The libertarian story about national defense policy and the achievement of the F-16 fighters acquired for a million dollars is beginning to leak. Because, one after another, four soldiers took their lives in recent days due to the humiliating conditions to which the Government reduced them with its chainsaw. The first of them was even found dead in the Quinta de Olivos, where he had to guard the perimeter. He was in debt of more than 2 million pesos, earned very little and left a farewell letter. According to the reconstruction of Justice, he shot himself with his FAL rifle after 5 in the morning and no one heard the roar of that rather noisy weapon. They found him only later, warned of his absence.
The drama of the uniformed men who commit suicide at the same time that the Government shows off its new war tricks is difficult to justify. Because, just as Javier Milei and company celebrate the forced savings applied to the armed forces and the rest of society as a success, they simultaneously spend atrociously on purchases by the Ministry of Defense. A case already mentioned is that of the highly celebrated F-16s, for which Argentina paid Denmark the sum of 301 million dollars, despite the fact that they are the same fighters that the Colombian government rejected some time ago as obsolete, and despite the fact that Romania bought them for the symbolic value of 1 euro from the Netherlands, which did not want to charge more for them due to their obvious age.
At the same time, another controversial acquisition of the administration of Luis Petri – the former minister who jumps and hugs Milei every time they coincide at an event – is that of the Stryker tanks that the United States left us at US$ 100 million for 27 units. The problem is that Poland got the same armored vehicles and from the same buyer for $1 each, thanks to a military agreement with Washington. Do you like to overpay our former Minister of Defense? Are you fooled easily?
That is, in any case, one of the two sides of the matter. The other is that what you spend more on fighters and tanks do not try to save on soldiers’ salaries.
