POSTED RESPONSES TO A COLUMN BY PAUL KORING IN TORONTO'S GLOBE AND MAIL
This guy is shilling for Harper.
We can "maintain our air defense" with much less costly weapons.
Besides, there are no serious challenges to our air defense. None.
We need planes to escort errant air liners and the like. That doesn't require the ultimate sophistication.
Having a large storehouse of highly sophisticated weapons is an open invitation to getting involved with nonsense like Libya or war crimes like Iraq.
Many of the best historians agree that the useless horror of WWI started in large part because all of Europe was a heavily armed camp.
Politicians and military people will always use power if it is there.
Just so right now in Libya, a lunatic business we do not even discuss.
And just so America's pointless crusade in Afghanistan where we have spent a considerable number of lives and great treasure.
A sheer waste.
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"However, if you throw your back out trying to shovel deep snow when it does fall, you can be very uncomfortable for a long time. That event can make the snowblower look cheap and handy.
Note to Putin or any other aggressive interloper - we understand the need for snowblowers. Don't even think about messing with us or our pals."
A totally false analogy.
A snow-blower is a useful and time-saving tool, used many times a year.
And snow-blowers never start wars, the most wasteful and savage enterprise on earth.
A high-tech supersonic fighter is useless unless something extraordinary happens.
It just sits on the tarmac most of the time, gets its exquisitely fine-tuning put out of tune by jet jockeys taking it out for a playful spin, and absorbs vast amounts of cash on maintenance.
Even mentioning Putin marks the writer as something of a right-wing crank.
Its the cheap Harper ploy on Arctic sovereignty, ignoring the genuine threat against which these planes are useless.
We have infinitely less to fear from Putin's Russia truly than we do from the United States, a country which now regularly attacks and bombs countries it doesn't agree with.
Arctic sovereignty and Great Lakes water are two great targets for American interests.
Were the United States inclined to flex its muscle on us, this small number of jets would be shot down in a day.
The contract represents little more than a subsidy to the Pentagon trying to develop this costly machine.
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Further on the silly snow-blower analogy.
If you live in Georgia, a snow-blower is an utterly useless thing with no conceivable use ever, a vast waste of money and time.
In terms of geo-politics, we actually do live in Georgia.
The world's Frankenstein military resides next door, watching with unblinking eyes.
No one else, but I mean no one, is going to come calling.
So we do not need this plane for any possible circumstance.
The Pentagon wants us to buy it - as it wants other NATO countries to buy it - to help subsidize its astronomical cost.
Just as when the US fights its various wars, it is always cajoling and pressuring its allies to join them - effectively a subsidy of activities they chose alone to engage in.
What a damn poor way to blow tens of billions of dollars.
Remember, Harper is the most pathetically servile prime minister towards the United States in our history.
He supports and goes along with whatever they choose to do but he is always disingenuous about just what he is doing, and just so this silly plane.
His stuff about Arctic sovereignty is a cheap political game because he entirely ignores the genuine threat to it, instead serving its interests without hesitation, and even completely adopting the political methods and language of the Republican Party.
