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Robert Scheer: Deep-Sixing the F-22
I’ll believe it when it finally happens. But the news that Congress might actually stop production of a high-tech, job-generating and, most of all, high-profit weapons system because it fills no legitimate national security function is a considerable victory for President Obama and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, as well as for logic.
You wouldn’t think it should require great courage to conclude that the 187 F-22s already authorized are enough when the plane has yet to fly a single combat mission in Afghanistan, Iraq or anywhere else. But if usefulness were the criterion for defense spending, it would not have ballooned since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, accounting for more than half of the federal government’s discretionary budget.
Trillions wasted — ostensibly to defeat a terrorist enemy armed with an arsenal that can be purchased for a couple of hundred bucks at any garden-variety hardware store. We would not be spending as much on the military as the rest of the world’s nations combined, friend and foe, if defense spending were anything more than an elaborate political slush fund.
Just check the spectacle of supposedly enlightened Democrats such as California Sens. Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein, joined by Connecticut’s Chris Dodd, treating yet another $1.75 billion F-22 allotment for war profiteers as a progressive jobs program.
Los Angeles couldn’t find $50 million to keep its summer schools open, but a supposedly liberal senator such as Boxer has voted for hundreds of billions over the years for exquisitely expensive military junk. Having lost the courage to make the swords-into-plowshares argument, they act like craven hustlers for the Daddy Warbucks types who support their re-elections. And once again, when it comes to being rational about military spending, John McCain, a Senate co-sponsor with Michigan Democrat Carl Levin of an amendment against funding the F-22, distinguished himself in the very moment when so many of his presumably less hawkish Democratic counterparts failed.
Gates failed to halt further production of the F-22 during his tenure in the Bush administration, but this time the bipartisan military-industrial complex clique was beaten back. The incredibly intricate and therefore expensive plane was designed to defeat an ultra-advanced Soviet air combat ability that was never realized. And it obviously has no purpose in fighting irregular wars against terrorists, as Obama has pointed out.
But those who support the plane make the same “the Chinese are the new Soviets” argument that Sen. Joseph Lieberman uses to such great effect to get his $2 billion submarines built in Connecticut to combat an enemy holed up in caves. The absurdity of borrowing money from the Chinese at a furious rate to be able to afford to build weapons to counter weapons that the Chinese have no intention of building rises to the level of a Madoff scam.
The end of the Cold War, with its potential for human extinction, was greeted with a great sense of relief by most of the world’s citizenry. For the United States, as the first President Bush pointed out years ago, it was an opportunity to “look homeward even more and move to set right what needs to be set right — for half a century now, the American people have shouldered the burden and paid taxes that were higher than they would have been to support a defense that was bigger than it would have been if imperial communism had never existed. ... Two years ago, I began planning cuts in military spending that reflected the changes of the new era.”
He and his then-secretary of defense, Dick Cheney, did cut defense spending by 30 percent. President Bill Clinton, ever mindful of triangulating with the hawks, did less. Now we are reduced to being grateful that Obama halts an extremely wasteful F-22 program, even as he makes the claim that this will free up money for his disastrous war in Afghanistan.
That’s not good enough. We don’t need a more “rational” use of defense dollars to fight yet another irrational war. Combating terrorism should never have been thought of in military terms, but rather as a matter of international police work that has very little to do with most of the items on our bloated defense budget.
But terrorism is not the major threat to our security — that threat is rather to be found in the failure of public schools, the decay of our economic institutions and the corruption of our politicians. All of those failures combine to produce politicians such as Boxer, Dodd and Feinstein, whose idea of looking homeward is not to create a vibrant peacetime economy, but rather to hype high-tech weapons systems as the only viable jobs program.
— TruthDig.com editor in chief Robert Scheer‘s new book is The Pornography of Power: How Defense Hawks Hijacked 9/11 and Weakened America. Click here for more information. He can be reached at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
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» on 07.25.09 @ 06:20 AM
The answer is the military industrial complex lobby is extremely powerful. When a congressman or senator is looking at job losses and large campaign contribution their decision making becomes tainted, eventhough the project is useless.
The U.S. needs to revisit is imperialist view of international policy. We cannot afford to be the world’s watchdog. The military cost will bankrupt this country. Since the early 80s this country has been in a prepetual war. No wonder we are running such huge deficits. Remember one of the reasons we won the Cold War is that we ran the USSR into the ground with a costly military build-up. The question is, are we doing it to ourselves now? Military intervention and spending as much as the next top 25 nations combined is not the answer. We have some of our military now on their 5th and 6th deployments. What do you think that is doing to the long term health of these people and our military strength. It would be great to have a timeout for a few years at least and not be fighting or at war with anyone so we could rebuild our country. Maybe the terriorists are winning by achieving an economic collapse?
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» on 07.25.09 @ 09:43 AM
The F-22 is the most awesome amazing machine ever built by man and the pride of our nation. It employs our finest and our best and reaches the heart of our country and is the symbol of peace through strength. It gets us the respect of those who only respect power. Go to an airshow and watch an F-22 in action and you will see why. For that reason alone it should be maintained. It’s too bad so many have lost pride in the greatest country on earth and spend all day in self loathing for being a citizen…blaming us for all of the world’s flaws and shortcomings. Once it is ramped down the cost of ramping it back up again will be prohibitive. We will miss it - especially when it becomes time for China, the new Russia to take advantage of our self weakening - and other countries like Korea and Iran to taunt us as we try to be “friends”. Weakness invites aggression. We will have to learn that history lesson once again as Obama guts our defense. But we are so evil to defense ourselves we must commit suicide to repent our sins…right lefties?
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» on 07.25.09 @ 09:49 AM
And we shouldn’t use or have the most powerful military on earth as our contribution to international “police work”? What an idiot. If you recall we went to Iraq because the “international forces” dropped the ball. The UN was being defied and ignored as the weak entity that it is, and certainly there was no police work or anything else contributed from anyone. I actually am surprised we haven’t just outsourced all of our defense to China. This international one world government idiocy, and those who believe it and promote it will be the death of freedom, the death of our autonomy as a powerful free country not bowing to any other.
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» on 07.25.09 @ 09:55 AM
A “peacetime economy” and a “peace benefit” and the fact that we have peace at all is due to our strong national defense. You can’t have a “vibrant peacetime economy” if you don’t have peace. Let’s just say we destroy all our weapons today. Do you think we would live in peace while the rest of the world doesn’t? All they have to do is look at our open borders and swiftly overrun the country. Whoever gets here first is the winner. We take so much for granted when we don’t have to deal with it don’t we? You should be thanking God and kissing the US soil that there is a strong military and those willing to serve so that our country may be at peace. You don’t just say “oh” we are at peace so lets get rid of the military and spend the money on green stuff or something, we don’t need them….fools!
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» on 07.25.09 @ 09:58 AM
Its ok the Chinese already have stolen the plans for the F-22 and should be producing an imitation soon that will easily penetrate our airspace unnoticed. What the heck do WE need one for?
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» on 07.25.09 @ 10:39 AM
The liberals want the money to take care of illegal aliens…
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» on 07.25.09 @ 11:56 AM
Actually the F-22 is a failure. It cannot fly at night and the Pentagon even wanted it dropped. Another example of money wasted by the military industrial complex. We need to be smart with our money. There needs to be a balance. We can still have by far the strongest military but also refocus our priorities away from imperialism and the world’s policeman because we simply cannot afford it. In order to be strong overseas we must first be strong at home.
Hey Scheer Idodocy, we did not go to Iraq because the UN was be denied. Actually, inspectors were on the ground in Iraq telling us there were no WMDs. We invaded Iraq for oil and for W the son to show he could upstage his Daddy.
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» on 07.25.09 @ 08:32 PM
Did someone really say that we should all go to an airshow and watch the F-22 in action to appreciate it? That is ridiculous! Sounds like a good idea to spend another 1.75 billion so we can have enough planes to perform at airshows. Who thinks like that? The chinese don’t need planes, they’ll just send their 1 billion person army to overwhelm us and an F-22 won’t matter at all.
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» on 07.26.09 @ 05:51 AM
Fundamentally flawed!
People who believe that the world will eventually be conflict-free, should be forced to absorb 3000 years of history.
When we chose to not participate in external events (Roosevelt), we provide motivation to dictators and eventually are forced to get involved.
We were not prepared for WWII, Korean War, Vietnam, etc. That lack of foresight causes a greater loss of treasure and humans than the money spent to establish power projections.
The argument that the F-22 is not a viable investment because it is not used in IRAQ and Afghanistan is specious. Why commit a limited resource to situation where less capable assets can perform.
If you don’t think our country should invest in technology which will project our power for future conflicts, then you must support the concept that people’s lives and treasure are expendable.
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» on 09.01.09 @ 05:45 AM
“Realist” needs a post-dated, immediate reality check! Is there a doctor in-house to assist such hyper-ventilation? The issue presented by the Far Right is whether the F-22 production line (in Georgia) then its supply chain shall remain active or whether the F-22 production stops at ship #187. That’s it! But to listen to some, the Nation’s national security is at risk—and nothing is left to save us from imminent attack. The Air Force Secretary AND the USAF Chief of Staff say: Cap the F-22s at 187 only. Based on those judgments, the Secretary of Defense then the President agreed. During the Senate Floor debate on FY 2010 DoD [Pentagon] appropriations, Senator John McCain (R-AZ) stated: [para] For every one hour flown, the F-22 requires 30 hours(!) of maintenance. That’s certainly not cost effective, even when compared with the more formidable & versatile F-35 Joint Strike Fighter which has nearly two dozen allied countries lining up for their own F-35s—not the F-22!
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