Letters to the EditorDebating the B-2
Robert D. Kaplan is right to applaud the dedication of B-2 air and maintenance crews (“The Plane That Would Bomb Iran,” September Atlantic). Yet he is too sanguine about the implications of this weapon system. Does the B-2 deter “rogue” nations, or does it encourage them to seek less-conventional ways of striking at us—ways that do not provide readily identifiable targets? Alternatively, do the unique capabilities of the B‑2 and its virtual immunity to enemy countermeasures encourage our leaders to seek deceptively simple military solutions to complex geopolitical problems? Here one need only read Matthew Scully’s “Present at the Creation” piece in the same issue of The Atlantic to be reminded of the euphoria leading up to the May 2003 “Mission Accomplished” speech—those quiet sirens of Baghdad, that silent desert. Tragically, “quiet” Baghdad and the “silent” desert have never ceased being killing zones. The fact that the grandson of Colonel Paul W. Tibbets Jr. is the current squadron commander of the 393rd may have more historical resonance than Kaplan is prepared to entertain. Piloting the Enola Gay, Tibbets essentially inaugurated “shock and awe” at Hiroshima in August 1945. Historians still debate whether the atomic bomb hastened the war’s end (I am inclined to think it did), but most agree that the sheer expense and technological enormity of the Manhattan Project, together with the cost of the B‑29 as its most logical delivery system (each effort cost over $2 billion in 1945 dollars), made it difficult in the extreme for Harry Truman to decide against using atomic bombs. Will similar technological and cost imperatives encourage today’s leaders to use the B‑2 to awe the enemy, especially when they need risk only a handful of U.S. lives (and perhaps none, if the B‑2 strikes from a distance)? If we destroy an enemy’s weapons of mass destruction or persuade a rogue dictator to reform, all well and good. But for every Libya, there is an Afghanistan or an Iraq. Misguided use of the B‑2 and its dedicated crews may ultimately require more boots on the ground, not fewer. William J. Astore In “The Plane That Would Bomb Iran,” Robert D. Kaplan reports that Air Force Captain Jim “Genghis” Price earned his call sign “by destroying a line of suspect buildings in Afghanistan with a ‘stick’ of 28 500-pound bombs, and then dropping cluster bombs on nearby cave entrances.” This tells us a lot about the way we are fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Five-hundred-pounders are big bombs: Dropping 28 of them from a plane flying 500 miles per hour at 30,000 feet will do a lot of damage over a very large area, and blanketing what’s left of the target with cluster bombs will make sure that there won’t be many survivors. I just hope that the bombs were on target, that the buildings were more than just “suspect,” and that some unsuspecting goatherds hadn’t wandered into the target area. Cluster bombs are particularly lethal and unpredictable antipersonnel weapons. Packed in canisters containing as many as 600 bomblets (each about the size and shape of a softball), and designed to scatter over a wide area and explode upon impact, cluster bombs fail at such a high rate that large numbers of bomblets remain unexploded after the combatants have left. Innocent people, especially children, see these lethal devices and, out of curiosity, pick them up or kick them, with devastating results. They are such a threat to civilians that 46 nations have joined together to ban their manufacture, sale, and use. The United States, Britain, and Israel are not among the signatories. There is, however, legislation now before the U.S. Congress that would “ban the use of cluster munitions in or near civilian populated areas, as well as the use, sale, and transfer of cluster munitions with a failure rate of more than one percent.” Norman Ewers In his piece on the B-2, Robert D. Kaplan writes that the B-52 made its debut during the Vietnam War. I believe that that formidable aircraft actually dates back to the mid-1950s. Joe O’Connell Robert D. Kaplan replies: It is true that every conventional solution puts pressure on adversaries to attack us unconventionally. Assets like the B‑2, although enormously expensive, can solve a lot of problems within their aerial domain, but they are not a foolproof solution to all our challenges in war. I agree that we put too much emphasis on “shock and awe,” and have consequently neglected low-tech, asymmetric warfare—something I’ve written about in other articles. The Vietnam War, to my knowledge, was the first major conflict in which the B‑52 was used in a high-profile manner. All the President’s Secrets
Graeme Wood doesn’t provide enough information to support his assertion that the Bush administration is “pathological” in classifying information (“Classify This,” September Atlantic). The graph that accompanies the article shows an increase in the number of documents classified under George W. Bush, but these figures are meaningless without the total number of documents produced. While 20.6 million documents classified in 2006 is numerically high, it may be a smaller percentage of documents produced than, say, the roughly 11 million classified under President Clinton in 2000. Steve Wilent Graeme Wood replies: It is possible, as Steve Wilent suggests, that the number of documents produced overall has kept pace with the absolute rise in classification actions during the current administration (in which case that number would need to have nearly doubled). But these data are only one sign of secrecy fetishism; others include instructions from the Department of Justice to fight Freedom of Information Act requests, the thwarting of the government’s own secrecy watchdog’s inspections, and the specious logic the administration employs to justify classification practices that likely jeopardize national security. Blowing in the Wind
The item “The Fire Next Time” (Primary Sources, September Atlantic) shows diagrams of fallout plumes that could be produced by 550-kiloton nuclear attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C. Your readers should be aware that the orientation and length of the plume that would result from a nuclear explosion would depend strongly on the direction and speed of the winds aloft at the height of the mushroom cloud that would contain the radioactive debris produced by the blast. Thus, the plumes shown in the diagrams could result after nuclear attacks on New York and Washington, but plumes of quite different orientations and lengths could result instead. Therefore, contrary to what the diagrams suggest, the fallout plumes might well not cover Long Island and Baltimore. Sean Barnett Editors’ Note: A 19th-century orator mentioned in Matthew Scully’s article “Present at the Creation” (September Atlantic) was incorrectly identified as Edward Everett Hale; he was Edward Everett. Joshua Hammer’s article “After Musharraf” (October Atlantic) incorrectly identified Richard Armitage as an assistant secretary of state; he is a former deputy secretary of state. We regret the errors.
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