War Is Boring

She’s 41,000 tons of fun. 844 feet long and 106 feet wide, USS Kearsarge, the third Wasp-class amphibious assault ship, joined the fleet in 1993. Within two years she was already world famous, as the ship that launched the Marine mission that rescued downed Air Force pilot Scott O’Grady in Bosnia.

Over the years Kearsarge has intersected with history many times. She’s assisted in the aftermath of several natural disasters, and in 2003 joined the invasion of Iraq. Today she’s one of two East Coast-based assault ships pioneering a new naval strategy. Instead of hauling 2,000 Marines plus tanks, Harrier jump jets and Cobra attack choppers, Kearsarge is loaded with 550 humanitarian workers including Navy and Air Force construction workers; military doctors and dentists from the U.S., The Netherlands and Brazil; civilian plastic surgeons; and even a couple of historians. Kearsarge left Norfolk, Virginia, on Wednesday for a four-month South American cruise, calling at six countries, including Nicaragua, to deliver free medical care and economic assistance. The idea, says Commodore Frank Ponds, is “influencing generations to come.”

“This is not a new mission for the Navy,” contends Kearsarge skipper Captain Walter Towns. He says the Navy has always had a humanitarian bent.

But there’s a feeling of something new here, and it was plain to see as Kearsarge left Norfolk that morning. Instead of the traditional ranks of white-clad sailors manning the rails, this morning the ship’s deck was dotted with folks in scores of difference uniforms. There were sailors, Marines, soldiers and airmen from half a dozen nations, plus all of us scruffy civilians. For a year now Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has been calling for the U.S. to harness all aspects of state power – especially so-called “soft power” – to fight a long war against extremism. Well, this is what it looks like: a motley assemblage of military and civilian packed into the formerly empty vessel of the USS Kearsarge.

For stripped of her Marines, that’s what Kearsarge is: a floating shell with safe, efficient and redundant means of moving people and stuff from one place to another across great distance and through harsh weather. When the U.S. Navy built the world’s most powerful amphibious fleet in the decades following World War II, it unknowingly built the key to soft power in the 21st century. An amphib takes on the character of whatever you fill it with. Fill it with humanitarians, and it becomes the world’s most capable weapon for effecting the very generational change that Towns, and his boss Gates, advocate.

If my diatribe makes Kearsarge sound like a concept –- or worse, a mere tool -– then I’ve misrepresented her. She’s so much more than that. Deep in the bowels of her boiler rooms she sweats with the exertion of hauling 1,700 people and thousands of tons of fuel and supplies. Her decks flex and sway as she embraces the waves. She stinks in some quarters and smells sweet in others. On her flight deck, her skin is rough and hard from exposure. The sounds she makes recede into the background until, all at once, she bellows something new -– a horn, a whistle, some cry from her PA –- and you’re reminded that a ship this old, this storied and this ripe with potential is a living, breathing thing. She carries us inside her because she loves us, and believes in what we do.

Check back in coming days as I explore Kearsarge and her mission to Nicaragua.

(Photo: me)

Related posts:

1. Columbia City Paper: Dark Trade: Aid-for-Bases, Failed Development Reveal the Dark Side of U.S. “Soft Power”
2. World Politics Review: U.S. Navy Awakens to Irregular Warfare
3. Warships International Fleet Review: Rising Star Proposes USN Should Provide Comfort