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Read all about it in these three Washington Independent posts. The latter one has this reaction from Bob Gates’ spokesman Geoff Morrell: "[Gates] believes that the Pentagon cannot continue with business as usual when it comes to the F-22 or any other program in excess to our needs."
So. They said this day… would never come. You’ll read a lot over the next 24 hours fleshing this out, and I’m on deadline for a much different piece. But as I argued in this post, this was a fight between people who believed the defense budget is magically distinct the rest of the federal budget and those who didn’t. In a post I can’t find because his search function is worse than mine, Yglesias conceptualized the F-22 fight by saying that if Gates didn’t win on this one, all other reforms are stillborn.
Today Gates won. Obama won. McCain won. The reality-based community won. Next will come further debates about what capabilities and programs are relevant and irrelevant, what needs to be bolstered in the defense budget and what needs to be scrapped. But none of that could proceed without today’s victory.
And here’s how you know Bob Gates is a gangster. The final number of F-22s the Air Force will possess? 187. And you don’t stop… (Well, in this case, you do. But still.)
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And civil rights for the gay community won.
One thing I’ve noticed is that a lot of the criticism of the F-22 program comes bundled with pictures of the F-22 looking completely awesome. So while the content tends to be a sobering analysis of political/strategic realities, the visual impact is more look at that bitchin’ jet, man! I’m going to ignore all the structural factors that made this such a struggle and blame Matthew Yglesias for all our national security woes.
But yeah, excellent news. There needs to be some sort of basement-produced hip-hop track that begins with the lyric Robert Gates / regulates and then details the constant employment of his pimp hand.
It’s true. No observer can credibly deny that the F-22 looks unbelievably cool.
In spite of the salutary nature of this decision, I remain unconvinced. Maybe it was the 40 Senators who even today voted to continue the funding. Maybe it’s everything from missile defense to “Global Strike” to new manned bombers and main battle tanks. Maybe I’m a hopeless cynic.
But we’ll know soon enough. If this leads to ANY kind of realistic discussion of the actual value of specific DoD procurement projects, I’ll gladly accept the progress.
But at this point I’m wondering if the congress will operate from the standpoint “OK, we showed what rational, logical people we are. Now let’s budget for that hypersonic submarine!”.
You know. One and Done.
We’ll see….
mikey
Well, it’s said the real deciding factor for endangered-species protections is how cute the animal is. It’s the same for defense programs, then?
I don’t know if the F-22 is the cutest defense program, but it does have the nicest ass.
Yeah, I don’t see a lot of people stepping up to defend the distinctly goofy-lookin’ Boeing ABL.
It’s a cool looking death sentence to every marine company who wouldn’t have gotten an MRAP or a translator if the senate had blown its wad on it.
Good news as far as it goes, but not great news in the wider context. If you view the Goldman Sachs inspired near meltdown of the world financial system as a sorta surrogate F-22 program, then the government just bought around 100,000 of those suckers. Kinda puts things into perspective…No?
Only if you view the issue purely in terms of spending. But that’s just not how defense spending works. For years, while money poured into the F-22, it wasn’t going to practical programs that would have/will save soldiers lives.
You could say the same about bailouts vs. health care spending I suppose but defense spending has been crazed for decades — the bailout was an emergency thing.
In a rational world I think we would be near to total agreement, especially in regards to saving soldiers lives, but in no way was the war in Iraq a rational act. So while eviscerating a wasteful and useless weapons system is a good thing, our troops died because the decision making process that led us to war was essentially conducted by irrational actors…
The point of my earlier comment is that on a relative scale capping the F-22 program is like saving a few taxpayer pennies in the piggy bank while our real wealth is funding the banksters. The national embrace of being penny wise and pound foolish has yet to catch up with the electorate…
Rumsfeld stopped that huge Army gun system, the Crusader. Most SecDefs get one ’stop.’ This was Gates’ now back to business. The business of keeping Congresscritters happy building useless stuff in their districts.
Well, except that Gates also axed the VH-71 helicopter, the vehicular heart of the Army’s Future Combat System, a $26 billion Air Force satellite system… It’s good to be skeptical, but Gates has really gone far out here, and that deserves recognition. This is more than Rumsfeld killing Crusader, which had a hell of a lot to do with pique at the Army. Gates has proven he’s different.
Now, when you click on this link, what’s the first thing that pops into your mind? Now, read the article.
Checkmate, Wired, I’m on to your stealth campaign to make us love the F-22. Or associate it permanently with Michael Goldfarb. Either way, it’s clever.
Gates, for one thing, never bought into the whole “technology means we need less boots on the ground” crapola that Rumsfeld did (and which led to invading Iraq with maybe half the force needed for what they said that they wanted to do). For every program Rummy scrapped, bunches more took its place.