Pulling The Plug On Missile Defense, NATO And Other Western Absurdities

 A famous bit of office copier wisdom states: When you are up to your ass in alligators it is worth reminding yourself the original intention was to drain the swamp.  This expression brings a nice bit of levity to a very common human trait- our ability to stare at a problem straight on and not see the solution. There may be all sorts of reasons why self-evident solutions elude us –perceptual, financial, political or shades of all three; but most prominently greed and stupidity.

Let us suppose for a moment that the solution to many of the world’s problems right now would be to pull the plug on  missile defense and all those big fat menacing alligators that are supposedly nipping at our fleshy buttocks, those damned Russians, those obstinate Iraqi’s, those Islamo-fascists, those irate Iranians, those pesky North Koreans, those retrograde, misogynist Taliban and those bloody ingrate Chinese would all go away.

 Missile Defense is more cause than cure and pulling the plug on it – draining the swamp- would be a giant step forward for mankind.

First of all, Missile Defense really is a bit of a lie, a very big lie! When they say “defense” they really mean “offense” because right now America doesn’t really have any enemies threatening it in a big way. It is really just swatting flies. But in order to justify missile defense, which is really missile offence, you have to exaggerate and inflate your enemy’s capabilities, and in many cases manufacture them, to suit your imperialist agenda.

The reason you can’t say missile offense is because that would reveal your true intention which is to have nuclear primacy; the ability to blow all these multi-ethnic alligators out of the swamp before they blow you out of the swamp, but of course the crazy part of it that most of these alligators are on survival rations with barely the ability to feed themselves and hang on to their own corner of the swamp let alone blow anybody else out of the swamp.

 The problem is the guys who want missile defense want to own the whole swamp and tell everybody else what to do.  But they too have problems.

The first is trying to fool all the people all the time.

The second is that they are trafficking in militarism, where, like trafficking in drugs there are huge profits to be made. They are also known as the military industrial complex, where might makes right, and where war is good for business and there can never be enough armaments sold or wars fought. Enough is never enough to satisfy their vicious corrupted souls as they steal from their own kind to satisfy their obsessive greed and leave their homeland really much less secure and debt-ridden.

 What makes them even nastier is that they like to get others hooked on their endless arms race and utter refusal to pursue a peace dividend. NATO used to be a somewhat respectable defense alliance dating back to the Cold War but is now a courtesan to arms dealers and she plies her trade wherever she is told. She does though have moments of truth where some members of her body revolt at her recently acquired whorish nature.

The biggest problem for missile defense is that it doesn’t work! It has been described as hitting a bullet with a bullet- one missile taking out another missile- which any prepubescent  school child will tell you requires an incredible degree of accuracy that is really only attainable in video arcades and not the real world. To think that missile defense will stop a barrage of incoming missiles is simply insane. All it takes is one missile to get through to kill off a city of eight to ten million people! Is this the sort of game we want to play?

Another rather large problem for missile defense is that dating back to presidency of Ronald Reagan over a hundred billion dollars has been spent on research and so far to no avail. The question then arises how many more hundreds of billions, and more than likely a trillion or two, will have to be spent to make it work? Experts within the US military candidly admit that it could be another twenty years before it can be made to work. 

Then too there are those who maintain it doesn’t matter if it works as long as all those bloated ethnic alligators out there believe it works.

So missile defense is something that doesn’t work and won’t work for some time to come. But in the mean time it is causing one hell of a lot trouble as it is precipitating a new arms race.

It is being used to advance American imperialism and NATO, along with its loss of any redeeming virtues has become the Trojan horse to this neo-imperialism. By coercing former USSR satellite nations into becoming NATO members and then loading them up with missile bases, military hardware, and US trained troops there has been a steady encroachment of Russia’s sphere of influence.

As reported in London’s Daily Telegraph Washington’s neocons wanted both Georgia and the Ukraine to be NATO members by Christmas. Now they won’t get their Christmas wish as Russia has said enough is enough.  A CIA report, probably waved under the nose of Georgian President Mikheil Saakasvili, proved to be deadly wrong when it claimed there would be no Russian response to Georgian aggression in Ossetia.  If the US wanted to find out the limits of Russian patience with its ongoing encroachment of Russia’s sphere of influence they now have their answer.  With the US waging wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and threatening Iran, Russia has shown considerable forbearance.

British foreign secretary David Miliband, in the grand tradition of Tony Blair’s poodle politics, has called for, “the widest possible coalition against Russian aggression.”  He also warned against Russia starting a new Cold War. Like Blair before him Miliband has a fondness for misstatement. Russia’s aggression was only in response to Georgia’s aggression against Ossetia; most probably instigated under US tutelage.  If anybody is pushing for a new Cold War it is the US and its spineless NATO proxies.

Western politicians and media are playing a very wicked little game as they invoke the tyranny of the now long defunct Soviet Union to tar present day Russia. Zbigniew Brzezinski national security advisor to former president Jimmy Carter, and now advisor to presidential candidate Barack Obama exists in his own time warp and is still fighting the Cold War.

 Why are we doing this to ourselves?

The Cold War was thirty odd years long, fought at horrendous cost, a huge wasting of resources, hundreds of millions lived under the threat of nuclear annihilation and we were fortunate it never did come to a hot war between the two superpowers.  Now, in this Age of Senility we are sliding toward another Cold War possibly a very hot war and recreating the same oppression all over again. Missile defense is the pipe dream of infantile neocon school boys, NATO should be put out of its misery and trying to paint Russia as being the villain of the peace is past being a joke. The treacherous West has a corrupted view of the world. If it persists in its present pigheadedness WWIII becomes inevitable.

Militarism as diplomacy is bankrupt foreign policy which only leads to continuous warfare.  The wise men of the West (though none are evident) might want to get back to real leadership, real diplomacy, a renewed respect for international law and civility among nations. Harvesting a peace dividend is available to those willing to practice a sane and rational multilateralism.

Robert Billyard 2008 ©