Another Dilemma For Mr. Dithers

To complicate matters further for Mr. Dithers--er, Martin--the news on January 14 must have left him scratching his head. A much anticipated and publicly announced demonstration of the capabilities of the missile defense program fizzled like a firecracker in the rain: it never left the launch pad. Quickly launching into full damage-control mode, US officials have said the problem was just a “very minor software glitch”. Of course, that begs the question that if a ‘minor glitch’ can bring this system to a grinding halt, how stable and reliable could it hope to be? It also ignores the point that the previous test, two years earlier, didn’t work either. This scenario is reminiscent of Microsoft chairman Bill Gates demonstrating Windows 95 to a full house and having it crash his computer. Windows 95 did eventually make it to market but no one would seriously say that it, or any of its successors, is reliable. They have all been full of holes big enough to, well, fire a ballistic missile through. Pentagon officials declare the test proves the system is partially field ready (read: it doesn’t work) and have further added that they may never announce whether the system is fully up and running. They did not elaborate on why they may never make such an announcement; but not wanting to look like complete failures might have something to do with it. Critics have long argued that this is a ludicrous plan with almost no chance of ever approaching any acceptable level of reliability. Other critics, those with a moral conscience, have always breathed a sigh of relief over the prospect that it probably wouldn’t work anyway. But think of the problem this creates for our prime minister. Here he is with a very tenuous grip on power, with no solid reason to expect that an election today would return him to power, with Bush solidly entrenched in the White House, and with a missile defense system that appears to be a complete flop. Canada still has a decision to make about signing on to the missile defense system and we are soon going to have to tell the Americans what we will do. The prime minister will still want to kowtow to Bush and still needs to mollify the voters and the Opposition, who will likely be even more certain that they don’t want this system now that we all know it doesn’t work. Ironically, the fact that it doesn’t work is the only part of the problem that won’t impact on the PM’s thought process . . . the Liberals have never been shy about adopting things that don't--or couldn't--possibly work. [Proofreader's note: this article was edited for spelling and typos on January 17, 2005]