon.

Remember Ronald Reagan's face-to-face confrontation with Mikhail Gorbachev in Iceland? The abortive talks that just barely missed a comprehensive agreement to denuclearize Europe? All right, the talks themselves were barren. The Soviets already felt the breath of history on their necks, and their military posture in Europe was their last claim on world-power status. But it wasn't for the results of the talks that the meeting was valuable. It was the chance to see Reagan and Gorbachev together, to measure each against the other.

Gorbachev was twenty years Reagan's junior. But the Russian had no other points in his favor. You couldn't look at the two men without immediately recognizing Reagan's infinitely greater stature, command, and presence. That linebacker build of his, still straight and firm even in his mid-seventies, spoke silently and irrefutably. You could see it in his eyes when he looked at the Soviet potentate: I can take you, creep.

Seeing the two men together, the leader of the Free World and the hegemon of World Communism on the same podium, how could we doubt it?

It's been a rough twenty months since Black Tuesday. The nation has had to do some terrible things. We've fought and won two wars, at a considerable cost in blood and treasure. We may have to fight another. Our economy remains a bit rocky, and our international relations -- who we can take for a friend and who must be reckoned an enemy -- are less satisfactory than they've been in quite some time.

Still, we do what we must. But to know what one must do, one must have clarity of vision. To succeed at doing what one must, one must be sufficiently strong and confident to move when the circumstances demand it.

America emerged from the English tradition in human mores. One component of that tradition is the command to "be more than you appear," to let your excellences, whatever they are, speak for themselves. In consequence, Americans tend to shy back from ostentation about their prowess, as our British cousins have always done. That doesn't mean it isn't there.

The cultures that spawned the evil that roams the world are otherwise. Islamist terrorism rides on a platform of cartoonish self-exaltation. The strongman is expected to beat his chest in public and roar unending challenge at his legions of enemies, real or imagined. Saddam Hussein was notable for that, among other things.

We can also see this predilection in Kim Jong Il, chief tyrant of North Korea. North Korea is the only country that has an official Leader Cult, involving public celebrations of the personal qualities of its dictator. However, the dictator himself might feel just a tad less secure in his Ubermensch status than the official rhapsodies make out. Why else would he be striving so determinedly after nuclear arms?

America is officially engaged in a war to extirpate terrorism. To prosecute that war, we must be clear about what terrorism is, and confident that we have the means and the resolve required to destroy it. The nation has those things, despite the best efforts of the deconstructionists and postmodern transnationalists, despite the deprecations of the professional guilt-mongers, despite the tonnage of coverage the Old Media continue to bestow on the mouthpieces of the hate-America camp.

Imagine being George W. Bush, our head Big Swinger, Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces of the United States of America, the world headquarters for the defenders of liberty and justice. Imagine being at the controls of that Viking jet yesterday, soaring over the Pacific waters in the most vivid manifestation of freedom, power and confidence any man can ever experience. Imagine being in control of all that thrumming power, and knowing that thousands more instruments of war just like it were yours to command, to send forth against the villains of our time.

Imagine peering through the windscreen of that jet, and envisioning the face of Saddam Hussein, or Kim Jong Il, or Osama bin Laden -- the Big Swingers of the Dark Side -- painted in watercolors on the sky. Imagine centering a mental crosshairs on its forehead and feeling your fingers tighten on an invisible trigger.

Dubya landed on Abe in a two-place fighter jet, an S-3B Viking.

A fighter? The S-3? BWAHAHAHAHA! It wouldn't even make a decent Korean era fighter! The S-3 was made for lingering over an area for hours as it dropped sono-bouys and listened for submarines.

OK over the top writing.

Factual problems: The S-3B "Viking" (Hoover) is not a "two place fighter jet" as the author wrote. It is a four place multi-purpose aircraft, it does ASW, tanking, some strike.

The author goes on to say 'Presidents travel with huge protective entourages. The Secret Service likes to enfold our chief of state as thickly as it can. It didn't get to do that, this time; Bush, was alone in that jet with only Navy pilot John "Skip" Lussier for company.'

Nice sentence, except the S-3B Viking had the pilot Commander (not LT as the author mistates) John "Skip" Lussier, the executive officer of the VS-35 "Blue Wolves". President Bush was in the co-pilot set up front. Who else was onboard the aircraft? In the back seat were Lt. Ryan Phillips, a Navy flight officer, and a Secret Service agent.

The author futher writes: "Of course, reporters wanted to know whether Lt. Lussier or President Bush had landed the plane. It was assumed that Lt. Lussier had done so. At least, no one said Dubya had landed the plane... but no one said he didn't."

Actually they did, as the New York Post On-line edition story "SKY CHIEF BUSH HITS THE DECK" said: "After Lussier landed the jet, Bush, who hadn't piloted a plane in 35 years and had never in his life landed on an aircraft carrier, climbed out and strutted like a proud Texas rooster."

See, facts are FUN.

dvwjr

Who says you can't mix business with pleasure?

It was good to see the Prez in his element and enjoying himself. No doubt, the pressures of his job now must be formidable. I have no doubt though, that with the guidance of God and the support of the American people, that the Prez will lead America to its renewed and most worthy destiny.

I'm sure I was not the only one who noticed how choked-up and misty-eyed the Prez was over his warm reception at the beginning of his speech. How can someone not trust a man who is so visible in who he is? When one sees the Prez speak, they are seeing the man as well as the President. With the Prez, what you see is what you get, and that inspires trust.

I sleep better at night, and have much optimism about the future, knowing that a man with the strength of character as President Bush is at the helm.

God bless and protect our President, the honorable George W. Bush.

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