What We Really Need Is Democracy

32 Replies to “What We Really Need Is Democracy”

1. I really hope they are the “remote shut off” edition, where (unaccountably) “stuff” refrains from working at critical junctures. Like the engines, the missile launching, the radar…

2. Wouldn’t it be cheaper for Washington to just nuke Tel Aviv?
   I’m sure the new Israeli Arab capital of Jerusalem could have the Brotherhood and Hamas hosting human rights conventions by the summer.
   Nobel prizes for all!

3. US foreign policy at work or should that be inaction? I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.
   I am not all that worried about the Israeli Air Force. They have F15s and F16s with superior missiles, US built AMRAAMs and Israeli built Python-5s, which the Egyptians lack. The Israelis can launch AMRAAMs from beyond visual range and then close in to finish off the survivors. Need I mention the difference in pilot skill levels?

4. The US tendency, under Democratic regimes, to support Islamic causes goes back to the Bill Clinton era.

5. The Eygptian airforce is perhaps the most competant element of the Eygptian military….but that ain’t saying much.
   1) IDF has no average pilots.
   2) IDF prior to 1967 drilled until they could turn around a jet fighter in under 5-6 minutes.(NATO average 2-3 hours)
   Most airforce(including NATO) can manage maybe 2 sorties/day.
   IDF averaged 5-6/day.
   Aircraft are high maintainance…IDF achieved air supremecy not just from destroying aircraft and runways….but benefited from the enemy inability to repair damage/defects.

6. I just don’t understand how Hillary Clinton could bang her head.
   How do you tip over a pyramid?

7. From Defense Industry Daily…
   Note that Egypt’s new F-16C/Ds may be Block 52 aircraft, but they differ in one important respect from their counterparts in places like Singapore and Israel. Instead of relying on the modern, active-homing AIM-120 AMRAAM as their medium range air to air missile, Egypt’s F-16s depend on the older AIM-7P Sparrow. The Sparrow uses semi-active radar homing, which means the launching fighter needs to maintain a continuous illumination lock on the target aircraft. In contrast, an Israeli F-16i equipped with AMRAAM missiles can achieve lock, launch, then break lock and evade while the missile guides itself to the target.
   That leaves Egyptian jets at a notable disadvantage against Israel, but in a confrontation with the air forces of neighbors like Libya or Sudan, Egypt’s combination of better fighters and supporting E-2 AWACS planes would make even Sparrow-armed F-16s extremely dangerous.

8. So,Obama is a christian,mmmm,would that be a coptic christian or some other type?

9. So,Obama is a christian,mmmm,would that be a coptic christian or some other type?

10. The aircraft does not make the airforce. Plenty of unpleasant regimes have bought fancy airframes as a showcase and then failed to train pilots or maintain them. I’m not worried at all.
    More sport for the Israeli Air Force…..

11. Sooooooo……arm Israel and Egypt….watch the fireworks…..how many women killed today in the new democracy of Egypt because they smiled under their gunnysack? Darn.
    Israel….raise mega numbers of birds.One little wren/tit down the intake….plane gone.

12. When does he give back his Nobel Peace prize?

13. grok….When does he give back his Nobel Peace prize?
    And just what war did he stop? I thought the Peace Prize was given out for starting and maintaining PEACE.

14. The U.S. controls the Egyptian military. Looks like they are keeping them coup-ready.

15. The U.S.calls these F16’s “monkey models”. The same goes for the Abrams tanks. They are supplied without the sophisicated armour and fire control systems on U.S. models.
    I doubt egypt could field %20 of their tanks and jets due to poor or non existant maintenance.

16. First Peace Prize ever awarded for not being George Bush

17. So, this year’s price for this year’s temporary cessation of hostilities in Gaza is 20 F-16s supplied to the Caliphate. At least the dhimmi Obama Administration is consistent, as the Libyan cover-up had to be hiding a CIA arms supply operation. The only thing that baffles me is the aggressive Drone program. It must be a smokescreen to fool the drone electorate into thinking he has legitimate enemies besides Fox News viewers and the Tea Party.

18. You got it all wrong, being a socialist Obama believes in equality of all nations and all political systems whether they be a Democracy or a Religious Dictatorship. He’s only trying to introduce equality to the Middle East. His ideas on how to do it are just difficult for anyone with a functioning brain to understand.

19. Something about this seems very peculiar, until you recognize that the prime directive of a Leftist is Equality.

20. Did not the US also arm and train the Mujaheddin against the Soviets? That worked out well.

21. ken
    Yeah it did work out well.
    It did…the Mujahedin won…the Russians left. When the mujahedin won the Taliban returned from Pakistan and the Mujahedin…The Northern Alliance…lost the initiative in the face of political/religious coup.
    The myth is that the Taliban EVER engaged the Russians….they didn’t…they didn’t even support the Mujahedin materially.

22. When the Russians were Egypt’s main arms supplier, they sent Russian “tech reps” with all the seals and washers required to keep the MiGs serviceable. When the Russkiys got kicked out, they took those small supplies with them and within a matter of weeks the fighters were grounded. I hope the Americans are smart enough to have some similar safeguard built into their contracts, but I’m not hopeful.

23. @ Ken/Sasquatch
    .the Mujahedin won…the Russians left
    The Mujahideen didn’t win, they avoided losing. The Soviets didn’t lose, they failed to win — until their Empire suddenly crashed.
    The myth is that the Taliban EVER engaged the Russians….they didn’t.
    That’s because the Taliban didn’t exist during the 1980s. According to the National Counterterrorism Center: ‘The Taliban is a Sunni Islamist nationalist and pro-Pashtun movement founded in the early 1990s that ruled most of Afghanistan from 1996 until October 2001. The movement’s founding nucleus—the word “Taliban” is Pashto for “students”—was composed of peasant farmers and men studying Islam in Afghan and Pakistani madrasas, or religious schools.’
    (emphasis added)
    The Taliban came into existence after the Soviets had departed. Founded by Pakistan’s ISI and recruited from Pakistan’s Jamiat-e-Ulemae Islam (JUI) foot soldiers from madressahs in North West Pakistan.

24. Further to may last comment on the Russian “strings attached” method, LTV in the U.S. made replacement seals and washers for the Egyptians until the Americans could provide replacement aircraft.
    Sometimes foreign policy makes the jump from wild idea to implementation without any forethought.

25. @ Aviator
    Prior to their Dec 27, 1979 invasion of Afghanistan, the Soviets had removed the batteries of Afghanistan’s tanks for ‘winterization’, thus rendering them out of service.
    I am sure the US has some kill switch in their gold plated stuff that the Egyptians field. In any case, just as an army walks on its stomach, weapons are moribund without spares.

26. Sasquatch and Rizwan, thanks for that clarification. Interesting times, then and now. History repeats?

27. And the gullible thought that 1 billion in foreign aid meant food, medicine or something else equally silly.
    “Arab Spring”
    Bwahahahahahaha.

28. The spare parts game is also the main tool used by the US to ensure that the Israelis don’t get overly aggressive (ie. maintain proportionality) with their peaceful and civilized neighbours.

29. Why isn’t the Canadian Liberal left asking Obamba for some spare jet fighters?
    They love the fact that he gives them away free to totalitarian Egypt, and then piss all over Harper for shopping around for some of our own.
    Something tells me Obamba doesn’t like them the way they think he likes them.

30. This is why I advocate a nuclear Canada. We must at all cost maintain our own arms industry.

31. Lots of fun poked at Egypt & the present US administration by our posters. The reality is O’Allahu Akbar is at the very least the re-embodiment of Neville Chamberlin.
    I miss true brave men like Winston Churchill.
    F-16’s giving projection of power or not to Egypt, it’s appeasment. People are going to die.

32. In any aerial engagement between Israel and Egypt, I’d bet on the Israel’s. I doubt that Egyptian pilots are any better than the Syrian pilots who lost some 80 aircraft against shooting down one Israeli plane the last time that they tested Israeli defenses.
    More recently Israel totally neutralized Syrian anti-aircraft defenses when it bombed what was suspected to be a Syrian reactor project. It wouldn’t surprise me if Israel has figured out how to deactivate key aircraft systems from afar in the Egyptian F16’s.
    What does surprise me is why the Totus is sending the Egyptians evil CO2 producing aircraft when he could have sent them $200 million worth of corn to turn into ethanol to provide “low carbon” fuel for the people of Egypt?