ReeferMadness

In other words, you've made up your mind and won't look at information that doesn't support your foregone conclusion. Which seems to be exactly the attitude that created the F35 debacle in the first place. The Americans appear to have a strategy that sees their subservient allies subsidize their industry by buying overpriced, underperforming bomb trucks to support their 3rd world incursions. All the while, they save the air superiority planes for themselves. I would prefer that Canada pursued an independent defence policy.

You and Derek throw out comments like this but what is your source? Or are you an expert in this area?

You seem to be arguing against information that is available elsewhere. Here is an excerpt from Janes that shows the operating cost for a Gripen is much, much lower than the flying turkey. In this link, is a comparison of 5 different planes including the Gripen and the butterball. It shows the Gripen has significant advantages in top speed, wing loading and range. Do you deny that? And the Gripen could be produced in Canada Seems like it was built for Canada

What does your link really prove? It says nothing about the Gripen NG.

First the US invaded. Then North Vietnam invaded to support an uprising in the south. The only way the North Vietnamese could have kicked out the Americans was that they had huge support by the indigenous population. If you're looking for me to support North Vietnam, you're going to be disappointed. However, the US didn't have the best interests of the South Vietnamese people when they propped up the puppet government. ETA: And while we're remembering, let's all take a moment to reflect on the idiotic domino theory and how the military industrial complex played it for all it was worth.

I'm not sure that's necessarily the case. The Gripen was built for conditions that are more in line with Canada's situation. Northern conditions, without the best runways, lower maintenance requirements and low cost. I've not read anything that 65 typhoons would be better than, say, 100 Gripens. Regardless, if the mission is defending our airspace, it seems like either option is preferable to the F35 butterball.

If it's not certain to be ISIS, then the French bombing in Syria is ridiculous theatre, isn't it? Ridiculous theatre that kills people.

Derek, I think the proponents of the F35 have been dishonest with the citizens of Canada. They're sold on the basis of "defence" but that is not their primary role. They are mostly bomb trucks, intended to be used in misadventures like Afghanistan and Iraq. These operations have not made Canada safer and it can be easily argued they've made Canada less safe. When most people think of the fighter procurement, they think of North American air defence and let's face it, the F35's are a poor choice. For fighter planes, they are slow, not very agile and I understand that the requirement to carry weapons internally restricts the type of payload they can carry. They are also very expensive, both to procure and, more importantly, to operate. Here is the unspoken bargain that you and other F35 proponents are getting us into. We buy these bomb trucks and participate in dumb missions like Iraq. In return, the US defends our airspace. I would prefer that we, like Sweden, bought aircraft that would be capable of defending our own airspace. And if they didn't last past 2040, well, the operating costs are greater than the procurement costs anyway.

ISIS wants western governments to not accept refugees, argues Syrian-American political researcher Nader Atassi.

Seems like hyperbole to me.

And 20 years ago, I'm sure you could say the same thing about the Muslim community in France. This isn't about Islam, however much people want it to be. It's about populations of disaffected, disillusioned young people. Radical Islam just happens to offer a convenient cause for these people to link up with.

Gripen is cheaper, I believe both to purchase and to operate. We'd be better having more gripens than fewer typhoons?

Then maybe they're buying the wrong plane. Based on what I've read, the F35 is expensive to buy expensive to operate, expensive to maintain and isn't especially fast or maneuverable. It has stealth. it seems like it's giving up a lot for a feature that hasn't even been proven in air-to-air combat yet.

If the argument is for a plane to defend North American airspace, it would seem that the Gripen is the right choice. If the argument is for a ground attack plane, I think we'd be better off with nothing. All of the military engagements we've had in the past few decades have not made Canada safer.

This website claims that Europe is buying the F35 as a "ground pounder" to replace the Tornado, not as a replacement for the Eurofighter.

Here's a website called Gripen for Canada. It recommends the Gripen on the basis of range, low operating cost and higher speed. Thoughts?

France has a large population of disaffected Muslims living in ghettos If we want to take a lesson from France, that is where we should look. Canada also has a large, disaffected population living apart from most of the rest of us. But they're not Muslims, they're indigenous peoples.

So, business as usual. They're pursuing the same actions that have brought us to where we are now. Are we going to expect different results?

I agree that this took some time and planning but a "sophisticated operation"? It seems like there were several teams of people spread around the city killing people. Hardly a "mission impossible" operation. Apparently, France has a large population of disaffected Muslims so that's where the logistic support would be. I understand that Kalashnikovs are readily available in Eastern Europe and open borders makes it easy to smuggle them across borders. I read that the explosive used was TATP, which is fairly simple to make out of readily available materials. The one thing I would say was that it seemed like the shooters were by all accounts well trained. So, it's reasonable to think that they were involved in the middle east wars and made their way to Paris (perhaps home to France in some cases).

Do you have a link to support your pontificating?

So, why don't you tell me how wonderful the last government made things? Or are you claiming that the attack in Paris is a result of Trudeau announcing he intended to withdraw the F18's? If what you're doing isn't working, smart people try something different. Especially when there was no logic that went into the initial actions.

Thanks for supplying a satirical example of the type of mindless nonsense that is used to create fear and justify endless military action against Muslims. But now tell us - what do you really think?

And... will any of it matter?

The Ho Chi Minh trail was less than a goat path in 1959. It was a month long hike. You keep on talking about the 1970's, well after the US invasion, and in fact, after the war was mostly lost. And it was well after the Gulf of Tonkin incident which has since been established to be a false flag event. The incident was staged to allow a pretense for US military escalation. Look. Of course, North Vietnam sent in soldiers. That's not the point. The point is were the South Vietnamese people more supportive of the corrupt tinpot dictators propped up by US military might or the Ho Chi Minh communists? It can't have been an appetizing choice but clearly, they were more supportive of the Communists. Otherwise, how can you explain how the south lost the war? The countries were of comparative population and in the south, the US dominated the air and sea. If the South Vietnamese didn't want the Communists, they would have defended their home. Instead, the Viet Cong (South Vietnamese communists) were actively fighting their own corrupt puppet government. The lesson that the military geniuses in Washington didn't seem to know (and still hadn't learned when they invaded Iraq) is if the locals don't want you, you won't last. And the reason they haven't learned is because the salaries of the "fortunate ones" in the military industrial complex depend on them not learning it!

So we shouldn't panic and make the problem much worse than it is. Of course, that would mean we'd need to employ some basic honesty about our role in creating the mess in the first place. And whatever honesty existed seems to have been almost entirely replaced by fear.