The Swiss Cheese Defense
by Eric Wittmershaus

After the shock, after the horror, after endless comparisons to Pearl Harbor, national missile defense was on a lot of people's mind.

"Well, that pretty much kills the idea of national missile defense," one co-worker said Tuesday, as we labored to put out the next day's newspaper. It was a sentiment echoed often, and not just at my newspaper. For Wednesday's New York Times was to carry a shocking account, buried deep as the No. 2 story on A24 of the national edition.

"Bush Aides Say Attacks Don't Recast Shield Debate."

What?

"I don't think it's fair to say that the system that is designed for a specific purpose is flawed because it doesn't accomplish something that it is not designed to do," said the Pentagon's top policy official, Douglas J. Feith.

"If a missile defense system is designed to intercept missiles, and airplanes hit the World Trade Center, it's not what the missile system is designed to protect against. I guess I have difficulty with the question," he concluded.

Either Feith and other Bush advisers are engaging in the world's most severe case of doublethink, or they just aren't getting it.

Most of us thought national missile defense was a bubble-headed idea to begin with, what with its high cost, low success rate and inability to deal with legitimate threats like suitcase bombs and hijacked planes hitting the World Trade Center. And while Feith has a point — the system isn't designed to stop those things — his defense of the Star Wars program is the biggest argument against it.

No sovereign nation is going to fire a nuclear missile at the United States because to do so would be suicide. And while the events of the past week made it clear that there are plenty of individuals willing to die for a cause, no nation — or aspiring nation — is that irrational. The mindset that led to Yasser Arafat issuing condolences even as some of his people partied in the streets of the West Bank is a kissing cousin to the one that keeps any nuclear state from dipping into its arsenal: To revel in the United States' horror would be to invite instant reprisal.

Despite this fairly self-evident truth, columnist David Horowitz called in his Front Page Magazine for the United States to "spend the (budget) surplus on national security now. Beginning with a missile defense system that will prevent even bigger terrorist disasters in the future."

While Horowitz's contention that "America is soft" holds a ring of truth, he's overlooking the plain fact that the United States spent as much as $122 billion (more than half of even the most generous estimates of the surplus) on systems to intercept incoming missiles and that an estimated $30 billion to $60 billion is needed to get even the simplest, barebones missile defense system in place.

In the face of an ever-dwindling budget surplus, wouldn't that money be better spent on airport security, gathering intelligence, disaster relief and rebuilding efforts in New York and Washington? On putting real live human beings in US streets and airports to thwart terrorism and comfort a badly shaken national psyche?

To think some crazy, hi-tech pie-in-the-sky gizmo is the solution to US security problems is to insult the intelligence of the American people. Tuesday's attacks demonstrated that all it takes to hurt the United States is determination, hard work and a little luck. The US Government would do well to spend the money slotted for missile defense on beefing up national security and intelligence, thereby eliminating the real, tangible threat that so horrifically manifested itself this week. To do anything less would be a disservice to those who without being asked gave their lives to expose our country's greatest weakness.

E-mail Eric Wittmershaus at ericw at flakmag dot com.