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I grew up in a town which had sizeable populations of both Irish and Polish immigrants. Sean Dunphy was mayor for four years, then Wally Puchalski was in for four. In my town, both ethnicities were disparaged fairly evenly, with the Irish tarred as drunks and the Poles as stupid. Ethnic jokes were very popular at the time.
I mention this as a prelude to reporting that the Polish government did a tragically dumb thing. They signed a deal with the United States to put an anti-missile base on their soil. The Russians are furious about the plan, which also includes building a radar site for the missiles in The Czech Republic. The Russians see this as outright aggression. Even our European, um, allies, are worried that the anti-missile program could spark another costly and dangerous arms race.
Did you ever hear the joke about a guy on stage doing stand-up who invited his audience to ask him two questions? He told them to ask him what he did for a living and to what did he attribute his success. So someone asked, what do you do for a living and he answered "I’m the greatest stand-up comic ever to come out of Poland." And then before the second question could be asked, he answered it saying, "Timing."
Considering what’s happening only 1,300 miles away in Georgia, you’d think Poland would at least have had the sense to postpone the signing of the agreement. The timing was obviously deliberate, and no doubt the U.S. pushed the Poles into the signing now by sweetening the deal; dessert at The Last Supper. Whatever the Bush-Cheney rationale, it was no doubt cut from the same cloth as the rest of the disastrous foreign policy that’s come out of Washington during the past eight years.
What also makes this deal so ridiculous – if it weren’t so potentially lethal – is that the anti-missile system to be installed has never been tested. Plus, in exchange for basing the system, the U.S. is giving Poland some Patriot missiles. Those were the defensive missiles that were used against Iraq during The First Gulf War. Remember Poppy Bush making that special photo op tour of the Raytheon factory where the Patriots were produced, heralding American know-how?
Yeah, well, that know-how didn’t actually work. The Pentagon’s final report years later on the "success" of the Patriots revealed that of the 752 reported "kills" of incoming Scud missiles, only one of ours hit one of theirs, and that was only a probable.
A Russian general last week threatened to use nuclear weapons against Poland for colluding the U.S., so congratulations to the leaders in Warsaw for buying this pig-in-a-poke while they put their neck back in the Cold War noose. If the Russians do attack, the Patriots will be useless. But who will be left to complain?
