Saturday 15 June 2019

Plenty of Money for Warplanes


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What golden idols are we making and worshiping today?
W.J. Astore
Even as Congress fights over a few billion dollars for the 9/11 first responders, there’s no shortage of money for warplanes.  This week the Pentagon announced the largest military procurement deal in history: $34 billion for 478 F-35 warplanes.  This decision comes despite the less-than-stellar performance of the F-35.
How can we forget the suffering of 9/11 first responders yet continue to buy overpriced jets at mind-boggling prices?  Sometimes I think we worship weapons as a golden idol.  People get so excited about them – almost as if they “own” their own personal F-35.  What can these warplanes do for us except blow things up?  Who’s going to attack the U.S. with a vast air fleet such that we need all these planes for “defense”?
The other day, I was reading old reporting from World War II (in the Library of America series).  There was an article on war rationing and how Americans were fighting for more gasoline for their personal cars.  And a war ration board member referenced the amount of gas a bomber needed just to warm up its engines as the reason why ordinary Americans had to ration gas.
Imagine if Americans today had to ration gas so that our F-35s and stealth bombers could fly.  Imagine if you couldn’t go on your summer vacation because you couldn’t get the gas due to the war on terror or the gas-guzzling appetites of B-52s and Navy jets operating near Iran.
Americans might actually pay attention to our foreign wars!  They might begin to question why they couldn’t get gas for their cars, trucks, boats, and campers because of Iran deployments or Afghan operations or what-have-you.
But unlike in World War II, today we are asked to make no sacrifices.  None.  Only our tax dollars — and our collective futures.

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