| http://www.onlinejournal.com/Commentary/Grant050301/grant050301.html
The empire strikes back By Chris Grant May 3, 2001—Nope. Not what you're thinking. There's no Luke Skywalker, no Darth Vader, Han Solo doesn't even get frozen in carbonite. But it does involve Star Wars. That steady ticking in the background is the doomsday clock, counting down from one minute to midnight. Tick, George W. Bush wants to violate the ABM (Antiballistic Missile) Treaty of 1972. Tock, the United States' allies are none too pleased. Tick, George W. Bush doesn't care. Tock, the allies are none too pleased. It's a broken record. Whatever Bush wants, Bush gets. I may have been a slight bit harsh when I said that Bush wants to violate the ABM Treaty. He doesn't. In fact, he doesn't recognize it to even attempt violating it. Instead, he believes it to be a Cold War antiquity and that it should be scrapped. In a previous article, my first here at Online Journal as a matter of fact, I said that the United States needed a bogeyman amongst the world's nations. The current bogeyman is China. The EP-3 spy plane incident (note I do not say accident) saw to that. This incident is now seen as justification, as we all knew it would be, to start talking Star Wars again. Paging Dr. Strangelove, Dr. Strangelove. You are wanted in the Pentagon. Oh, there you are. I didn't see you. Let's let Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Lucas Fischer explain the Bush administration's plans, just as he explained them to the Danish Parliament this past week: "We will deploy defenses as soon as possible. Therefore, we believe that the ABM treaty will have to be replaced, eliminated or changed in a fundamental way." The ABM treaty of 1972 states neither the United States nor the Soviet Union (and later Russia and the various countries that used to make up the U.S.S.R.) would provide or deploy a base for ABM systems for a defense of the territory of its country. Nor would they develop, test, or deploy ABM systems or components that are sea-based, air-based, space-based, or mobile land-based. You can kiss that goodbye as American officials (read: Bush administration) say that they are planning on a multi-layered system that would involve sea-based radars and interceptors and land and space-based "elements." As of this writing, Bush has made his speech. He's told all of us that there bogeymen out there and that without this system online, we don't stand a chance against them. He's warned us that we ought to dust off the bomb shelters. Kids, you should be prepared for your new class, Duck-and-Cover. Your first lesson: find a desk, get under it, and pray your little butts off. What good the desk will do you if a nuke should make it to you has yet to be determined. We're informed that we need to protect ourselves from "rogue states." Among these "rogue states" are Iran and Iraq. Forgetting that the Bush administration stole the election in November with the help of the Supreme Court (which should, in turn, make us a rogue state), the question that no one asks is how many ICBMs (Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles) either of these countries have in their arsenals? Doing a little bit of digging, and with the help of the FAS (Federation of American Scientists) website, I discovered that Iran has two different kinds of operational missiles: the Shahab-1, of which they have anywhere from 50 to 300 and the Shahab-2, of which they have anywhere from 50 to 450 in their inventory. The Shahab-1 is capable of reaching a distance of 300 km (kilometers) and the Shahab-2, 500 km. Iraq is just as pitiful with their Al Hussein missiles, holding anywhere from 6 to 50 in storage, with a range of 600 km. Is it just me or is 600 km nowhere near the United States? Bush called this a limited-defense package. Yet in order to "protect" our allies, the very definition of limited is flawed. From downtown Baghdad, you could hit as far west as Cyprus, as far east as central Iran, as far north as Turkey, and as far south as Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Limited is not what it used to be. Let's not stop there. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said Tuesday that, "They [the missile "defense" systems] need not be 100-percent perfect in my opinion and they are certainly unlikely to be in their early stages of evolution." Let me slow this down for you. The missile "defense" system does not, in Secretary Rumsfeld's eyes, need to be 100-percent accurate in shooting down incoming missiles. If we are to understand the good secretary, it's okay if someone is able to toss an ICBM our way and our "defense" missile misses it, allowing it to hit its intended target: us. And it's okay that our missile, missing the target, continues on to hit something else, possibly a city that had no hand in sending the previously mentioned ICBM towards us. If that doesn't reach out and shake you, I think you need to lay off the Prozac. In the previous eight years of the Clinton Administration, the testing of the system was, as best (and by at best, I mean you need to be living in a Rumsfeldian fantasy land), mediocre. Missing two out of three attempts is a 33.333333-percent accuracy by my math. Maybe it's fuzzy. The only country that poses any kind of threat to us, in terms of missile range capability, is the former Soviet Union, Russia. You know, the men and women we have (or maybe I should say had) a treaty with to avoid something just like this. So is it possible that maybe we shouldn't be talking about recanting on a treaty that has worked pretty well, thank you, since 1972? The argument to this is, of course, that the Soviet Union no longer exists and that the arms that used to be concentrated in the hands of the Soviets are now spread out all across the globe. Yes, the Soviet Union no longer exists but Moscow, the people we signed the treaty with, does. This makes that argument moot. I would like to leave you with two questions: What is the definition of limited? What good does a 33.333333-percent accurate missile "defense" system do us? Action is split-second. Talk and thought take a little more time. |
