The Big Dog

** wuf **

Some people just don’t like big dogs. There have been new mini-breeds of yap-yap dogs created to suit those for whom serious size is just too much. Some folks are plain intimidated by big dogs, no matter how well-trained or behaved they are; simply being big, as in powerful and capable, is enough. And that brings me to the United States.

A few days ago, I compared a few select people to various breeds of dog. And disqualified certain other people from claiming any right to be a dog at all. But that comparison is even more obvious, when we apply the measurement to militaries. The Russians still have a respectable military, and Japan does well for its size and budget. Nobody comes in and messes with the Israeli Defense Force on equal terms. And China has imposing numbers for size and growth of capability. But make no mistake, the US is still the biggest freaking dog on the planet, big enough to eat any other dog out there, and big enough to make a joke out of the yap-yap military outfits currently on parade in Europe, Britain excepted.

In 1991, a somber Chairman Gorbachev showed a classified presentation to the Politburo, of US forces in action during the Gulf War. After the end of the film, Gorbachev solemnly informed the stunned room that “we cannot possibly defeat a force such as this”. At about the same time, whatever the Mandarin equivalent of “oh crap” was making the rounds in Beijing, as so many of the cutting-edge weapons Saddam bought from China failed to even slow down American tanks and infantry. In 2003, just to reinforce the message, even newer Chinese weapons proved equally ineffective in combat conditions against the US. It’s not just that American material is still superior, but that US battle doctrine and training was immeasurably superior to anything even guessed at in other countries. Other countries grow and improve, but US doctrine and training leaps. This is in part due to the all-volunteer character of American military, but also the career perspective many US soldiers take towards their work, and the commitment by the majority of one major political party to supply, train, and prepare for necessary actions.

The military is not everything, of course, which brings me to American business. Left for dead by so many in the MSM, American business has re-created its success over and over again in many places and ways. A key example is the loss of VCR technology to Japan in the 1980s; while the Japanese celebrated their victory in cornering the market of VCR players, which hold they eventually lost to competition from South Korea and other rising contenders, the US continued to dominate in the far more lucrative domain of videotape recordings. Even today, the United States is the majority shareholder of the Video and DVD market, especially in profits. Almost every major city on the planet has several chains of American fast-food and franchise merchandise; you can get a pair of GAP jeans in Shanghai or Dubai as easily as you can in Big Sky, after all.

And then there is that little matter of the Purple Finger. Kerry’s Purple Hearts, however he got them, are no match for free elections, especially for millions of women who voted for the first time, not just in their lives, but women voting for the first time in their country, ever. That counts as a big bark, folks.

So let the French have their poodles, let Germany have little dogs to match their little wieners, let the Left whine and yap about the big bad Army, big bad Business, big bad “Ownership Society”. In the end, everyone knows who is the Big Dog, and who is just bitching about it.