Opinion/Editorial

VIVA LA FRANCE

Not long ago millions of Americans ran a representation of the French flag as a part of their Facebook identity. That was to support France in a time of need. They’d just been terror bombed in a horrible way. France was America’s first, and sometimes only, ally when the country struggled to come together and throw off British rule. Now France has withdrawn its embassies and consulates from the United States, basically severing the many hundred-year-old alliance.

France is a country about one-twentieth the land area of the United States and has a gross domestic product annually about ten percent of that of the U.S. California has a bigger economy than France. The defense budget of France is 52 billion a year, while the U.S. is quickly closing in one trillion a year.

Australia isn’t even in the game except in landmass (the U.S. is 1.3 times bigger). The Australians have a tiny defense budget as well as a long-standing federal law that does not allow the country to possess nuclear anything.

Now, the U.S. steps in and cancels a deal between the French and Aussies that would have paid 60 billion overtime for a bunch of conventional submarines. We handed France, one of our best friends in the world, a sizable chunk of its own ass. Now, the U.S. seems dead set on changing the Aussie federal law, not to give them power plants, no, but to get them into nuclear submarines so the Chinese will get a case of the willies about that ridiculous fact.

How is Australia going to afford these new toys? What kind of nukes will they get, the attack subs or the boomers with nuclear missiles? I don’t know the words to match the phrase ‘screw you’ in French but I’m willing to bet it is being used all over France this day and on into a good part of the future. A future that is not likely to include much in the way of supporting the U.S.

This kind of game-playing macho “RISK” board game crap was going on with the monster president. Now, the sedate, easy-going, and well-mannered professor of a president pulls this crap.

The reality of what’s going on in Australia and its submarines. The Australian Navy has six submarines, all Collins class subs built in Scotland between 1996 and 2001. The six subs are not all operational, as most spend time docked being worked on or serviced. They are all conventional submarines. It was just announced that the Australians, as this new deal, supplanting the French deal, will give them nuclear submarines beginning in 2040. Yes, you read that right. The French deal would have replaced the aging subs year by year. By the way, the latest the newest conventional sub they have could stay afloat is 2038.

So, what’s going on here? Australia is not getting nuclear subs. They are getting no subs at all for some good time on into an unknown future. They are sure as hell not turning around to change their laws to permit nuclear power. Once again, the American public gets completely left out…wandering around on the plains of ignorant uncertainty with only the French to keep us company.

What does all this mean to American citizens across the nation and even living in Southern Wisconsin, as Australia is 9,767 miles away, and France is 4220?  The distance is meaningless, the money is almost as meaningless and the future of delivery of anything nuclear to Australia at some time in the distant future is equally as meaningless.  What matters is truth, integrity, justice, and yes, the American way.

The lies of the previous administration played up as alternative facts or even facts themselves, hurt our country to the core of where it lives.  That core is all about how Americans feel about themselves.  A new leader comes in, with a whole lot of other subalterns, and purports to change that kind of behavior.  Joe Biden will not be able to change the animalistic up-until-now hidden away part of America that has either had too much lead in its water or simply did not do favorably well when genes were codified and passed around, but it was expected that the kind of confusing lying behavior of his predecessor would quiet the rise of ‘conspiracy theories’ and bring back some direct talk to the public.

We kill seven kids in Afghanistan with a drone that was probably a whole lot smarter on its own than its idiot handlers in the Air Force or whatever military wants to claim it pulled that murderous stupidity. The solution is to bring the remaining members of the Afghan family to the U.S. Like…why in hell would they want to come here? The Charlie Hebdo newspaper terror act killed 12 adults. We killed eight, seven of them little kids. By definition of the modern Western World, the U.S. cannot be labeled a terrorist but was sure as hell committed a terrorist act there…and no, you don’t get to say you’re sorry and walk away from that.

There are general officers that need to start packing away their stars, on boards of inquiry that should be underway for all of them up and down the line.

Biden could have done a better job in bringing everyone home from Afghanistan or at least admitted that they could have done a better job.  That retreat was not a great success and his saying that lessens his credibility and the public’s belief in him.  And this unnecessary debacle made up of whatever it is truly made up of, lands across the pages of our newspaper and across our television and Internet screens.  It was unnecessary and the fact that he and his advisors could not see that coming is downright scary.  We all expect and deserve more.