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It's Security, Stupid!
Air Combat Command (ACC), the primary provider of combat airpower, is cutting 32,000 flying hours to help compensate for its $825 million operations and maintenance shortfall.This strikes me as odd, given that Rumsfeld and Co. seem to think that airpower can almost single handedly win wars. I don't really understand how budget appropriations works within the services, but could it be that the Air Force is trying to poke the secretary in the eye, so to speak, for cutting their overall budget by making cuts to something important (both to Rummy and to the AF)? Or could it be that the pork projects are too well protected by corporate friendly insiders? It really makes absolutely no sense to me- anyone else have any insights?
The cuts come as Air Force aircrews are heavily worked, flying missions in Iraq, Afghanistan and over some U.S. cities in an attempt to prevent another terrorist attack.
"Starting early this summer, units may have aviators unable to get required training to maintain full combat-ready status," Col. Jim Dunn, deputy director of flight operations for ACC, said in a written statement. "Overall effectiveness will become a growing challenge."
With this cut, the command now has 21,000 flying hours left of the original 53,000-plus hours programmed for the rest of this fiscal year -- a 60 percent reduction...
Retired Gen. Hal Hornburg, former ACC commander, said the cuts are "a big deal" and show the military's grim financial situation.
"They're not cutting fat, they're cutting to the bone," Hornburg said, noting the Pentagon has taken large sums of money away from the Air Force to pay for the Army in Iraq.
Reducing flying hours will free up about $272 million, not quite a third of the command's shortfall, said Col. Dave Goossens, ACC comptroller.
Just more evidence that those who supported the Iraq fiasco really need to STFU, stop lecturing the rest of us about foreign policy, sit in a corner, and think about what they did.
My perception is that the so-called left-wing bias of American universities is prevalent, but I don't really know that to be definitively true since my contact with the academic world has been relatively limited (college, graduate school, and presenting papers at about a dozen academic conferences hardly qualifies me as an expert on America's campuses). That said, I find it interesting that the right-wingers want to penetrate this liberal stronghold with conservative ideas, in much the same way as the progressives are trying to build a bridge between the left-wing and the conservative bastion known as the US military (for example, the Civic Soldier Forum, a contact-to-contact exchange advanced by both J. at Armchair Generalist and Alex at Draft Zinni).He also notes a couple of problems with the conservative attempts, namely that there simply aren't that many conservative thinkers in many areas. After all- how many conservative Cultural Studies professors are you really going to find out there?
For this reason a prince ought to take care that he never lets anything slip from his lips that is not replete with the above-named five qualities, that he may appear to him who sees and hears him altogether merciful, faithful, humane, upright, and religious. There is nothing more necessary to appear to have than this last quality, inasmuch as men judge generally more by the eye than by the hand, because it belongs to everybody to see you, to few to come in touch with you. Every one sees what you appear to be, few really know what you are, and those few dare not oppose themselves to the opinion of the many, who have the majesty of the state to defend them; and in the actions of all men, and especially of princes, which it is not prudent to challenge, one judges by the result.
For that reason, let a prince have the credit of conquering and holding his state, the means will always be considered honest, and he will be praised by everybody because the vulgar are always taken by what a thing seems to be and by what comes of it; and in the world there are only the vulgar, for the few find a place there only when the many have no ground to rest on.
The Arab world's spiritual and media leaders have their hands tied right now. Friedman better hope Islamic spiritual leaders don't get involved in this mess because the first thing they'd have to do is remind the Islamic world that according to the Quran, the Islamic world may not be under the guardianship or command of non-Muslims- and that wouldn't reflect nicely on an American occupation of Iraq.It never fails to amaze me how little empathy Western thinkers are able to muster when dealing with the Muslim/Arab world...
Friedman wonders why thousands upon thousands protested against the desecration of the Quran and why they do not demonstrate against terrorism in Iraq. The civilian bombings in Iraq are being done by certain extremists, fanatics or militias. What happened in Guantanamo with the Quran and what happens in places like Abu Ghraib is being done systematically by an army- an army that is fighting a war- a war being funded by the American people. That is what makes it outrageous to the Muslim world.
In other words, what happens in Iraq is terrorism, while what happens to Iraqis and Afghanis and people of other nationalities under American or British custody is simply "counter-insurgency" and "policy". It makes me naseous to think of how outraged the whole world was when those American POW were shown on Iraqi television at the beginning of the war- clean, safe and respectfully spoken to. Even we were upset with the incident and wondered why they had to be paraded in front of the world like that. We actually had the decency to feel sorry for them.