Weapons for sale

I admit it. It bothers me that the US is becoming an international arms dealer. I know the dollar is tanking, but this isn't the way to improve our GDP.

BBC: US Defends Pakistan F-16 Jet Deal

India - which may also buy F-16s in the future - has warned the US deal with Pakistan risks creating an arms race.

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A spokesman for Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said he had expressed "great disappointment" on Friday about the decision to supply F-16s to Pakistan. But India is contemplating a "very large" purchase of fighter planes, a state department official said.

Color me suspicious. Do India's new planes come from Lockheed Martin too? Arms race sounds good for business. But we'd better wait until we get what we want from Pakistan first. We shouldn't let whoring ourselves to the defense industry get in the way of pimping dimpolmacy with weapons.


For those of you out there who don't oppose wars, but do favor strong foriegn policy: consider the reason we had embargoed Pakistan...

It marks a change in US policy, which blocked the sale of F-16s in 1990 over Pakistan's nuclear weapons programme.

OK, so we were unhappy that they chose to become a nuclear state and punished them. For like 15 years. Now that they actually have nukes, we're cool again. Plus, we can sell them vehicles to deliver them. I gotta say if I were Brazil, Indonesia, Iran, any of the hundreds of countries that don't have nukes yet, I wouldn't be too worried about the US taking a hard line on non-proliferation. Weak foreign policy. Weak national defense.

I'll end this with a tidbit from Dr. Rice:

"What we're trying to do is break out of the notion that this is a hyphenated relationship somehow, that anything that happens that's good for Pakistan has to be bad for India and vice versa."

Maybe if you decontextualize it enough that could make sense: clean water in the Punjab would be good for both. But get a clue. These are weapons of war. Of course it is bad for India!!

These idiotic spin comments are what drive me to vote Democrat. It's only vaguely a matter of morals, economy, or policy. Formost it's a matter of accountability. When you insult people's intellegence with this nonsense you deserve to be voted out of office.

While we're at it let's break some other hyphenated relationships. Maybe appointing a UN-basher to the UN will make it stronger. Maybe bank bought bankruptcy bills aren't bad for consumers. Maybe the abolition of the House Ethics Committee will result in more ethical congresspersons.

Maybe if we fill people's heads with enough non-sequiturs they'll give up trying to think rationally and just repeat what we say.

Sure. Maybe donating money to Democrat politicians won't be bad for Republicans.