Ron Jacobs's Blog, page 17
June 23, 2023
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June 9, 2023
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May 29, 2023
F-16s Bring War, Not Peace
F-16s are not defensive weapons. Indeed, they exist to attack cities far from where the generals andcolonels are drinking coffee and strutting about. They bring deathand then more death. Giving them to a military drunk on its ownglorification is akin to putting an alcoholic in the driver’s seatof a big pickup truck with a bottle of whiskey next to him and a tankfull of gas. No matter what the stated promises of Kyiv are, the factis giving these planes to its military is a drastic escalation of aconflict that would have most likely never have started if it weren’tfor Washington’s endless meddling and provocation. Even if onebelieved that Kyiv was fighting a just war when the current roundbegan in February 2022, denying that this is now a war between theNATO Axis and Russia requires some very intentional blindness to thefacts. Unfortunately, that blindness is epidemic.
Originally designed and built bythe General Dynamics corporation—a company whose only business iswar ever since its development of the Gatling gun in the 19thcentury, the planes are now produced only for foreign sale by theworld’s biggest weapons manufacturer Lockheed Martin. Although theUS no longer purchases new F-16s, it continues to fly them intraining missions, especially with the Air National Guard. Indeed,it was only after the Air National Guard base near Burlington,Vermont received several F-35s that the F-16s they previously usedfor training were moved elsewhere.
According to the defenseindustry website Defenseone.com, F-16 training specifically forforeign pilots usually takes place in Phoenix at Luke Air Force Base. However, the training for Ukrainians “will likely happen entirelyin Europe.”(5/19/23) Of course, this doesn’t mean that somepilots might also be trained in the US. Nor does it mean that NATOpilots will not be flying these planes along with Ukrainians incountry. Indeed, given the quick turnaround the war planners seem tobe hoping for, the likelihood of joint NATO-Ukrainian teams does notseem far-fetched at all. Either way, this escalation increases thepossibility of a greater war, with no guarantee of a victory forKyiv. Despite the stories in the US media about Russia’s militaryincompetence, the truth of the matter is that Moscow has been able toanswer every escalation by Kyiv./NATO. This is one reason whythe war is stalemated. The fact that so many armchair warriors inthe US (and European) media are cheering this escalation seemsto illuminate that they donot know what they aretalking about. However,it does show the effectiveness of the US propaganda machine inpromoting war. Those columnists, reporters and talking heads whorepeat the stories put out by the war machine’s propaganda wing arelittle more than Pentagon pawns. They are certainly not journalistsin any genuine sense of the word.
Beyond the gifting of F-16s,there is also the ongoing increase in military aid to Kyiv by theUnited States. In what I can only consider to be a piece ofaccounting trickery akin to Donald Trump’s financial malfeasanceinside his own companies, the Pentagon recently came up worth another$3 billion to provide weapons and ammo for Ukrainian forces. Thestory the Pentagon is telling the American people is that theyovercharged for earlier shipments, writing down the munitions’current value as opposed to the original purchase value. The actualfacts are pretty much irrelevant, given that the war machine neverseems to suffer no matter how the US economy is doing. This extrathree billion means that US taxpayers will have given Kyiv an averageof over $93 million dollars a day since the Russian invasion inFebruary 2022. Not only has this money been provided with barely apeep of dissent in Congress (and that from right-wingers whose truemotives are always questionable), but with an almost completeshutdown of opposing voices in the public sphere. On a deeper note,this grotesque spending on war while budget cuts for health care,food assistance, veterans services and education are being consideredprove that Washington’s dependence on the war industry is like thatof an opiate addict shooting up on the back streets of Manhattan orany other inner city. Neither even knows how strung out they reallyare.
Regarding that almost universalstifling of dissenting voices in the US, ever since the beginning ofthe conflict in Ukraine, those who oppose it have been labeled astools of Putin. This charge is almost always a lie. It is is themodern equivalent of red-baiting. In reality, most people who opposethe war also oppose Russia's invasion. This is reminiscent of thenonsense people pulled on antiwar voices when we opposed the war inVietnam, the US wars in Central America and the wars in Iraq. We arenot tools of Putin, but comrades of those around the world who opposethe war—from Russia to Ukraine to Berlin to China and beyond. Ifanyone is a dupe of one of the warring powers, it would be those whoecho the words of Washington, Brussels, Bonn, London and Kyiv asthose capitols bring us closer to the threat of a much largerEuropean war.
