So, ThinkProgress, a lefty news rag, says that Israel just signed a $38 billion dollar military assistance agreement with the United States. This gives the impression that the U.S. is about to write a $38 billion dollar check to Israel. That is not, in fact, what happened.
First of all, this agreement is for $3.8 billion per year over a 10 year period. Accounting for inflation, this is not out of line with historical military aid to Israel. Yet even once you arrive down at the $3.8 billion figure, you’re *still* not understanding what you’re looking at. The reality is that Israel does not need military assistance from the United States. In 2012, Israel even baldly stated such to the United States. So why $3.8 billion, and why now?
If we had actual journalists here in the United States rather than propaganda hacks, they might cover that story. But probably not. Because the reason for this sum of money, and the reason it is now, is one of the greatest embarrassments to the United States since the Brewster Buffalo. I am talking, of course, about the F-35 fighter.
The deal is that Israel isn’t getting a check for $3.8 billion. Rather, what they’re getting is export credits that can only be reimbursed for American warfighting gear. They’re basically getting store credit at the US Military-Industrial Complex Store, that can only be spent there.
Why is this important? It is because Israel is one of the participants in the F-35 program. Due to the skyrocketing cost of the aircraft — now $148M per plane — and the poor performance of the F-35 due to the design compromises made to accomodate the USMC jump jet version of the F-35 and the USN carrier version of the F-35, Israel had threatened to pull out of the F-35 program and either buy more F-16’s or buy planes from someone else. That would have wrecked havoc with the production plans for the F-35 and resulted in lost profits for Lockheed-Martin, and that would have made Baby Jesus cry.
So basically, the deal is this: Israel gets $3.8 billion per year in credits, and Israel stays in the F-35 program. Basically, it’s an indirect subsidy to Lockheed-Martin. Israel has already spent $1.4 billion dollars on nine F-35 fighters. The plan is for Israel to continue buying F-35 fighters at a rate of roughly nine per year for the remainder of the new 10 year agreement, thereby helping keep Lockheed-Martin’s assembly line purring away.
In short, it’s really more of a $2.6 billion military assistance package with $1.4 billion on top of that to subsidize Lockheed-Martin. And given that the majority of that $2.6 billion also has to be spent in the United States, the only real question is why this is called military assistance to Israel, when in actuality it is corporate welfare to American defense companies.
But I suppose pointing out that reality — that this is actually a corporate welfare package for American defense companies, not the spectacular boon for Israel that it looks like at surface glance — would require actual, like, research, and everybody knows that research makes Baby Jesus cry. Why do research when you can whip up a facile surface glance at a big number like $38 billion, move on, and rake in the money from ads without having to actually, like, work for a living? What a job!
– Badtux the “Hell, I do a better job than that” Penguin
Yep, that’s pretty much it.
On an unrelated note, why isn’t the past tense of “wreak havoc” “wrought havoc”? I just realized I’ve never heard anyone say that.
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