Everywhere I look, everything I read, and just about everything written' confirms that it is a wonderful money-saving thing that that the government has done by canceling production of the new F-22 'Raptor' fighter. I don't see it that way. It is a dumb luddite-based decision. Yes, anti-technology, head-in-the-sand, but seemingly fiscally responsible decision. In reality, it is canceling the future to make believe we are paying for the present. And the amount saved is nonsensical. We could have had the remaining raptors built and operational for years just on the money that was recently distributed to executives at the banks we gave bailout money to. So this aircraft cancellation is all about posturing.
The F-22, it is complained, was designed during the cold war. Somehow that means that the design is mired in that period of strange political unrest. That is like saying that the hammer you have in your basement workshop needs to be thrown out because it was designed at a time when most things were put together with hammer and nail, not nail guns. The F-22 is a tool. Its use capability is amazingly versatile. And God, does it send a message to the rest of the world and to the future. That message is that the United States will dominate the air in any conflict that anyone gets involved in that includes the United States. Anywhere, anytime, when fighting breaks out, you will face the Raptor in the air...and nobody, but nobody, argues that there is a plane, or mix of them, that can match that tool in the air. And oh, do you happen to recall that we have a bomber in the inventory, still very well used, called the B-52? It was designed before the cold war, then dedicated solely to that 'almost' conflict. Amazing the usage we have found for that old 'hammer!' The argument has also been raised that the F-22 costs too much in maintenance to fly. What hogwash. It costs, even at the ridiculous figures presented in the press, about eighteen times less, per plane, than a B-52 to keep in the air!
A lot of people are talking abut retreat today. A lot of people are talking about not planning for future. It seems that the discussions are all about today, even though the hard-clad, cold-bleeding Republicans have supposedly been vanquished, and not tomorrow. From the space program through weapons procurement and even scientific research, we have been in retreat from a proactive plan that takes on the future. Instead we are 'going green' and heading into some 'bong considered' idiocy of pastoral life. The idea that we are somehow going to change this planet into one vast garden of Eden-type delight would be laughable, like Creationism, if there was not a grand, vapidly drooling, segment of our culture buying into it. Our future is in technology. Technology is why you have heat in the winter and air-conditioning in the summer. It is why you can talk to one another all the time, anywhere and at anytime. It is why you have clothing and shoes, and yes, packaged and then cooked food. Technology is simply another word used to replace the word 'better.' Whenever technology is considered something bad, and not better, then you have to go to the additional word 'perspective.' Nuclear weapons are great, if you have them, but terrible if you do not. Great if you are one of the people (in the countries that do have them) who control them, and maybe not so great if you are one of the people who do not, or do not trust the people who do. It is perspective of technology.
We live in a time where people who benefit from the stunning technological gains of the last two thousand years understand, and strive to do better. And we also live in a time wherein people who do not much benefit from the advances, hate them. We have a lot of problems with negative belief systems in the underdeveloped countries of this world. We have radical religion, which, amazingly, thrives in areas where technology does not reach very well! A great advance, also part of this technology, that should be used to combat this, is education, and gifted benefits of other technology. Instead we have gone at this great rift in belief systems with more destructive technology (bombs, mines and combat planes and troops). Hammers can be used to remove nails, and take apart, as well as build.
Yet, here I am proposing that the cancellation of the F-22 raptor is a big mistake. Amazing. But the analytical points of my argument are well founded. The United States is something special. It arose from a nightmare of warring nations intent on supporting the wealth of a few and the deliberate (and forced) slavery of the masses (physical and economical). The United States has pulled itself through and up above that, dragging much of the world with it! And here we sit. "Top of the World, Ma!" A line from an old Jimmy Cagney movie. We are on top of the world and we are having a terrible time figuring out what to do with the position we are in, for ourselves and for everyone else. And, in truth, since the cold war, we have been acting like a horse's ass, to our own people, for the most part, and the people of the world. We have to change all that, for our own survival and for that of the world itself. But we cannot change it from a position of weakness.
We need a six hundred ship Navy. We need a strong well-equipped Army and Marine Corps. We need domination of the air (and that 'for sure' includes the F-22 Raptor). And, with those things in place, we need to then do the hardest thing of all. We need to do the right thing, for us and for everyone else not so blessed. So, yes, I am an Emersonian Imperialist...of the right thing. And how is the 'right thing' decided upon? Therein lies the rub. Bush and Cheney had all the power in the world, and the good will of the planet (following 9/11) and what did they choose to do? The wrong thing. We voted Bush in (arguably), and he delivered very poorly. But we did not vote him in to do the right thing. We just kinda slipped him on by another mediocre candidate...twice. I think, however, we voted Obama in to do the right thing. And I think we were correct in our choice, if he can work through the morass of our Congressional Houses he was handed to deal with.
Obama was at the top of the heap in the cancellation of the F-22. I believe he is trying to do the right thing, but I do not think, or expect, that he is always going to be correct. We may well rue the day, with respect to this cancellation of a fighter contract, and pay a price in that future I write about. I hope not, but, more than that, the cancellation is symptomatic of our flight from science and technological advance. I think about this and I worry.
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