Missile Fallout
A Montana court has granted an injunction to R-CALF, keeping the US-Canadian border closed to Canadian cattle. It’s unlikely that any appeal will be heard prior to the scheduled March 7th opening.
Is the decision the result of Paul Martin’s botched BMD fiasco? No – but the oncoming freight train of Bush administration indifference to Canadian grievances will be.
Condoleezza Rice has deferred her visit and Paul Martin can’t get his calls returned. Martin’s flip flopping support for missile defense reminds me about something that David Frum wrote in his book “The Right Man”;
Then Arafat made what may someday be reckoned as the most fateful miscalculation of his career. On January 5, 2002, Israeli naval forces intercepted a Gaza-bound merchant ship loaded with fifty tonnes of arms from Iran. Arafat hastily sent Bush a letter denying any involvement in the shipment. Probably Arafat did not even intend his denial to be interpreted literally; he may have written it as a social form, like the phrase I regret in a letter declining an invitation to a wedding or a dinner party. If so, Arafat sorely misunderstood his man. Bush does not lie to you. You had better not lie to him.
I’m beginning to wonder if Paul Martin has just been confined to his compound on 24 Sussex.
The comparison between Martin and Arafat is idiotic. Martin is making a decision in line with his rights as a head of government in the normal business of diplomacy. Arafat was smuggling arms.
Who is going to “confine” Paul Martin to his compound? The US Army? The Front de Liberation du Quebec?
“Bush does not lie to you.”
*jaw drops to the floor*
Canadians have been allowing silliness to prevent them from acting like adults. Perhaps this situation will cause them to grow up, but I’m not holding my breath. It isn’t likely that the Bush administration will actually create any real consequences for Canadian silliness.
Excellent post.
I crossposted this to another group blog I write to. I’ve been astonished at the lack of reading comprehension shown by commentors who seem incapable of understanding that an anecdote illustrating Bush’s intolerance of duplicity (which is just one step removed from the flipflop actions of the Canadian Liberal government over BMD) is being interpreted as “comparing Martin to Arafat”.
If one is aware of the public statements in favour of BMD by Paul Martin of a year ago, his new ambassador to the US a week ago, followed by a complete reversal a few hours later, it is not a stretch to wonder if the US was not misled about Canad’as intentions over the past few months. They certainly aren’t above misleading the electorate.
The lack of Canadian enthusiasm for detonating nuclear weapons above their heads is truly mystifying.
(Anticipatorily, even if the alleged interceptor missiles wouldn’t set off the nuclear warheads *now*, how hard will it be to redesign the enemy missiles so that the warheads *do* explode upon impact?)
That said, I think the Canadians would’ve been quite safe saying, “Why, yes, we’d love to participate in your missile-defense system. Just as soon as you have a fully functional prototype. We’ll be attending *all* your tests, and reviewing your classified reports, we being partners & all.”
Anderson, an interceptor missle can not set off a nuke, the timing needs of a nuclear explosion are far too tight for accidental explosions to occur (I think we are talking on the order of tens of nanoseconds timing, but it might be as high as a microsecond.) As for causing the nuke to go off intentionally when intercepted, unfeasible since the nuke would only be able to detect the interceptor at impact, ie. too late to react. At best you would get a nuclear fizzle.