Kamala Harris' Navy
Vice President Kamala Harris delivered the inaugural address at the US Naval Academy on Friday. Some people in the press paid more attention to what he said. If he had, he would have heard Harris voicing a vision for the US Armed Forces, which is quite different from the previous administration, both Republican and Democratic.
Harris told the graduating class that the Kovid epidemic has changed the world, such as Pearl Harbor and the Civil Rights Act, and the fall of the Berlin Wall has changed the world in the past. Today's situation presents new threats, Harris explained. "A deadly pandemic can spread across the world in just a few months. A gang of hackers can disrupt the entire beach's fuel supply. One country's carbon emissions can threaten the stability of the entire Earth."
"The challenge before us now," Harris said, "is how to mount a modern defense for these modern threats."
Harris told the graduates that they should excel in tasks such as developing artificial intelligence, robotics and other technologies. Military expertise proved to be quite valuable during the epidemic, she said, for example, by "naval researchers exploring how 3D weaving machines are used to make masks."
But Harris paid special attention to "a very real threat to our national security" - climate change. "You are an ocean engineer who will help ships navigate through thin ice," Harris said in his sole acknowledgment that the Navy has any connection with the world's oceans. "You are the mechanical engineer who will help reinforce sinking targets. You are the electrical engineer who will soon help convert solar and wind energy into electricity, convert solar and wind power into war power. And today any marine Ask, will she carry 20 pounds of battery or roll-up solar panel? And I'm positive that she will tell you a solar panel, and so will she. "
Left almost entirely undiscovered was the more basic mission of the Navy and the Marines. They fight a war. Equipped with heavy weapons, they protect the interests and shipping of the United States and project American power across the ocean and around the world. They have done it for more than 200 years, with great valor and sometimes with enormous personal sacrifices for sailors and sailors. Harris left most of the war-fighting corps of naval and maritime missions by his speech.
It was not that there were no reminders around him. Harris spoke at the Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium in Annapolis, Maryland. The upper decks of the stadium are ornamented with battles that are famous in the history of the Navy and the Marines. As he looked around, Harris could see them: the Coral Sea. Bellow wood. Tarawa. Chosin Reservoir. The middle path. Guadalcanal. If Harris saw them, he wouldn't let go; He never referred to any great moment in the history of the Navy and the Marines.
But Harris told the class that he had personal knowledge of the Navy and the Marines. "I know the United States Navy well," she said. "Every day, in fact, I am surrounded by sailors and marines and your tradition and history." Harris notes that she flies on a Vice President helicopter known as Marine Two. She lives in the grounds of the Naval Observatory. Her West Wing office includes a desk made by CBZ. And his formal office was once Secretary of the Navy. Finally, that office includes a performance dedicated to midshipman Sydney Barber, the 16th woman and the first African-American woman to serve as brigade commander at the Naval Academy.
"And so here's what I know," Harris said. "Midshipman, you are tireless. You are ambitious. You are a fierce fighting force. You are truly idealistic. You are the embodiment of American aspiration." "Fierce fighting power", with his statement that the military would turn solar and wind power into "combat power", Harris was only a clear reference to the fact that the Navy and the Marines actually fight for the United States.
Harris's speech presented a striking contrast with the Naval Academy's opening speeches given by the previous two vice presidents, Mike Pence and Joe Biden.
Pence spoke at the academy on May 26, 2017, just as Harris in his first few months in office. Pence quickly identified himself as the father of a Marine, then First Lieutenant Michael Pence. The vice president then looked around the stadium. Pence said, "These stands are embellished from top to bottom in the name of land and sea, which were consecrated by the sacrifices of American sailors and marines." "I see Belue Wood, where the Marines attacked the enemy six times, and won the day to defend the freedom of Western Europe. I see the Battle of the Atlantic and the many battles of the Pacific - the Coral Sea, Midway, Leyte Bay - When the navy withdrew the tide of tyranny that greatly affected the Asian Pacific. I see the Inchon in Korea and the Mekong Delta in Vietnam. I look at Iraq and Afghanistan, where to this day, at the same time, hour Your brothers and sisters are strong and courageous to defend freedom in the global war against terrorism. "
Pence called for the graduates to be men and women of good character. "Honesty, humility, orientation to authority, and self-restraint are my advice to you today," he said.
The Vice President also introduced the crowd to Admiral Robert Natter, a member of the Naval Academy's Class of 1967, who was there to mark the 50th anniversary of its launch. Shortly after graduation, Pence said, Nutter went to Vietnam. "One day, assigned to a small boat unit, he was working with his team to evacuate a group of navy seals from behind enemy lines when his boat was ambushed," Pence continued Kept. "He was thrown into the water, wounded by shrapnel. But he still found within himself the strength & courage to swim back to his nearly empty boat & provide cover fire for his brothers. Despite his injuries, he personally He took care of the injured from the . Are sitting. "
And so on. Pence spoke of naval & maritime missions fighting to protect freedom in the United States & around the world. He did not talk of new threats, but old threats which seem to be coming back in some new form from generation to generation. Or they celebrated the heroism that men & women of the US Army have shown in the fight.
Biden, then Vice President Biden, addressed the Academy's graduation on May 22, 2015. In true Biden fashion, he debuted with jokes and jokes. "You have spent your summer abroad on real ships instead of internships," he said. "& the ghost of your parents living in the basement after this graduation is unlikely to be your biggest concern." Aside from the humor, Biden had a point: The Naval Academy graduate is doing something big.
He mentions his son Bue, an army chief who won the Bronze Star in Iraq. (At the time, Beau Biden was seriously ill with cancer & would die a week later.) Biden then talked about the length of the Navy and the Marines' mission.
"As President Theodore Roosevelt declared in an address to Congress, 'a good navy is not a provocation for war; it is a sure guarantee of peace," Biden said. "The United States of America is in the Atlantic, Pacific, Arctic ... The maritime zone, the oceans you will roam in, will be as important to our national strength & security as ever in the 21st century. And let me tell you why. 1st of all, the ocean is a potential conflict." There remains an area of… but you will be there to keep the peace. US foreign policy is rebalancing towards the vast potential of the Asia Pacific region. But we cannot succeed if you do not show that. That is the reason That by 2020, 40 percent of the United States naval forces will be deployed in the Asia Pacific - P-8s, Zumwalt-class destroyers, coastline combat ships, forward-deployed marines ... all & many more of the Pacific. Going to, & so many of you are. And it matters - because Pacific peace and prosperity is, to a large extent, dependent on U.S. naval power & will continue to depend even further, as it has for the past 60 years. Chinese President Xi, when I was meeting him, asked me why I say that America is a CIC power? & I said, 'Because we are.'"
And so on. Biden & Pence prepared their speeches differently, but each showed deep appreciation for the Navy & the Marines. Harris described a very different navy & marines, in which battles with missions are mostly carried out in a figurative sense, against threats such as climate change. The New York Times reported after the vice president's speech, "Ms. Harris' visit was meant to signal that the current White House relationship with the military has changed since the Trump era." indeed it is.