Cold War Deja-Vu

In his speech in Prague, President Obama's rhetoric was essentially
no different than that of George Bush. He promised, because of our
"moral responsibility," to rid the world of nuclear weapons. He then
averred that the US would not lower its defenses while others are
pursuing a nuclear threat.

He's right about his last promise. Under his budget the US will
continue to spend on defense (and a nuclear capability) more than all
the rest of the world put together, "While others are pursuing a
nuclear threat" an obvious reference to Iran, which our intelligence
community reports is not pursuing a nuclear weapon. Obama who knows
this intelligence information said to a cheering crowd: "As long as the
threat from Iran persists, we will go forward with a missile defense
system that is cost-effective and proven." So much for his recent
peaceful overtures to the people of Iran whose defense budget is less
than 1% of ours.

"Cost-effective!!!" The missile shield is the biggest boondoggle in
military history with constant cost overruns. "Proven!!!" All tests
have failed save one where the target's location was programmed into
the interceptor guidance system. The President's false exaggerations
are statements right out of a lobbyist's briefing paper. The missile
shield in Alaska was deployed before the system was ever proven to work
at a cost of $100 billion. The shield for Poland and Czech will cost
more than $100 billion. The great majority of knowledgeable scientists,
not on the payroll of the benefiting defense contractors, state that
the system will not work and that a threat does not exist.

When we are hemorrhaging debt at home in the current economic
meltdown and tanking unemployment does this expenditure abroad make
sense? Barack sings a different tune when he's abroad. His hawkish
statements in Prague are as inaccurate as Bush's were prior to the
invasion of Iraq. Progressives are in for a lot more surprises to come.

The missile shield system has little to do with the phony nuclear
threat from Iran or for that matter North Korea. It is the continuation
of the arms race in space that started under the Clinton
Administration. The missiles of the shield are really designed to shoot
down orbiting communication satellites, thereby blinding and
economically crippling a 21st Century enemy. But this can be done by
any country that can launch a satellites. That's why Western Analysts
are so concerned with the ICBM rocket capability of Iran and North
Korea. For them this capability is vital for their defense by raising
the threshold costs of superpower intimidation. They well know that
their rockets are not a system to attack the US superpower, Europe,
South Korea or Japan, where at best they can only inflict recoverable
damages. Any sane leader knows that such an attack would bring about a
national suicide, easily inflicted by any one of the 19 plus US and
NATO Trident submarines.

The arms race in space is now evolving into the Cold War posture of
MAD (mutual assured destruction), the only beneficiaries of which are
the arms contractors around the world. President Obama's statements in
Prague are Cold War, signaling that the military industrial complex
(mic) investment in the political campaigns of the 2008 election will
not only reap handsome rewards but will also insulate them from the
pain of the present economic meltdown.