With all the talk about how the Bhutto assassination might affect the Iowa caucuses going on, what happened to the story of recently-approved sales of F-16 fighter jets to Pakistan? This happened just a few days after the assassination. What's more, the sales of the fighter jets are in fact financed by U.S. taxpayers. Lockheed-Martin gets the contract, but the money to buy the jets is from the U.S. Senator Biden has been almost alone in opposing this. See below:
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I thought financial aid to Pakistan was supposed to be directed to tracking down "terrorists". Are we supposed to believe that F-16 fighter jets are going to be used against Al Quaeda by Pakistani armed forces?
I guess the reality is that the Democratic candidates cannot criticize anything having to do with military force. Only Ron Paul has had the courage even to use the term "military industrial complex".
How exactly is Pakistan a U.S. ally? It's harboring terrorists, including the world's most wanted man. Musharraf is playing the U.S. in the manner of a master fiddler, following a pattern that reaches back to the Shah of Iran and further. The U.S. backs dictators in an effort to achieve stability--just as we once backed Saddam Hussein.
Most Americans do not even know that we backed Iraq in the '80s under a GOP administration. Or that Saddam Hussein's use of chemical weapons against his own people occurrred while we were supporting him.
Pakistan developed nukes as part of its perennial stand-off with India. There is no way these fighter jets are going to help fight terrorists or terrorism. Should Pakistan go the way of Iran, which seems increasingly likely, we could be looking at an Islamic radical regime with nukes--precisely what we supposedly tried to prevent in Iraq (except that wasn't an Islamic regime)and what the neocons have been worrying about in Iran.
Many experts have concluded that seizing control of Pakistan has been the goal of the Islamic radicals for a long time. Christopher Hitchens talked about this just a few months after 9-11-01. Some of us have been arguing for a long time that Pakistan is the most dangerous country in that part of the world. Next door, India has a a stable democracy; India is a natural ally of the U.S. Weapons sold to Pakistan could end up being used against us or our allies. So why are we arming Pakistan?
This is the country that appears to be the most culpable in passing nuclear weapons on to others, including North Korea.
So is the argument that Pakistan will buy weapons from someone else if we don't sell them? We've heard that before. But at least the U.S. taxpayers would not be picking up the tab.
This is corporate welfare at its worst and someone still in the campaign should be talking with Biden and picking up the ball. This seems to me to be a major opportunity for some candidate. Of course the Pakistan nuclear weapons are the major concern. Why do they need fighter jets unless it is to line the pockets of Lockheed-Martin?
This blends into a larger point. Why should we taxpayers be financing M-I-C projects like this? Lockheed-Martin could be devoting its efforts to mass transit, defensive national security, anti-terrorism, etc.