The showdown over the shoot down
Right now Kim Jong Il is fueling a missile for a test to see if he could hit the United States in a nuclear confrontation. In an effort to stop him, the Bush Administration is leaking that they may shoot down the missile if the North Korean’s do in fact test it. They have readied the anti-ballistic missile sites in Alaska and Hawaii for just such a purpose. The problem is, everybody knows our interceptors don’t stand one chance in a million (literally) of hitting the North Korean missile. It would be very embarassing for the Bush Administration if we tried to shoot the missile down and fail.
This would beg the question, why isn’t Ted Kennedy demanding that we shootdown the missile? Why aren’t the democrats in the House and Senate drafting resolutions in support of the President? There’s a pretty obvious two-fer here. The Democrats get to look tougher on security than the Republicans and then make the Administration look weak and ineffectual at the same time. All the Democrats have to do is come up with a clever answer to the challenge that they have never supported missile defense in the first place. I’ve always wanted to hear a politician say that something was “apples and oranges” like my 7th grade algebra teacher. Previous Democratic opposition to missile defense has nothing to do with whether or not we use the system. Democrats opposed it because it was a huge waste of money.
We have spent about $100 billion on missile defense since President Reagan made his famous Star Wars speech in 1983. But what is the point of having a $100 billion anti-missile system if you are not going to use it. And when the interceptor fails, the Dems would have another opportunity to accuse the Bush Administration of wasting billions of dollars on their cronies. They could even come out sounding rational by contrasting the shootdown with the direct strike on the missile site Ash Carter is proposing. All we need is a mouthpiece. I’d suggest Bob kerrey. He is always looking for ways to antagonize his students at the New School and he has just enough gravitas and cross-party appeal to get away with it.
