Some days, I hear the latest Bush attack and feel the temptation to just shake my head in disgust, fight back the nausea, and pretend like I didn’t see that. Yesterday’s salvo on missile defense is just such an attack. In a campaign filled with bewildering nonsense, this one has to be right up near the top.
Here’s what Bush said yesterday in Pennsylvania:
“Another thing that’s interesting that’s happening at Boeing that probably you aren’t aware of, but you should be, is that Boeing engineers lowered the first ballistic missile interceptor into its silo at Fort Greely, Alaska. It’s the beginning of a missile defense system that was envisioned by Ronald Reagan, a system necessary to protect us against the threats of the 21st century. We want to continue to perfect this system, so we say to those tyrants who believe they can blackmail America and the free world: you fire, we’re going to shoot it down.
“I think those who oppose this ballistic missile system really don’t understand the threats of the 21st century. They’re living in the past.”
So many deceptions in so few words.
First, Bush boasted of the “first ballistic missile interceptor,” now in place in Alaska. What he didn’t mention is that the system can’t protect us against anything.
For starters, the interceptors have never succeeded in realistic tests. The [Missile Defense Agency] press release tries to paper over that, declaring that “At the system level, we have been successful in four of the last five flight tests. …” What that means is that they’ve made sure that all the parts of the system will work together. But this completely avoids the central problem: The individual parts don’t yet work by themselves. It’s as if Edison had declared that electricity was flowing from his generator to his light bulb, but neglected to make sure he had a functioning light bulb design to begin with.
In fact, there’s every reason to believe this system will never work.
The multibillion-dollar U.S. ballistic missile shield due to start operating by Sept. 30 appears incapable of shooting down any incoming warheads, an independent scientists’ group said on Thursday.
A technical analysis found “no basis for believing the system will have any capability to defend against a real attack,” the Union of Concerned Scientists said in a 76-page report titled Technical Realities.
Second, and more importantly, Bush is projecting again. He doesn’t really understand the threats of the 21st century and he’s living in the past, so he lashes out and accuses his political opponents of having his faults.
If the last three years have proven anything about national security, it’s that the old threat model — ICBMs from Russia during the Cold War — has been replaced. The more immediate threat is a vial of anthrax, a “dirty” bomb, a suitcase full of chemical weapons, and what Bush calls “suiciders.” A missile defense system — that doesn’t work and may never be effective — is a shield against the old dangers, not the new ones.
And yet, Bush’s goal has been focused on the threats of the past from the beginning. Let’s not forget, on Sept. 11, 2001, Condoleezza Rice was scheduled to deliver a speech about the most serious international threats to the United States. The speech, however, did not talk about terrorism; it’s emphasis was on missile defense.
The address was designed to promote missile defense as the cornerstone of a new national security strategy, and contained no mention of al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden or Islamic extremist groups, according to former U.S. officials who have seen the text.
The White House was understandably embarrassed by this undelivered speech, and Bush aides did their best to hide Rice’s remarks from public view. Indeed, despite a promise to cooperate “fully” with the 9/11 Commission, the White House initially refused to share a copy of Rice’s speech to members of the panel, even after excerpts ran in the Washington Post. (The White House argued that the unused speech, which Rice was going to read publicly, was “confidential.” They eventually caved and shared the speech.)
In a post-9/11 environment, the administration had to shift its emphasis in rhetoric away from missile defense, but not its policy goals, which continue to be misguided and, as it happens, stuck in the past.
Bush has been as consistent as he has been misguided. After learning that Osama bin Laden was “determined to strike inside the U.S.,” Bush boosted spending on missile defense and cut the budget for counterterrorism. In November 2002, as U.S. forces battled the Taliban in Afghanistan, Congress urged the White House to take almost $1 billion from Bush’s missile defense program and move it to Homeland Security — but Bush refused.
What’s worse, all indications are that the Bush administration knows full well that it’s investing heavily in a program that doesn’t work at all.
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has asked Congress to exempt missile defense from the law that requires all weapons systems to undergo operational tests before being deployed in the field. Carl Levin, the Senate Armed Services Committee’s ranking Democrat (and the only lawmaker raising a fuss about this move), noted that the purpose of this law is “to prevent the production and fielding of a weapon system that doesn’t work right.” Yet Rumsfeld, justifying the bypass, said, “We need to get something out there,” in case, say, North Korea attacks us with ballistic missiles soon.
Only the Bush administration would want to “get something out there” to protect us against a threat without actually providing a defense against that threat.
And when given the opportunity to invest resources in preventing more immediate threats, Bush prefers not to so he can spend even more on a defense shield that doesn’t work.
John Kerry, meanwhile, prefers to focus on protecting Americans against a terrorist threat and less on a missile defense program that doesn’t protect anyone against anything. A Kerry administration would still allow work to proceed on developing missile-defense technology, but emphasize immediate counterterrorism efforts instead.
This position, in Bush’s mind, shows that Kerry is “living in the past.” It’s as if the poor president is stuck in a Twilight Zone episode in which he’s on a journey into a wondrous land of imagination where nothing is as it seems…