FROM MOUNTAIN MEDIA
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE DATED SEPT. 17, 1999
THE LIBERTARIAN, By Vin Suprynowicz
But we never ask, 'Why are we the target?'
Only a few years before the Soviet Union collapsed into a bankrupt flea
market for Third World terrorists -- its once-vaunted nuclear submarines
rusting at their moorings for lack of cash or motivation to put to sea --
America's vaunted Central Intelligence Agency reported that the USSR's
economy was almost as large as America's, and might soon surpass ours if we
didn't watch out.
In purely practical terms, a potlatch in which U.S. arms expenditures
drove the Soviets to bankruptcy as they tried to keep up might have been a
clever strategy -- albeit an expensive one.
It's somewhat harder to brag about the wisdom of this course when it
turns out we pursued it out of sheer igorance, abetted by a naive
willingness to believe fantastic statistics dreamed up by sweating Soviet
commissars eager to make themselves look good with their superiors.
On the Chinese front, the CIA also predicted, not long ago, that Beijing
might be able to come up with a neutron bomb within 15 years or so -- only
to have it revealed the Chinese already had one.
Now, in a report which will doubtless be used to drum up more support for
development of an anti-missile defense, the CIA reports hostile sttes
North Korea and Iran may be expected to develop long-range missiles able to
reach the United States within 15 years, and that Iraq is on the road to
acquiring such technology as well -- albeit at a somewhat slower pace.
Short-range ballistic missiles such as Iran's Shahab-3 and North Korea's
No Dong already pose an "immediate, serious and growing threat" to U.S.
allies and forces deployed overseas, the CIA advises, while the
longer-range missiles expected to emerge by 2014 "potentially can kill tens
of thousands, or even millions, of Americans," depending on whether they
are armed with nuclear chemical, or biological warheads.
Meantime -- in an aside of almost studied casualness -- the CIA report
warns we should expect China to enlarge its estimated stockpile of 20
long-range nuclear missiles by "a few tens of missiles," including some
with warheads "influenced" by U.S. technology which the lackadaisical
Clinton administration allowed to be stolen from American defense labs at
the same time Mr. Clinton was accepting millions in illegal Red Chinese
campaign contributions and inviting Red Chinese agents over for White House
pajama parties.
So -- especially after the Rumsfeld Commission warned Congress last year
that the CIA's shortage of on-the-ground assets has "eroded" the agency's
ability to provide timely and accurate estimates of such threats -- on
which side shall we assume the CIA has erred this time? Is it more likely
that such developments will actually take 30 years, or that the enemy
missiles are aimed at our cities even as we speak?
Actually, the bottom line is not much changed: Even the new CIA report
acknowledges "The Russian threat, although significantly reduced, will
continue to be the most robust and lethal, ... orders of magnitude more
than that potentially posed by other nations."
For all these reasons, efforts should continue to develop a reasonably
priced missile defense -- even one restricted to defending our own
counteroffensive capability should serve as a deterrent to all but the most
crazed of enemies.
And as for lesser foreign powers: Yes, continuing intelligence on their
capabilities is always valuable. No one is saying America should hide her
head in the sand.
But allow me to pose one further question which the CIA apparently
considers beyond its purview: If we were to simply follow President
Washington's advice -- avoiding meddlesome entanglements in the affairs of
distant nations (stuff like, you know, overthrowing the duly elected
government of Iran in 1953), thus giving them no further cause to brand us
the "Great Satan" -- then why would we need to assume all their bellicose
preparations are meant for us, at all?
We don't wring our hands over the (start ital)British(end ital) having
nuclear weapons, do we?
Vin Suprynowicz is the assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas
Review-Journal. His new book, "Send in the Waco Killers: Essays on the
Freedom Movement, 1993-1998," is available at $21.95 plus $3 shipping
through Mountain Media, P.O. Box 271122, Las Vegas, Nev. 89127; via web
site http://www.thespiritof76.com/wacokillers.html, or by dialing
1-800-244-2224.
***
Vin Suprynowicz, vin@lvrj.com
"The evils of tyranny are rarely seen but by him who resists it." -- John
Hay, 1872
"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed -- and
thus clamorous to be led to safety -- by menacing it with an endless series
of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." -- H.L. Mencken
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