U.S. defense industry, taxpayers, keep NATO in business

The NATO-industrial complex

In Chicago, the defense industry's grip on NATO was tighter than ever.  Make way for missile defense

By Alexander Zaitchik

May 24, 2012 | Salon

URL:  http://www.salon.com/2012/05/23/the_nato_industrial_complex/singleton/

Zakaria: Obama is right on missile shield

I'm not convinced that America needs any missile defense system against Iran -- even against its short-range missiles -- but this decision by Obama is at least a step in the right direction.

National Security Adviser Z. Bzrezinski famously called the $150 billion boondoggle defense system "a scheme that doesn't work against a threat that doesn't exist."

Iran was never a threat to Poland or Czech Republic. The planned missile defense system was an extremely expensive -- and dishonest -- way to demonstrate America's commitment to these countries' security against evil, neo-imperialist Russia. At least, that's the "experts'" revised version of history. But why then did we expand NATO membership to Czech Republic and Poland in 1999? A Russian attack against them would precipitate an automatic counter-attack by NATO, according to Article 5 of the NATO treaty. So what good is NATO, where is NATO's credibility, if it still takes expensive U.S. missile defense programs to guarantee NATO's security commitments?

No, missile defense in E. Europe was a neocon ploy to either (1) anatognize Russia and possibly extract concessions, and/or (2) the neocons really believed that they could perfect this hopeless system and neutralize or reduce Russia's nuclear first-strike capability, thereby unbalancing the scales of MAD, thereby making the world a much more unpredictable, dangerous place. I'm open to other possibilities, but the "official" version of Dubya was an obvious lie, and the revised "new official" version still makes no strategic sense.

Anyway, kudos to President Obama for backing away from this crazy plan.

Zakaria: U.S. did the right thing the wrong way on missiles

September 11, 2009 | CNN

URL: http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/europe/09/18/zakaria.missile.defense/index.html

Missile defense charade exposed, but nobody cares

Have these people no memory, no conscience, no shame? After how many years of solemnly assuring us (and the rest of the world) that the planned U.S. "missile shield" in Poland and the Czech Republic had nothing at all to do with Russia, and everything to do with a nuclear-armed and missile-happy Iran, (which has never had any nukes or ICMBs, by the way), now that President Obama is rumored to have decided to shelve the stupid idea of a boondoggle, ineffective missile shield in E. Europe which would have only spurred a new nuclear arms race, suddenly all these neocons are finally coming clean and admitting that this had nothing to do with Iran all along, and everything to do with Russia. Which is exactly, by the way, what Russia has been saying all along and we (the United States, under Dubya) had been denying!

I'm no fan of neo-Imperialist Russia, but jeez, at least they are more or less transparent about their cynical, self-serving aims. Whereas we in America have to couch everything in these grandiose, moralistic, world-saving terms that the rest of the world knows are self-serving BS.

Who are these deranged, dangerous people running U.S. foreign policy, and what have they done to our country?!? Thank Allah that Barack Hussein Obama is our president, and not those neocon Dr. Strangeloves who were pushing us towards the brink of nuclear war the past 8 years. But unfortunately, there's not much difference, policy- or ideology-wise, between the disgraced neocons and just about every other unelected, chickenhawk, foreign affairs egghead who writes and runs U.S. foreign policy for our domestic-politics-focused presidents. These discredited nutjobs are in Obama's administration, too, and they continue to haunt the Ivory Towers of U.S. academia and unaccountable, quacky Beltway think tanks.

Get educated and start caring about the world, Americans! Or else pencil-necked geeks from SAIS and Georgetown will continue to successfully advocate all-out U.S. war against the world as the best avenue to world peace and stability, while intellectually insecure U.S leaders continue to listen to their inane advice!


Obama Tosses an Ally Overboard -- and All We Get Zip
By KT McFarland
September 18, 2009 | FOX News

Remember Polish jokes? They're politically incorrect these days, so no one makes them. No one, that is, except President Obama. By cancelling the promised missile shield, he in effect cut Poland loose and threw her to the Russians...70 years to the day after of their brutal invasion of the country. Nice timing.

The missile shield was designed to protect Eastern Europe from the growing Iranian missile threat, which threatens to soon go nuclear. It would have put American military personnel in Russia's backyard, in countries that were until recently part of the Russian empire, and which Russia yearns to control again.
The very thought of this drove the Russians nuts. They would have paid dearly to get it dropped. If Obama was willing to renege on a promise and toss an ally overboard, he should have at least gotten something for it-- like getting Russia to cooperate with us to stop Iran's nuclear weapons program.

What could Obama have traded? He could have gotten the Russians to delay or halt delivery of the state-of-the-art air defense system they've promised Iran. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu went to Moscow recently to plead with them to delay delivery. Once Iran gets the S-300 system, an Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear sites would be nearly impossible.

Obama could have gotten Russia join with us in a gasoline embargo on Iran. Iran imports 40% of its gasoline-- an embargo would force them to the negotiating table, quickly, and leave them ready to make a deal. But an embargo would be toothless if the Russians block it at the U.N., or cheats on it once it's been passed.
Obama could have gotten Russia to stop helping Iran enrich uranium. Without Russian assistance, it will be more difficult and take longer for Iran to develop nuclear weapons.

If President Obama had gotten one or more of these concessions, cancelling the missile shield might have made sense, especially if we retained the right to have a ship-based system. But he has apparently cancelled it without extracting anything from Russia, hoping instead that his goodwill gesture would allow us to 'reset' the U.S.-Russian relationship. The administration said there was no "quid pro quo." The Russian Foreign Minister said sanctions against Iran would be a "serious mistake."

President Obama not only threw an ally overboard, he got snookered by the Russians, and just moved us closer a world where the Mad Mullahs have the bomb. If he hasn't learned his World War II history about Poland and the Soviet Union, he may want to read up on what happened to Neville Chamberlain when he tried to curry favor with Hitler.

Obama will can E. European missile shield?

If this is true, it's great news. Sanity has at last prevailed. The so-called missile shield was never about Iran or "defense," it was about reducing Russia's first-strike capability, thereby threatening the principle of MAD, thereby initiating a new arms race and destabilizing Russia-US relations, thereby making the world a much more dangerous place. It was sure to be a multi-billion dollar boondoggle to boot.

The idea was a dangerous relic of U.S. neoconservatives' mad dream to guide the rest of the world by force of arms; hopefully it will be retired to the dust bin of history, along with the disgraced neocons themselves.

Although U.S. Vice-President Biden would not confirm yet that the missile shield was being shelved, he did tell CNN the following: "I am less concerned - much less concerned - about the Iranian potential. They have no potential at this moment, they have no capacity to launch a missile at the United States of America," he said.

Wow, after years of Dubya's lies, finally the truth!

U.S. to Shelve Nuclear-Missile Shield in Europe

Defense plans for Poland, Czech Republic to be dropped as Iran rocket threat downgraded; Moscow likely to welcome move

September 17, 2009 | Wall Street Journal / Associated Press, FOXNews.com

URL: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/09/17/shelve-nuclear-missile-shield-europe/

This Pole's got balls!

-->

Polish pianist stops show with anti-US tirade

By Andrew Gumbel for LA Times

April 29, 2009  | Guardian

Krystian Zimerman, the great Polish concert pianist, is usually a man of few words. He doesn't, as a rule, talk to the audience during performances. He says little or nothing in the press between his all-too-rare concert tours - not even about his habit of travelling everywhere with his own Steinway grand piano. He rarely grants them the pleasure of an encore.

So he triggered more than the usual rumble of discomfort when he raised his voice in the closing stages of a recital at Los Angeles' Disney Hall on Sunday night and announced he would no longer perform in the United States in protest against Washington's military policies.

"Get your hands off my country," Zimerman told the stunned crowd in a denunciation of US plans to install a missile defence shield on Polish soil.  Some people cheered, others yelled at him to shut up and keep playing. A few dozen walked out, some of them shouting obscenities.

"Yes," Zimerman responded with derision, "some people when they hear the word military start marching."

According to Mark Swed, the Los Angeles Times's veteran classical music critic who witnessed the incident, Zimerman hesitated before deciding to speak up. He was about to strike up the first notes of the final piece on his programme, Karol Szymanowski's Variations on a Polish Folk Theme, when he "sat silently at the piano for a moment, almost began to play, but then turned to the audience".

Swed said he delivered his tirade "in a quiet but angry voice that did not project well".

Zimerman appears to have been upset by Barack Obama's decision, announced this month, to maintain the Bush-era policy of installing a missile defence shield in Poland and the Czech Republic.

Obama insisted the shield was part of a defensive posture against Iran, not Russia, and that he intended to remove it as soon as the threat from Iran subsided. But many Poles have accused the US of wanting to mount a military occupation of their country, and fear the shield could make them a target of Russian aggression.

Classical musicians are not exactly famous for political ranting. When Beethoven became disillusioned with Napoleon after he crowned himself emperor in 1804, the loudest thing the composer did was remove the dedication to him from his Eroica symphony. Leonard Bernstein spoke out against the Vietnam war and hosted a notorious fundraiser for the radical Black Panther movement, but never discussed his politics from the conductor's podium.

Zimerman, though, has developed something of a track record - especially since the 9/11 attacks. In 2006 he announced he would not return to the United States until George Bush was out of office. The same year, at Baltimore's Shriver Hall, he prefaced his performance of Beethoven's Pathetique sonata with a denunciation of America's prison at Guantánamo Bay.

At least some of his opprobrium appears to be personal. Shortly after 9/11, his piano was confiscated by customs officials at New York's JFK airport, who thought the glue smelled funny. They subsequently destroyed the instrument.

For several years he chose to travel with just the mechanical insides of his own piano and install them - he is a master piano repairer, as well as player - inside a Steinway shell he borrowed from the company in New York. In 2006 he tried to travel with his own piano again, only to have it held up in customs for five days and disrupt his performance schedule.

Buchanan: Obama playing the Great Game?

My favorite paleoconservative Pat lays it out pretty straight.  Too bad there aren't more adults in media and punditocracy analyzing foreign affairs sans emotion and ideological fluff.


Obama and the Great Game
By Patrick J. Buchanan
February 13, 2009

http://townhall.com/content/c77b4c70-054c-4098-8b9f-b77e4bde8c5c