🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <3r4l5e$95d@news1.cle.ab.com>, Neill.Harris@ab.com says...
>
>birdhaex@cais3.cais.com (David Birdsey) wrote:
>>Similary, what nation would launch a single missile when the result would 
>>be to turn (Insert enemy du jour here) into rubble? 
>
>If I may, part of the point is that BMD gives an option in a 'single
>missile' situation.  The US can stop the attack without being forced into
>deciding whether the loss of Newark is worth frying North Korea.

Exactly.  While those against missile defense worry about doomsday 
scenarios, crowing the MAD doctrine, they miss the true foreign policy 
leverage a TMD system (either in the field militarily, or around major US 
cities) provides. Heck, if Hussein had an ICBM and *no* nuclear warhead to 
mount on it, why shouldn't he mount a chemical/biological/explosive payload 
on it and point it at Central Park?  He wouldn't have to announce it's 
existance, just "leak" it to the US foreign service.  Then, when he next 
moves on Kuwait, do we risk another military action--hoping for a 
malfunction on that rocket?  

And while we decide how best to find that rocket and destroy it 
preemptively, Hussein's building or buying more, if he's smart.  Now he has 
a few more rockets, each capable of killing only a few thousand people.  But 
who's going to explain to the American people that our foreign policy hands 
are tied because we can't prevent lethal clouds from seeping door-to-door on 
Manhattan?  And it's going to be even harder to make that TV address when 
some people begin to say that threat could have been dealt with had we 
continued the work.  

As a terrorist weapon, an ICBM forces the US to retaliate with global force 
to an attack.  Now, which would we rather do: launch planes and rockets on a 
foreign country that has delivered deadly agents from the comfort of their 
own home, or capture and prosecute human agents who reak havoc on our own 
soil and deal *diplomatically* with the offending nation?  Which scenario 
forces escallation?

If we, as a nation, are going to be active in international conflicts, we 
should *not* rely on sticking our nuclear forces in the face of anyone who 
disagrees with our position and has rockets that can reach the US.  Not only 
is that a world noone could possibly *want* to live in, it's no way a 
country *should* behave, full stop.  

Finally (this *was* going to be a quick reply), the proclamations Reagan was 
making about an impenetrable shield was newsreeling.  At that time, however, 
the fish he was frying was the USSR.  Different world now, and it appears 
it's the anti-missile-defense people that are missing the boat.  

-- 
Andrew Cott              MIT Lincoln Laboratory              cott@ll.mit.edu