Decrepit Old Fool

Remember “Star Wars?”  Our lovable president Ronald Reagan, said; “If we can send a man to the moon, why can’t we defend America against nuclear missiles?”  Or words to that effect.  He proposed a technological shield to fend off nuclear attack.

(Now there’s real childlike faith.  Even when the experts said it wouldn’t work, Ronnie looked resolute and forged ahead, armed with the expertise of all his training as an actor.)

Scientists said it would not work for any of a hundred reasons.  Stopping missiles is a very different problem from sending a man to the moon, for starters.  But no matter: we began spending billions of precious dollars of borrowed money to develop a system that could not work in a real attack.

Strategists said, even if it worked, it would be an expensive irrelevancy.  There are lots of ways to deliver nukes.  Ryder trucks, for one.  Trains, planes, and automobiles, or a trailer towed behind a Harley motorcycle.  Or our enemies could develop entirely new delivery vectors…

But no matter: development went on.  Money that could have been spent on schools, on veteran’s health care, or simply not borrowed in the first place, circled that drain.  At last we had a “system” that, despite failing to pass tests without a lot of handholding, was “ready” to deploy.  And what happens?

(This is kind of creepy, fascinating, and a little terrifying…)

BrahMos happens.  It’s a joint development venture between Russia and India to produce a supersonic cruise missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead.  It’s stealthy (forget tracking it on radar) and they are also developing a larger version able to drop from space and fly in an erratic (unstoppable) pattern to ground as well.

The scientists predicted that missile defense systems would not work, and they have not.  Strategists predicted dropping out of the ABM treaty would trigger a new arms race, and it has.

What we’ve spent on Star Wars so far amounts to a little more than a hundred dollars for every man, woman, and child in America.  How many people are there in your family?  Do you appreciate that many hundred dollar bills of your money being ripped up for no reason?  It’s money down a rathole that leaves us worse off than we were before.

You know how borrowed money works.  By the time it gets paid back, it’ll be several hundred dollars per American.  But the talking heads I saw on Fox today were climbing all over each other to plead for more money to be thrown at a problem which can’t be addressed by money.  Our continued safety from nuclear war is a diplomatic and cultural problem, not a technological one.