The Last Frontier

Paul Waldman has an interesting article in The Gadflyer on faithbased missile defense.

But this administration, the entire Republican Party, and healthy numbers of Democrats are still gripped by the idea that we can erect a missile defense “shield,” a big dome sitting atop the United States that keeps us safe from all who would do us harm. The Bush administration has requested an increase of 20% in the missile defense budget for next year, to over $10 billion. The eventual cost of missile defense is hard to predict, but given that Bush wants to spend over $50 billion in the next five years alone, it’s reasonable to conclude that the total cost of the program from this point forward will easily exceed $100 billion and perhaps $200 billion. Although it’s difficult to precisely calculate what we’ve spent since the 1980s, reasonable estimates climb toward $100 billion, which has bought us…well, nothing.

It seems inexplicable that these people would continue with this quixotic obsession year after year knowing that it will not work. Except as a form of welfare for engineers, it’s hard to understand.

Unless it’s really about R&D for space-based weapons. Then it makes a little more sense.

This is another little program in the Revolution in Military Affairs and the Third Wave crapola that Rummy and the Wohlstetter crowd have been obsessing about for years (and which has shown such spectacular success here on planet earth.)

Rumsfeld personally has a vested belief in weaponized space and the National Missile Defense system, having headed the commission that in 1999 helped to persuade the Clinton Administration to push ahead with missile defense. His staff’s long-range projections envision threats not from Europe, where the Army is heavily positioned, but from Asia—possible conflicts in which Navy missiles and Air Force precision bombs would be the preferred assets.

This fantasy of a “shield” is phony. As former arms control negotiator Jonathan Dean and Jonathan Granoff of the Global Security Institute wrote back in 2001:

The rushed deployment of a costly and almost certainly unworkable national missile defense system makes no sense. But it does make sense if the underlying motive is to use the missile defense issue as grounds for moving to the weaponization of space and ultimately to its domination.

Repeated UN resolutions calling for the prevention of space weaponization have been nearly unanimous and without any no votes. Recognizing this fact, the United States, backed by only two small client states, has dared only to abstain. The community of nations will not tolerate one country’s dominance of a weaponized space. Political and ultimately military challenges will certainly be mounted to contest U.S. dominance.

Not only is this very bad for our security, it contradicts our identity as a nation. Our country was founded in response to the actions of an over-reaching, hegemonic empire. In placing weapons over everyone on the planet, the United States is in peril of over-reaching itself.

Remember. These people are always wrong about everything. They are Austin Powers, not James Bond. Gawd help us.