by Emile Nakhleh

Much blame could go around regarding the current chaos in Iraq and the recent territorial gains of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Four contributing factors stand out:

The F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) is a black hole in the federal budget into which hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars have been sucked and billions more seem destined to vanish.

The most recent reminder came in an April 1 UPI article about the retirement [...]]]> via Lobe Logby Marsha B. Cohen

The F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) is a black hole in the federal budget into which hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars have been sucked and billions more seem destined to vanish.

The most recent reminder came in an April 1 UPI article about the retirement of Executive Vice President and JSF General Manager Tom Burbage from Lockheed Martin:

After spending 12 years fronting the Lockheed Martin F-35 program, Burbage retired Monday on an optimistic note but still far from clear about the aircraft’s ultimate cost and delivery schedule.

Burbage was named head of the F-35 program less than three weeks after the company beat Boeing to develop the aircraft. Then valued at $220 billion, the contract aims to build thousands of F-35 for the U.S. military and hundreds more for international partners…”The fundamental airplane is going to be there,” Burbage told reporters, Defense News said. “It’s going to be late, it’s going to be more expensive than we thought to do the development, but it’s still going to be there, which I think that’s the ultimate metric.”

Out of the “War on Terror”

The 9/11 attacks prompted the Pentagon in 2001 to push for a substantial increase of approximately $20 billion or more in its 2003 budget. Military officials expressed confidence that support for the “war on terror” would translate into recognition of the need to revitalize and rebuild the US armed services. Although Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld had hoped to reduce the size of the US armed forces and cut back on big-ticket items, the Pentagon’s comptroller, Under Secretary of Defense Dov Zakheim, argued that spending had to go up because the military would need to build tanks, warships and tactical fighter jets. The already projected budget deficit with which the first year of the Bush administration had managed to eradicate the budget surplus of the Clinton presidency, and the cost of the war in Afghanistan (initially estimated to be $1 billion a month), was being funded through supplemental congressional allocations which weren’t even in the budget.

Six weeks after 9/11, the New York Times reported that the Pentagon had awarded “the largest military contract in American history to Lockheed Martin to build a new generation of supersonic stealth fighter jets for the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corp.”  Describing the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter as “more Chevrolet than Porsche,” the Times noted that according to the over $200 billion contract, Lockheed would build “more than 3,000 of the relatively low-cost aircraft over the next two decades.”

Costs, Congress and the Pentagon

The price tag for these “relatively low cost aircraft” has now skyrocketed to $400 billion, according to Time Magazine. The Pentagon admits the overall cost of the F-35 program will reach at least $1.4 trillion dollars over the next 5 decades.

The F-35 has been plagued by problems caused by the contradictory and unprecedented demands made of a single aircraft. In a Foreign Policy article from last year headlined as “The Jet That Ate the Pentagon,” Center for Defense Information analyst Winslow Wheeler, a long time F-35 skeptic, wrote “A review of the F-35′s cost, schedule, and performance — three essential measures of any Pentagon program — shows the problems are fundamental and still growing.”

Asked how far behind schedule the F-35 program was, Lockheed’s Burbage referred to a restructuring of the program in 2010, adding, “I would argue the program post-2010 is not the program pre-2010, modified slightly. It’s really a new program.” That’s apparently enough to justify over a decade of development and the hundreds of billions of dollars that have already been expended on the “old” JSF.

So why aren’t the cheerleaders of fiscal austerity in our deficit-driven Congress demanding an immediate halt to this exorbitant project whose cost has skyrocketed while the problems with it have multiplied?

One actually has, Congressmen Ron Paul, who dared to use the F-word in a Texas Straight Talk commentary on March 3 about the sequester. It has received zero attention outside his fan base:

…the entire $1.2 trillion dollars that the sequester is supposed to save could be realized by cutting one unneeded, wasteful boondoggle: the $1.5 trillion F-35 fighter program. The F-35, billed as the next generation all-purpose military fighter and bomber, has been an unmitigated disaster. Its performances in recent tests have been so bad that the Pentagon has been forced to dumb-down the criteria. It is overweight, overpriced, and unwieldy. It is also an anachronism: we no longer face the real prospect of air-to-air combat in this era of 4th generation warfare. The World War II mid-air dogfight era is long over.

What’s most remarkable about this astute, candid and scathing criticism of the F-35 program is that Paul is from Texas. At least a quarter of Texas Congress members are strong supporters of the F-35, since a major portion of the work is being done in Ft. Worth. Rep. Kay Granger (R-TX), the organizer and fairy godmother of the 48-member Joint Strike Fighter Caucus in the House, declared in a 2011 speech to Lockheed Martin that the JSF was sacrosanct budget-wise and “absolutely, absolutely essential to our national defense.” Not surprisingly, Granger and her JSF caucus receive twice as much in campaign contributions as other members of Congress, according to the Dallas Morning News, with Granger topping the list.

Texas Sen. John Cornyn is also among the staunchest defenders of the F-35 in the Senate. This explains in part Cornyn’s vehement opposition — and that of Texas junior Senator Ted Cruz — to the nomination of Chuck Hagel as Secretary of Defense. Before and during his nomination hearings, Hagel made no effort to hide his doubts about whether the F-35 was worth what it was costing the Pentagon, soaking up limited resources with no apparent end in sight. The alternative nominees for Secretary of Defense proposed by Hagel’s critics were supportive of the F-35

Ashton Carter, who heads acquisition for the Pentagon, certified to House Armed Services Committee Chair Ike Skelton in June 2010 that the development of the F-35 was “essential to national security”; that there were no acceptable alternatives to the F-35 that would provide “acceptable” capability at a lower cost; that the Pentagon’s Director of Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation considered the F-35′s cost to be “reasonable”; and that the JSF was of a higher priority than other Pentagon programs that might have to be cut in order to fund it.

Michele Flournoy, the Former Undersecretary of Defense for Policy between 2009-2012, whose name was also floated and cheered by Hagel’s opponents, co-authored a report by the Center for New American Security (which she co-founded), that recommended the Navy reduce the number of F-35Cs it planned to purchase by half and the Air Force cut its acquisitions of the JSF by about a third. The savings would then be applied to other acquisitions. It did not, however, call for scrapping the F-35.

The Israeli Tie-In and Sequester Silence

Which leads us to another under-reported aspect of congressional support for the F-35 that explains why Ron Paul is unique in his loud criticism of the program and certain pro-F-35 senators keep diverting media attention to Hagel’s alleged antagonism toward Israel during televised confirmation hearings. One of the justifications used by Lockheed and its partners for the problem-prone JSF is that its stratospheric cost will be offset by sales to US allies including Canada, Japan and, oh yes, Israel.

Since the inception of the JSF program, Israel made it known that it not only wanted to purchase the F-35, but be part of its development too. Israeli participation in discussions was briefly suspended in 2005 to reflect US disapproval of Israel selling advanced military technology to China, although Washington made it clear that this would not ultimately affect the sale of F-35s, which Israel hoped would begin arriving in 2012. By 2009, it was clear that the F-35s could not be delivered until 2014.

Much of the debate in Israeli military circles over whether and when Israel should attack Iran has explicitly or implicitly hinged on the JSF, with those advocating restraint arguing that Israel should wait until it has the enhanced military capabilities of the F-35 before striking. When Israel signed an agreement in October 2010 to purchase a squadron of F-35 fighters which would be received in 2015 and 2017, Israel’s Ambassador to the US Michael Oren strongly hinted that an impending confrontation with Iran was the primary reason for the agreement. “It will be capable of sneaking in, penetrating defenses and pulling additional forces after it,” enthused Amir Oren in Haaretz, making the case for restraint until the F-35s were delivered. “The armed, in-flight refueling, flying computer will be the aircraft of the next war. And that is another reason to postpone the date.”

In July 2012, just prior to Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta’s visit to Israel, the Pentagon also reached an agreement with Lockheed Martin to integrate Israeli electronic warfare equipment and Israeli-unique systems into the JSF. Israeli technology is a design component of the F-35′s augmented reality helmet, the cost of which is estimated at between $1-$2 million each. The Israeli Air Force is counting on the F-35 to maintain its qualitative edge, still eagerly anticipating and preparing for the delivery of its squadron.

There is a significant overlap among members of the House and Senate from both parties who have been most supportive of the F-35 (many of whom are also ironically “deficit hawks”) and those from both parties who claim they are Israel’s staunchest and most unwavering defenders. Not all “pro-Israel” members of Congress approve of the F-35, however. Arizona Sen. John McCain has expressed serious reservations, calling the program a “scandal” and a “tragedy” in 2011. Nonetheless, it’s Ron Paul — perceived as so anti-Israel that he alone among the contenders for the Republican presidential nomination was not invited to make his case to the Republican Jewish Coalition in 2012 — who can speak bluntly about killing the F-35 in ways that others won’t. In contrast, John Cornyn complained to AIPAC’s Policy Conference in March, “I’m so disappointed that our delivery of F-35 Joint Strike Fighter aircraft keeps getting delayed. The F-35s are remarkably sophisticated planes that will dramatically enhance Israel’s security.” (At least one Jewish news organization interpreted this as a swipe against the Obama administration.)

The problems with the F-35 aren’t going away. Two months ago, the Pentagon called for all F-35s to be grounded when a crack on a turbine blade in the Pratt and Whitney jet engine was discovered during a routine inspection of a test aircraft in California. Despite the promises of retiring Lockheed EVP Burbage about how the F-35 will eventually ”be there,” Pierre Sprey predicts the Pentagon will “kill the program after 500 airplanes.”

In the meantime, don’t count on hearing this F-word anytime soon during all the squawking about the sequester.

Photo: The US Navy variant of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the F-35C.

by Daniel Luban

This week, as you’ve probably heard, marks the ten year anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq. Most people who have commented on the milestone have agreed that the war was a catastrophic mistake. But why, exactly, did the Bush administration decide to go into Iraq in the [...]]]> via Lobe Log

by Daniel Luban

This week, as you’ve probably heard, marks the ten year anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq. Most people who have commented on the milestone have agreed that the war was a catastrophic mistake. But why, exactly, did the Bush administration decide to go into Iraq in the first place? Even a decade later, there’s still not much of a consensus — although Jim’s piece from 2003, reposted yesterday, provides as good a contemporaneous account as you’ll find. Is there anything more we can say with the benefit of ten years’ hindsight?

I tried to sort through possible war motives in a piece I wrote several years ago. (Space constraints meant that the final version was cut rather heavily, and I’d be happy to provide the original version, which included more evidence and fuller argumentation.) I argued there against the somewhat conspiratorial notion that there was a single “real motive,” concealed from the public and shared by all administration backers. The Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) argument was clearly far from the whole story, as Paul Wolfowitz himself conceded. But individual actors and factions within the administration had their own reasons for wanting war.

More to the point, the motives tended to overlap: most war-backers would not have said that invading Iraq was desirable to stabilize oil supplies but not to spread democracy, or to improve Israel’s security but not to deter nuclear terrorism. Rather, they tended to hold a rather utopian belief that invading Iraq would further all of these goals simultaneously. For that reason, assessing motives is more a matter of teasing out emphasis and priority than of reaching categorical judgments about which motives were or were not in play.

With all that said, however, I think we can identify at least four relatively distinct motives that played a role. I provide more in-depth evidence in my RightWeb piece, so I’ll just sketch out some of the conclusions here.

Oil. The allegation that Iraq was a “war for oil” was one of the most frequently leveled charges against it, and one that clearly has some legs. (Just yesterday, for instance, Glenn Greenwald touched on the theme.) However, the notion of a “war for oil” is an imprecise one. It can mean two different things, one less plausible and one more so.

The first (and seemingly most widespread) meaning is that the Iraq war was primarily intended to allow the US (or US oil companies) to get their hands on oil reserves located on Iraqi soil. This is largely unpersuasive. There’s evidence (some of which Greenwald cites) that US policymakers such as Dick Cheney hoped that a post-reconstruction Iraq would greatly step up oil production and provide an alternative to Saudi oil, but there’s little evidence that this was regarded as a primary reason for invasion rather than simply a welcome collateral benefit. US oil companies themselves were lukewarm about the invasion, fearing that it might destabilize the region — and indeed, they haven’t been the primary beneficiaries of oil development in postwar Iraq.

The second (and more plausible) meaning is that the Iraq war was centrally concerned with preserving the stability of US oil supplies in the broader Gulf region as a whole. Here, the evidence is stronger: such “wars for oil” have been semi-official US policy since the promulgation of the Carter Doctrine in 1980, and this was certainly a primary motive for the first Gulf War in 1991. Saddam Hussein was regarded with more alarm than similarly brutal dictators elsewhere in the world largely because the risks of aggression in a geopolitically vital region like the Gulf were viewed as so much higher. Whether or not protecting the Gulf oil supply from Saddam was the primary reason for war, it was certainly an important one.

Israel. For many neoconservatives in the Bush administration, a major (perhaps the major) reason for ousting Saddam was to improve Israel’s security. Since the 1990s, when several future Bush administration figures prepared the notorious “Clean Break” report for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, neoconservatives had been preoccupied with the notion that regime change in Iraq would touch off a broader regional transformation that would disempower Israel’s opponents in the Middle East.

There are some caveats that should be made. First, although neoconservatives were the leading proponents of war, the broader “Israel lobby” as conventionally conceived did not play a particularly strong role (a clear point of contrast with the current campaign for war against Iran). Second, the fact that many in the US pushed for war out of Israel-related concerns did not mean that Israelis themselves were necessarily strong proponents — although figures on the Israeli right with strong ties to neoconservatives, such as Netanyahu himself, certainly were.

Even if neoconservatives inside and outside the administration were motivated in large part by concerns about Israeli security, this still doesn’t answer the question of how influential they were. After all, we should be wary of turning the top leadership (especially Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld) into mere vessels for neoconservative designs. As suggested below, I don’t think the Israel motive was paramount in the minds of this top leadership, although it was undoubtedly present. On the other hand, we shouldn’t downplay the instrumental role that neoconservatives played in setting the terms of debate over Iraq both before and after 9/11.

Payback. “We have been hit very hard,” a Cheney adviser told journalist Barton Gellman, “and we needed to make clear the costs to those who might have been supporting or harboring those who were contemplating those acts.” Or, as Jonah Goldberg (channeling Michael Ledeen) put it more bluntly, “Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business.” On this line of thought, 9/11 required the US to make an example out of someone to demonstrate its continued strength. The Taliban was too small and weak to serve this purpose, but Saddam — who had already been in the crosshairs for unrelated reasons — fit the bill nicely.

Many people seem hesitant to attribute the invasion to such a seemingly subjective and psychologized motive; it sounds more hardheaded to attribute it to a material interest like oil. But I think we underestimate the strength of this motive at our own peril, and that — particular for Cheney and Rumsfeld, who to my mind were the two critical decision-makers — it may even have been the primary one.

Democracy. The democracy promotion motive has become somewhat overemphasized in recent years, for several reasons. In the run-up to war, it was the motive that appealed most to pro-war liberal opinion-makers in the media, and thus received a disproportionate amount of discussion. Once the WMDs failed to materialize, the Bush administration fell back on democracy promotion as its main justification for the war, a trend that reached its height in Bush’s 2005 second inaugural address. And once the war went south, it became the easiest line of attack for critics who were eager to cast themselves as hardheaded skeptics and the Bush administration as wide-eyed utopians.

The fact of the matter is that democracy promotion was probably not the central motive for most of the war’s architects. This isn’t to say that it was always or totally insincere, however. Most notably, Bush himself seems genuinely to have bought into his own rhetoric. And although many (myself included) expected the administration simply to set up a friendly dictator to rule over postwar Iraq, this isn’t the course they followed or even really attempted. Whatever the many flaws of Nouri al-Maliki’s government, it is by no means a US puppet, and it did come to power through something resembling a democratic process (backed, to be sure, by a good bit of force).

To what extent were these four motives mutually exclusive? We should note, first of all, that the latter two flow in some sense out of the first two. The US had for decades regarded the Middle East as a geopolitically vital region, due both to its reliance on Gulf oil and its interest in the Israel-Palestine conflict. This intense focus on the Middle East helps explain why, in the significantly transformed post-9/11 landscape, the US seized on Saddam Hussein (rather than a figure with more significant ties to terrorism) as the proper test case for its efforts both at restoring deterrence and at democratic transformation. The hope was that success in Iraq would reverberate throughout the region.

At the same time, however, the tension between the final two motives (between payback and democracy) helps indicate some of the contradictions of the project. Thomas Friedman got at some of this tension when he suggested the “right reason” for war was “to partner with Arab moderates in a long-term strategy of dehumiliation and redignification,” but the “real reason” was “to go right into the heart of the Arab world and smash something — to let everyone know that we, too, are ready to fight and die to preserve our open society.” In typical fashion, Friedman did not bother to question whether these two goals were complementary or contradictory, and whether “shock and awe” was reconcilable with “dehumiliation and redignification.” But we’ve witnessed the various contradictions between these motives play out for ten years now.

Photo: President George W. Bush signs H.J. Resolution 114 authorizing the use of force against Iraq. Secretary of State Colin Powell, center, and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, right, also attended the signing. White House photo by Paul Morse.