Isn't the Cold War over?
Just who exactly are we arming against with this ridiculous missle shield boondoggle?
It's one thing to waste $10 billion a year quixotically developing a missile-defense system; President Bush clearly announced from the get-go that he was determined to do that, and Congress has been complicit in his quest.
But to spark a diplomatic crisis with Russia and the European Union while doing so—that takes bungling of an unusually intense quality.
On the verge of signing a deal to place 10 anti-missile missiles in the Czech Republic and Poland, the Bush administration is getting hammered on all sides. The European Union is furious that Bush is circumventing NATO and dividing the continent. Russia's defense minister, Anatoly Serdyukov, is calling the plan "a serious destabilizing factor which could have significant impact on regional and global security."
[...]
In a phone interview today, Thomas Christie, the Pentagon's former chief of weapons testing, recalled the initial discussions of the European missile-defense plan in 2003-04. The focus, he says, was to shoot down missiles launched by Iran as they passed over Europe on their way to the United States. The interceptors—again, assuming they worked (a doubtful proposition)—could provide protection for some parts of Europe, but that wasn't the intent.
Iran? They've got to be kidding.
Even if it's really intended to protect against imaginary missles from Iran, the location of this missle system in Europe shows a complete blindness for history. Apparently, nobody in the Bush administration remembers the outcry in Europe over the deployment of short-range nukes during the Reagan administration; that tempest very nearly split NATO apart.
We really can't afford to lose any more allies at this point.
This ranks pretty high on the Stupid Security Meter, for the simple fact that the technology doesn't even work correctly. Relying on faulty security is worse than no security at all.