Less than I worry about a technically bogus "missile defense" system triggering a MAD new arms race.
***You would have told the Wright Brothers it will never work, it will never work.FACT:Reagan's threat of Star Wars was responsible for the fall of Russia. A missile shield is necessary and one day will be in place.
Less than I worry about $100-$400 Bills being spent on that system when it can be circumvented by two guys in a rowboat.
***Two guys in a rowboat can bring down a 747, do we not fly because of this?
The threat of a non-existent, technically bogus system that would bankrupt us to try to build, and would be trivial (yes, trivial) to circumvent caused the Soviets to give up? Puhlease. The Soviet Union fell (Russia's still here, fyi) because the inherent internal contradictions of a communist system finally caught up with it. Bush is proposing $100-$400 Bills to try and shoot down maybe up to 10-20 missiles at best (by their own most optimistic estimates). You want to work out the economics of trying to shoot down thousands? And they can't shoot down one in tests that are rigged! Yup, tell 'em where the missile is coming and when, with no countermeasures, and they still can't hit. Of course, this technically achievable monster (Star Wars to Smart Rocks to Brilliant Pebbles to whatever it is now) has the full blessing of every major technical society in the US? Oops. Of course our allies would clamor to be put under this impervious umbrella so they could be safe. Oops. Of course we would then be perfectly safe against nuclear threat or other weapons of mass destruction. You're going to stop some creative terrorist from putting a warhead in a cargo-carrier on a cargo ship that lands in New York? Oops. Or two guys in a row-boat. We can't secure our borders against 100's of tons of illicit drugs! Or protect our most technically advanced and lethal warships from being bombed in harbor. Assuming you could build a "missile defense" system to some spec with however many 100's of billions of bucks you could spin up, any fixed defensive technology can be circumvented, and much more cheaply, with a offensive answer. This is the history of the world. This would be our Great Wall, or Maginot Line. Both, in the end failed in their intended purpose. This fraud of "missile defense" is a chimera. The solution to WMD is ultimately political, not technological. Time to deal with that reality, instead of (expensive) fantasy-land.
The real nasty part of this proposal is that right now, PRC has about 20-30 missiles, which is about the number of missiles that the "missile defense" system proposed by Bush is intended to shoot down. You think they'll sit there happy, or do we trigger yet another hostile arms race? Russia, with its huge number of missile is, of course, is going to agree to further nuclear weapons reductions in this environment?
A missile defense system is a bad idea in so many ways, it boggles the mind how it gets any traction. |
