What is wrong with President Bush? Does he want his legacy to be “the man that rekindled the cold war?” According to Vladimir Putin the Russian test-firing of new missiles was in response to the U.S. plans to build missile defense sites across Eastern Europe. Why would we do that? What is the secret Bush agenda?
According to White house officials the purpose of the missile defense system in Eastern Europe is to defend the area against rogue states such as Iran and North Korea. I am no military strategists but this makes no sense. If North Korea were to launch missiles at the U.S. why would they send them over China, across Russia, over Europe and across the Atlantic to the U.S.? Do they even have the capability to do that? Would it not make more sense to shoot them at Hawaii or California? They are a lot closer.
The same goes for Iran. If the shortest distance for a missile to fly is a straight line, I do not think that they would first go over Poland to reach the U.S. Again, do they have ICBMs? And, for the sake of argument, why does the U.S. have to defend Eastern Europe? If they are so concerned about Iran, which any intelligent being would doubt, then let them do something about it. Certainly we are a member of NATO but we simply cannot continue to put more bases and more missiles around the globe because we fear Iran and North Korea.
According to a May 31st AP report,
“He (Putin) assailed the United States and other members for failing to ratify an amended version of the 1990 Conventional Forces in Europe treaty, which limits the deployment of heavy non-nuclear weapons around the continent.
"We have signed and ratified the CFE and are fully implementing it. We have pulled out all our heavy weapons from the European part of Russia to (locations) behind the Ural Mountains and cut our military by 300,000 men," Putin said.
"And what about our partners? They are filling Eastern Europe with new weapons. A new base in Bulgaria, another one in Romania, a (missile defense) site in Poland and a radar in the Czech Republic," he said. "What we are supposed to do? We can't just sit back and look at that."
Putin and other Russian officials have repeatedly rejected U.S. assurances that the planned missile defense installations are meant to counter a potential threat from nations such as Iran and pose no danger to Russia.”
I am not sure that I blame Putin. The reasoning put forward by the Bush Administration makes no sense. There is no doubt that Russia is beginning to flex its new economic and military muscles and that Putin is moving away from democratic reform towards greater central authority. He certainly deserves to be watched but it seems that we are purposely antagonizing Russia. The question is, why?
The Bush Administration has lost international credibility. We found that it lied about Iraq and now is offering lame reasons to further extend our military capabilities. Once this Presidency is over, it is anyone’s guess what other lies may come to light but one thing is certain, our foreign policy is one of alienation and not one of peace.
