Bush's 21st Century Maginot Line

WASHINGTON, May 22 — With Congress considering cutting the Pentagon’s budget for missile defenses and Europe on edge over Bush administration proposals to deploy the system to the continent, much is riding on a test scheduled in the next few days of the antimissile shield based in California and Alaska. Read more ...

This totally unnecessary anti-missile system represents another multi-billion GOP give-away to friends in the defense sector. The only thing sadder than spending billions on an acknowledged boondoggle is the realization that while America builds its 21st Century version of the Maginot Line, our European trading partners are building the educational and infrastructure resources required to dominate world trade.

The primary mistake of our intellectually-challenged leaders said Jonathan Schell in Too Late for Empire is a failure, “to realize that power itself, whether wielded by the United States or anyone else -- if conceived in terms of military force -- has been in decline. By imagining otherwise, the United States has become the fool of force -- and the fool of history.” And as Professor Cook of the University of Toronto suggests, America may find its future, “Played out in the only realm that America still holds the edge — violence both inside and outside the nation.”