22 July 2009

It doesn't matter whether you win or lose...

The American senate has voted not to purchase further F22 fighters. This is a fine thing because nobody America is fighting right now can shoot down anything they've already got, and they have no plans to fight anybody who can. It was rather an albatross.

So all is fine and good. What disturbed me was the analysis in Fred Kaplan's piece expressing wonderment that the better argument could win and that national interests could prevail over the parochial interests of individual senators, despite the best efforts of the 'military-industrial-congressional complex' to rig the process otherwise. That billions of dollars and perverse amounts of destructive power could depend on the interest of a handful of factory workers in Connecticut is disgusting in itself. That an attentive observer would be surprised that democracy and good sense managed to trump these particular interests is worse. That someone could be so surprised and not mention any need for reform is positively vile.

I'll close with a shout out to my homie, Edmund Burke: "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."

No comments:

Post a Comment