$16 Billion Fighter Jets and Climate Change

BLOG POST posted on August 5, 2010 by mentatoom

How quickly Canada’s controversial purchase of 65 F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter disappeared from the public consciousness.  After all this is a $16 billion purchase for a state with a massive $50 billion annual deficit and involved a tender without competing bids.  Surely it deserved more public discussion and contemplation?

Perhaps it disappeared from the public consciousness for the same reasons that cutbacks to social spending similarly vanish.  Despite our self righteousness, we all know, deep down in our civilized subconscious, that the price is worth every penny.

The second I heard of the announcement of the purchase, I knew what these fighter planes were for.  These fighter planes are not meant for Afghanistan where they would be of little value against homemade bombs.  Forget Iran and North Korea, the distracting bogeymen of the West.  When these fighters arrive some years hence, they are to be stationed in Canada, along the country's vast coastlines.  Sovereignty is just another word for homeland security.

And who will be their intended targets?  

Boats, perhaps even an airplane or two, of migrants, families seeking refuge in one of the few places to be spared the immediate effects of climate change.  A safe haven that has not dried out yet, where reliable crops still grow for now, where the future is bright until it isn’t.  Whether people from the parched Mediterranean or low-lying island states in the Pacific, they are coming.  It’s just a matter of time and desperation.

Hence the true purpose of these F-35s.  The sea will swallow up the evidence of our inhumanity.  But we’ll all know deep down in our hearts what we’ve really purchased in these fighter planes.  Self-delusion, after all, is a central feature of civilization.