Re: from SLATE

[Jim Devine <jdevine03@xxxxxxxxx>]

"President Bush is rushing to deploy a technology that does not work
against a threat that does not exist." --  Joseph Cirincione

> From the NATION magazine, by Katrina vanden Heuvel, at
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/edcut?pid=203257

Last month's failed missile defense test was categorized as a "No
Test" by the Missile Defense Agency (MDA). The target missile didn't
fly into range of the interceptor so it was never launched.

Even though it was deemed a "No Test" by the MDA, an agency spokesman
nevertheless claimed that the results of "the failed test underscored
the need of the US to install 10 interceptors in Poland and a tracking
radar station in the Czech Republic as a defense against potential
missile attack from Iran…. It showed that any missiles that Iran
launched could similarly go astray and land in Europe even if Europe
was not Iran's target."

Huh?

Welcome to what Joseph Cirincione – senior fellow at the Center for
American Progress and author of the new book, Bomb Scare – calls,
"This week's episode of President Bush in Fantasyland."

"President Bush is rushing to deploy a technology that does not work
against a threat that does not exist," Cirincione says. "Iran is at
least 5 to 10 years away from the capability to build a nuclear weapon
and at least that far from having a missile that could hit Europe let
alone the US. And anti-missile systems are still nowhere near working
despite $150 billion spent since the 1983 Star Wars program started
and years of phony tests staged to demonstrate 'progress' and
'success.'"

None of this has stopped Bush from continuing to tout his Czech
Republic and Poland-based "proposed missile defense system designed to
thwart a possible nuclear attack from Iran." Adding to the irony (and
the outrage) is the fact that while Bush continues to frame the
weapons system as indispensable to democracy – "This is aimed at a
country like Iran… so they couldn't blackmail the free world" – the
people of the Czech Republic and Poland continue to oppose the plans
(as I initially reported here). Recent polls show that over 60 percent
of Czechs are opposed and only 25 percent of Poles support the missile
defense plan.

The mayor of the Czech village of Trokavec where the radar site would
be located recently held a referendum and 71 of 72 votes were cast
against the plan. The mayor of Stitov, Vaclav Hudec, and "most of" his
village's 58 residents "are bitterly opposed" to the radar site. Hudec
wrote House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Appropriations Committee
Chairman Robert Byrd outlining the opposition of "nearly two dozen"
Czech mayors to the missile defense plan.

"This is a crisis of our own making," Cirincione says. "President Bush
so fervently believes in something that doesn't exist that he
jeopardizes – again – our real security interests. The fact is the
Czechs don't want the radar, the Europeans don't trust his
explanations and deplore his unilateralism, the Congress has already
cut the funds on purely programmatic grounds. This was a dumb idea
before, now it is yet another foreign policy disaster."

All of this for a system Cirincione says isn't important to the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, who view these programs as "expensive pet rocks."

"The Joint Chiefs were happy to cut this budget as soon as Presidents
Reagan and Bush left office," he says. "In 1993 they formally wrote
President Clinton and recommended spending only $2.8 billion with $2.3
billion of that devoted to short-range defenses." (We currently spend
in the range of $10 billion per year.)

And while many in the mainstream media swallow the Bush Administration
talking points on Russian President Vladimir Putin as if once again
being spoon-fed pre-war intelligence, other experts on arms control
and foreign policy suggest Putin has real reason to worry about the
Bush Administration's moves.

In The Rise of US Nuclear Primacy, published in Foreign Affairs last
year, Keir A. Liber and Daryl G. Press wrote: "… the sort of missile
defenses that the United States might plausibly deploy would be
valuable primarily in an offensive context, not a defensive one – as
an adjunct to a US first-strike capability, not as a stand-alone
shield. If the United States launched a nuclear attack against Russia
(or China), the targeted country would be left with a tiny surviving
arsenal – if any at all. At that point, even a relatively modest or
inefficient missile-defense system might well be enough to protect
against any retaliatory strikes…"

Cirincione adds that he thinks Putin's response is a "clever gambit."

"There is a reason Russians are the best chess players – they know how
to read the board and exploit their opportunities," he says.
"President Putin thinks the US policies represent a new imperialism.
Now, he sees President Bush trying to build permanent military bases
on Russia's borders. Putin isn't afraid of 10 interceptors but he has
to worry about what comes next – any Russian leader would. He doesn't
believe President Bush and many Europeans don't either. This issue
feeds into the mistrust of America that Europeans feel on a host of
Bush Administration policies from global warming to Iraq."

So why is the Bush administration imposing this sucker of a weapons
system that nobody wants on an already inflamed relationship with
Russia? Why risk sparking a renewed nuclear arms race?

"Politics drives this deployment decision," Cirincione says. "Bush
Administration officials are trying to lock in the program before they
leave office. They are trying to build bases they hope the next
president will find impossible to shut down."

Thank you, Mr. Bush. One more relic from your Fantasyland we could do without.
--
Jim Devine /  "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your
own way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante.