Scott,
It is neither liberal nor naive to believe in prioritizing threats and spending money intelligently. We don't have infinite amounts of it. What I believe about missile defense is that it will cost billions of dollars is imo very unlikely to work in real life, since it could be overwhelmed by decoys.
Nor has scientific evidence to date been at all reassuring on that score. If somebody showed me evidence that the system could work in the battlefield I would feel differently. So far all the tests have been unbelievably canned, and even so, most of them have failed.
A perfect missile defense would not have made an iota of difference to yesterday's scenario, which is why I feel insulted at the Rummy's arguments. If yesterday shows anything, it shows that our enemies are very smart. They want to hit hard without being hit in return. Missiles are big, expensive, hard to hide, and have clear return addresses. They may be a chance of being able to convincingly pin the blame on your neighbor, but it seems a relatively small probability, esp. when compared to the ease of dropping nerve gas in a subway, or as we saw yesterday, using a hijacked plane as a bomb. Those methods don't have return addresses at all.
Yesterday showed that we are almost completely unguarded against these far more likely threats. I think we should concentrate our efforts on better intelligence to guard against terrorism, the likely threat, instead of missiles, the unlikely threat, for which we already have the defense of deterrence.
Our defense establishment is in love with high tech solutions. Yesterday showed the effectiveness of well thought out low tech plans -- it is entirely possible that the terrorists pulled it off with nothing but knowledge, discipline, a few knives, and a couple of airport accomplices.
I think GWB has a bee in his bonnet about missile defense, and the rest of the administration goes along. Let's just say that I don't share your faith in GWB's superior understanding of defense matters, particularly when it come to understanding the science. Nor do I think that I need overlook missile defense's incredible usefulness as a GOP patronage machine when looking for a motive. |
