{"id":103741,"date":"2021-04-01T17:21:51","date_gmt":"2021-04-01T17:21:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/radiofree.asia\/?guid=331231266bf912389a63d18b42a55059"},"modified":"2021-04-01T17:21:51","modified_gmt":"2021-04-01T17:21:51","slug":"we-need-diplomacy-not-war-time-to-ramp-up-the-pressure-on-biden","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2021\/04\/01\/we-need-diplomacy-not-war-time-to-ramp-up-the-pressure-on-biden\/","title":{"rendered":"We Need Diplomacy, Not War. Time to Ramp Up the Pressure on Biden."},"content":{"rendered":"\"President<\/a>

Two tidbits of note regarding the United States and its well-fed war machine, the first regarding a familiar problem child: the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter<\/a>. Coming in at an overall and still-growing project cost of $1.7 trillion, the F-35 was intended to be a kind of flying junk drawer, filled to bursting with neat technological tools to solve any dilemma a hypersonic weapon of mass destruction may encounter.<\/p>\n

Turns out, as many now know, the F-35 is basically just junk. It has never worked properly, never became the huge sales item the Pentagon was hoping for, and House Armed Services Committee chairman Adam Schiff recently called<\/a> the whole program a \u201cfailure on a massive freaking scale.\u201d<\/p>\n

All this was before one of the things shot the shit out of itself in early March. You heard me.<\/p>\n

\u201cA Marine Corps F-35B Joint Strike Fighter accidentally shot itself during a practice mission earlier this month,\u201d reports<\/a> Kyle Mizokami for Esquire<\/em>, \u201ccausing more than $2.5 million in damage. Fortunately, the fighter jet was able to land, and the pilot was unharmed.\u201d<\/p>\n

One does not have to be von Clausewitz to grasp the fact that a flying war weapon capable of firing 25-millimeter PGU-32\/U Semi-Armor Piercing High Explosive Incendiary-Tracer rounds from a side-mounted GAU-22 four-barrel, 25-millimeter Gatling gun at a rate of 3,000 rounds per minute is a damn dangerous thing to have on hand. The inability to prevent that weapon from destroying itself with one of its own weapons casts deep doubt<\/a> on its place in the skies over \u201cthe battlefields of the future.\u201d<\/p>\n

Context, as ever, is king. As the nation wrestles with how to fund the Biden administration\u2019s ambitious and expensive slate of policy proposals, a number of familiar voices have raised the inevitable chorus of \u201cwe can\u2019t afford it!\u201d Many of these voices belong to lawmakers who have spent the last several years practically pushing the F-35 down the runway to get it to fly and justify the expenditure. The very existence of hyper-boondoggle programs like the F-35 are a massive testament to the simple fact that we can afford to help people if we choose to. <\/em>The trick is in the choosing.<\/p>\n