PLANE AS DAY
Learning to fly

Now that Lieutenant Osborne and his crew are safely back in the United States, diplomats, politicians, the media, and America in general are left to make sense of the aftermath of the situation. Let me save everyone a lot of breath: there’s not much to make sense of.

I am a pilot in the U.S. Navy, much like Lieutenant Osborne: I am in my mid-twenties, highly trained, and almost every day, Uncle Sam gives me the keys to a technologically advanced, multi-million dollar aircraft. And on some of those days, I have been tasked to prowl around the coastlines of countries like Iran, Pakistan, and Iraq. My aircraft isn’t as packed full of secret eavesdropping equipment as an EP-3, but my mission is the same: keep an eye on the countries that my bosses (the President, et al) feel need to be monitored. This is what the United States military does. Every single day, almost around the clock. There aren’t many wars to fight these days, so we snoop, we provided “presence,” we let other countries know that we’re interested in what they’re doing, ostensibly in an effort to prevent armed conflict.

However, the prevention of armed conflict is really only half of the story. Certainly, with American military forces deployed around the globe, rouge nations are less likely to engage in aggression. But the larger goal is the protection of American interests. How you define those interests depends on where you fall on the political spectrum. Yet this much is irrefutable: the United States is an economic as well as a military superpower. As the old saying goes, money makes the world go ‘round. So when the pundits talk about “strategic” interests or “diplomatic” interests, the underlying subtext is always about economic interests.

Do you want to ensure that the cost of a gallon of gasoline for your SUV remains around $1.50? Or that your local Target or Wal-Mart remains well stocked with discount goods? If the answer is “yes,” then be glad that Lieutenant Osborne and his crew were on the job. Be glad that tens of thousand of people like them are on the job every single day, protecting American interests. Lieutenant Osborne’s EP-3 was just one layer in the multi-layered effort to keep apprised of what countries like China are up to. Why do we care? Consider if China decides to become aggressive and make a move against Taiwan. Or if Saddam Hussein decides to make another play for Kuwait. Suddenly, your gallon of gas or your favorite made-in-Taiwan product skyrockets in price or becomes unavailable altogether. I’ve never heard Americans whine as much as they did when gas prices soared last year. Imagine if there was no gas at all.

My intention here is not to be a prophet of doom, or to suggest that oil and trinkets are the backbone of U.S. military and foreign policy. But Texaco and Wal-Mart have direct analogues on the larger economic stage. For better or worse, the world is indeed a global marketplace. And the United States is very much interested in maintaining the starring role. The American consumer, indeed the entire American economic system, has nearly come to demand it. And like any good businessperson, the United States knows that the key to economic success is to know your competition.

Certainly, there are some real security issues here as well. For example, we don’t want countries like China or Iraq to develop new weapons because of the very real fear that they might use them. Spying on these countries ensures that the United States keeps abreast of the progress of these weapons’ potential development. But what’s the threat? So what if China uses their new guns to invade Taiwan? The United States has always spoken from behind the aegis of freedom and democracy for all. Yet, these days, promoting our democratic ideals is partially just rhetoric. In reality, an invasion of Taiwan by China would disrupt the free flow of goods from a whole host of Asian nations, including China itself, goods that the American economic system has grown to love. So flying spy planes up and down the Chinese coast is one way to let the Chinese know that we’re watching. And that we’re not willing to give up that starring role as the world’s preeminent economic power.

Which brings me back to Lieutenant Osborne and his EP-3. The crew of that airplane was engaged in a business-as-usual mission. Lieutenant Osborne and his crew were doing a job that gets done, by one means or another, every day. The American public needs to understand that job in its simplest terms, from beyond the shadow of political and diplomatic rhetoric. The collision between the EP-3 and a recklessly piloted Chinese fighter touched off an eleven-day standoff that made good copy in the media, only serving to add to that rhetoric.

As a military pilot who has been in a few dicey situations, I can attest that an absolutely superb feat of airmanship kept Lieutenant Osborne’s EP-3 from plummeting into the South China Sea. But once the crew of the EP-3 were on the ground on Hainan Island, they were relatively safe. Their lives, no matter how tense the situation seemed to be, were no longer at stake. What was at stake was the United States’ ability to freely monitor a country that could potentially threaten our interests. This ability to monitor, to provide presence, to show the rest of the world that we give a damn is what the U.S. military is currently all about. It’s not a particularly glamorous job. It may not even be a particularly popular job. But it’s a job worth doing.

Lieutenant Osborne and his crew deserved the hero’s welcome they received in Hawaii. But so do the other hundred thousand or so American soldiers, sailors, and airmen who conduct reconnaissance and “presence” missions against China, Iraq, and dozens of other countries. They may not be fighting the “good fight” against evil and tyranny. But every single day, they protect the American economic way of life, no matter what your politics happen to be. The U.S. military has conducted these operations for years. It is conducting them right now. And it will continue to conduct them long after the incident off the coast Hainan Island has blown over.