All–especially my fellow American citizens–praise the cruise missile. This marvelous weapon, “a guided missile used against terrestrial targets…remains in the atmosphere and flies the major portion of its flight path at approximately constant speed.” It is “designed to deliver a large warhead over long distances with high precision.” It can be launched off-shore from a ship, or from aircraft, obviating the need for the infamous ‘boots on the ground.’ The cruise missile allows foreign policy to be conducted from afar; no messy ‘contact’ with the ‘enemy’ is required. Launchings from ships typically take place at night, making for pleasing visuals tailor-made for display on the nightly news. There is something of the robot in the cruise missile; think of it as a self-driving car that likes to blow up other things. It is the modern saber; those who rattle it know its pleasing features all too well. Patriotism and war-mongering might be last refuge of the scoundrel, but it is hard to resist the temptation to make war in the way that the cruise missile permits. US presidents are not the only ones seduced by cruise missiles; military planners the world over, going back perhaps to Adolf Hitler, whose fantasies most definitely included the legends V-1 and V-2, have long dreamed about winning wars by merely showering their enemies with enough cruise missiles to make other kinds of military intervention unnecessary.
Most crucially, a cruise missile only costs a paltry couple of million dollars, thus making it the ideal weapon for any US president looking to bolster sagging approval ratings, unite the country around a surge of patriotism and xenophobia directed at unnamed external enemies, or, if needed, divert attention from an ongoing special investigation that is starting to look inquiringly in the direction of hush payments made to a pornographic movie actress during an election season.
The coincidence of an FBI raid on Donald Trump’s lawyer’s office and a chemical attack in Syria offers the best chance for the President to have his turn at firing a few of these cruise missiles again. An American destroyer–one with approximately five dozen Tomahawk missiles on board–has moved into position off the coast of Syria, and the president himself, in acknowledgement of the Very Serious Situation in Syria, has postponed his official trip to Latin America. The Trump administration fired cruise missiles at Syria last April; a year has gone by, and the president’s fingers must be twitching by now. A considerable privilege of the president’s office is the chance to play with expensive, high-precision weaponry, and for a man with the sensibility of an eleven-year old, firing cruise missiles only once a year must seem like slim pickings for such an exalted office.
The firings of these cruise missiles might, for good measure, be accompanied by the firing of Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Fox News, that feeder of talking points, and indeed, entire scripts, to the Republican Party, has been beating the ‘fire Mueller’ drum for a while now. The Republican Party is well aware their base has been fed this line and is well prepared for the Mother of All Firings. So, I think, should be the American nation.