The "Dracula" That Won't Die

There's nothing like an issue that in reality should never be an issue, but that's how convoluted things have become in today's world.

Convoluted i.e. the U.S. is building an anti ballistic missile system in Poland and Romania which it says is to counter an Iranian nuclear missile. It doesn't seem to matter that such an Iranian missile and nuclear warhead don't exist.

Then add that such an ABM system doesn't work; has never proven to work, can easily be decoyed, can easily be overwhelmed by multiple independently targeted re-entry vehicles, (MIRV'S) thus making such a system essentially worthless. Yet that hasn't stopped the U.S. and its NATO "poodle" allies from building such a weapon, a modern day equivalent of the "Maginot Line".

Meanwhile the Russians, (who have continually objected to such an ABM system since it was first discussed in 2002 during the Bush administration, revised multiple times and since October, 2009 by the Obama administration, put into its current project phase of four stages to be completed in 2020) yesterday announced, through Russian Chief of General Staff Nicolai Makarov, that his country would consider a pre-emptive strike to take out such an ABM system if project plans continue. The Russians maintain that such a system is aimed at them, not Iran.

Be that as it may, regardless of whether the Russians are blowing smoke with talk of a "pre-emptive strike", such needless puffery wouldn't occur and doesn't help the real issue which is the need of the U.S. and Russia to reduce their current nuclear arsenals which number over 5200 nuclear warheads.

The inanity and fantasy of an operational, workable ABM system was first introduced by President Reagan in the 1980's as part of his "Star Wars" initiative against the Soviet Union. The whole ABM idea should have died in 1991 with the demise of the Soviet Union, what Winston Churchill had once described as "a riddle wrapped in an enigma".

Since then Russia has posed no nuclear threat to the U.S., so the latter building an ABM system in Eastern Europe is an unnecessary provocation, a multi-billion dollar boondoggle and a paean to the U.S. defense industry, their neo-conservative henchmen, the crazy right wing Republicans and now too with Obama and the Democrats, forever fearful of being labeled as soft on national security.

For sure, there won't be a national discussion of any unnecessary defense spending issue during this presidential election year and probably not in 2013 and beyond.

Why? Because the fantasy and illusion of a U.S. ABM system that is 100% capable of shooting down an "enemy" missile, an impregnable shield, that protects the U.S., remains too hard to resist and suspend belief in.

Such illusions and fantasy won't die because the military/industrial/political complex benefits by continuing to stoke the flames with ABM propaganda, to make sure that ABM fantasy lives on; the Dracula that won't die.