The F-22 for a Bold, New, Dangerous World

Vice President Joe Biden was right; the new administration is being tested. This week alone brings a number of ominous signs of conflict the world will expect the United States to deal with. These are issues that will have to be handled fastidiously.

Wired reports that U.S. MNF-Iraq shot down an Iranian UAV last month. This opens yet a new front on the Iraq war.

Further east, Japan has threatened to shoot down North Korea's "satellite launch." If Japan follows through on its word, the action may cause North Korea to begin matching its rhetoric with deeds.

Lastly, Russia's interfax news agency is reporting the possibility that Russian strategic bombers could be flown out of Cuban and Venezuelan air fields. This obviously smacks of a second Cuban missile crisis.

These aerial crises stand apart from current wars being fought on the ground by the U.S. and its allies in the middle east. Military strategists, such as Thomas P.M. Barnett, have rightly argued the need for a robust American ground force which can provide not only security, but also civil affairs and humanitarian aid.

However, these increased threats to American air dominance among its adversaries may give the strategists pause. For example, Secretary of Defense Gates halted further production of the new fifth generation F-22 fighter at 185. The school of thought questioned the need for so many stealth, agile, supersonic dog-fighters in an age when insurgencies are fought in the cities and villages of third world countries. Others added the yet-to-be-fielded F-35 Joint Strike Fighter as another argument to kill the F-22 and thereby cut Defense spending.

The F-22 program was put on hold because opponents argued the fighter was built to help wage obsolete Cold War battle. Yet, as recent bellicosity from Russia, Cuba, Iran and North Korea demonstrate, many of our old adversaries are still in a Cold War mindset.

The United States should re-think a growing need for the F-22, especially considering the price tag of the F-35.

Traitor?

Not a punishable offense, just offensive to most of us.

What a fool.

Iran's Meltdown

As the Guardian reports the Iran interest rate cut sparks panic selling, we also hear reports of Ahmadinejad's crackdown on "Children of Allah influenced by International Imperialism."

These latest developments, coupled with the recent U.S. Navy war games in Iran's front yard, and the video of women beaten in the streets by religious police spell chaos, dissent and decline for the Iranian regime.

Finally, as icing on the cake, Iran has recently hiked the price of gasoline by 25 percent.

Things are not looking good, not even for Ahmadinejad's fellow non-aligned buddy Hugo Chavez.

Viva la resistance!

If liberals are worried about Free Speech...

We are concerned, as we all should be, about the infringement of our civil liberties by the government. Rightly so; it is, after all, a citizens' duty to preserve his own liberty and defy tyranny.

However, the liberal Think Progress is obsessed with the recent military restrictions on YouTube and MySpace access for our soldiers.

Ironically, it is their own left-wing doing most of the suppression in this Hemisphere. For a real example of government-directed press control, look no further than Venezuela.

Now, I don't want to sound like an alarmist, but there are also forces here at home with virtually the same intent. Far leftists, of all people. Fancy that!

Dennis Kucinich, for example:

Scarcity-obsessed Dennis Kucinich has recently introduced plans in Congress to revive the Fairness Doctrine, which once let government regulators police the airwaves to ensure a balancing of viewpoints, however that's defined. A new Fairness Doctrine would affect most directly opinion-based talk radio, a medium that just happens to be dominated by conservatives. If a station wanted to run William Bennett's show under such a regime, they might now have to broadcast a left-wing alternative, too, even if it had poor ratings, which generally has been the case with liberal talk. Sunstein also proposes a kind of speech redistributionism. For the Internet, he suggests that regulators could impose "electronic sidewalks" on partisan websites (the National Rifle Association's, say), forcing them to link to opposing views. The practical problems of implementing this program would be forbidding, even if it somehow proved constitutional. How many links to opposing views would secure the government's approval? The FCC would need an army of media regulators (much as China has today) to monitor the millions of webpages, blogs, and social-networking sites and keep them in line.

But I don't hear Think Progress whining about this.

Deplorable

Sheehan & Chavez

Venezuela to Al-Qaeda: Hey, don't threaten us, we're on your side

Jihad Watch: "We should confirm the authenticity of these reports. It seems illogical that Al-Qaeda, which is against the US imperialism, is going after a State that is precisely fighting this hegemony, this imperialism, yet using other methods." Hmmmm. Cabrera, has it...



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