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There are so many things so seriously wrong with the misleadingly-titled American missile "defence shield" that it's
difficult to do proper
justice to the long list in a brief commentary.
But, I'll touch on a few of the main problems
before turning to by far
the most dangerous and potentially disastrous concern that so many
Canadians and so many citizens
of other countries around the world fear.
First, there's much evidence that current American military plans,
directly
tied to so-called missile "defence," are rapidly pushing the
world towards the possibility of an apocalyptic nuclear
confrontation.
Mohamed ElBaradei, Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said earlier this year:
Never was the danger as great as today.
An atomic war draws nearer.
Both the Mayor of Hiroshima and U.N.Secretary-General Koffi Annan are among those who have
recently issued similar dire warnings.
Second, despite repeated denials from the Liberal government in Ottawa, U.S.
plans are now leading to the abandonment of important,
long-standing arms control agreements that have improved global
security for over three decades.
At the same time, both Russia and China are directly responding to the
George W.
Bush and Donald Rumsfeld plans in a new arms race that will assuredly quickly spread to India and Pakistan, and to many other
countries,
as the U.S. proceeds with the development of new nuclear
weapons and resumes nuclear testing.
Despite numerous assurances
from Ottawa to the contrary, Russian and Chinese threats are ominous. Both countries are now claiming they have no alternative
but to respond to the new American buildups.
Meanwhile, many experts in the U.S. and elsewhere say that the Bush
administration's
actions convey a clear message to present and future
adversaries: "Spare no effort to acquire nuclear weapons."
French
President Jacques Chirac warns that the American missile defence plans "cannot fail to relaunch the arms race in the world."
Next,
just as the American-led war on Iraq diverted the U.S. from the
real threat to their security, terrorism, the ballistic
missile system
is diverting tens of billions of dollars away from the menacing
probability that terrorists will try
to smuggle weapons of mass
destruction into the U.S.
Missile defence should be far down the list of U.S. priorities,
especially
since the system now being promoted doesn't work, cannot
work, and will not work no matter how many hundreds of billions
of
dollars are added to the $150 billion already poured into the pockets of
voracious American defence contractors.
According
to the widely-respected Washington-based Union of Concerned Scientists, Even the full National Missile Defense system would
not be effective...
The system the Bush administration plans to deploy will have essentially no defense capability
even if the technology worked perfectly, because it will be vulnerable to countermeasures that are much easier to build.
Another
American scientific study reports that
...none of the approaches to missile defense works, or is likely
to
work in the future.
O.K. then, if virtually all of the most brilliant scientists in the U.S.
say this, why
then is the Bush government plunging ahead where Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter, George Bush Sr. and Bill Clinton either folded
or declined to go?
Herein lies concern number one, the horrible prospect of the
weaponization of space. Over and
over and over again Prime Minister Paul Martin and Defence Minister Bill Graham have claimed emphatically, in Bill Graham's
words:
This issue has nothing to do with going into space.
Canada is opposed to the weaponization of space.
Just
the other day Paul Martin repeated, for the umpteenth time, that
Canada will never be involved in anything to do with the
weaponization of space.
Both these men are misleading Canadians. There is now an abundance of documented, irrefutable
evidence showing that the so-called missile
shield is really about American plans to, and I'm quoting now from
U.S.,
documents, "control space," "dominate space," "fight from and in
space," and "give the U.S. military the capability to
deliver
attacks from space instantaneously across the face of the earth" while they "deny others the use of space."
Hundred
of pages of official U.S. documents elaborate on these plans for "space-based strike weapons." These documents are not secret,
nor are they vague, and the officials who prepare briefing documents for both Martin and Graham are well aware of them.
For
Paul Martin and Bill Graham to intentionally mislead Canadians about such a vitally important matter is unconscionable and
truly scandalous.
The decision about joining in with the American plans has been described as a defining moment for
Canada. Certainly, it's one of the most important decisions in our 137-year history.
The suggestion from some of our
politicians and myopic, continentalist
academics that the Americans are going ahead with this anyway so we might as well
join in, is one of the dumbest arguments I have ever heard.
Did we join in with the Americans in their Vietnam and
Iraq quagmires
because they were going ahead anyway?
The latest public opinion poll shows 84% of Canadians say that
we made the right decision in not joining
U.S. forces in Iraq, and two brand new polls now show that most
Canadians
oppose becoming part of the American missile plans.
Rest assured that if Paul Martin makes the terrible mistake of
joining
in George W. Bush's dangerous, aggressive militaristic scheme, the
people of Canada will turn on him in
the next election with great force
and great determination.
For COMMENTARY this is Mel Hurtig in Edmonton
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