Missile Defense Program

[Elfie]

This program is currently a huge waste of taxpayers' dollars. The preceeding statement was an assertion. If anyone would care to disagree, please feel free to post, but I'm not going to go into great detail if it turns out everyone already knows this.

Note: Saying it is just a small waste of taxpayers money is not the disagreement I'm looking for, though it might make me chuckle.

[devo2]

and exactly how many of your tax dollars has it cost you?

[piñata]

Yeah, come to think of it, which country's missile defense program are we talking about here?

[Elfie]

It's the North American Missile Defence Program. Canada is under great pressure from the Bush Administration to join the Program. In fact, one admiral said that they wouldn't be opposed to shooting down a missile over Ottawa if we didn't sign. As for taxpayer's dollars, it has yet to cost us a cent, unless you look at the cost of disagreeing with the Bush Administration, which often results in tariffs against Canadian goods, despite the WTO and other fair trade organizations ruling that it violated NAFTA. However, the current cost for Star Wars and its related programs is 120 billion dollars, and that number is going up every year. Per person, this is roughly 4100 dollars.

I don't pay taxes, and I'm Canadian, so it doesn't apply to me directly, but most issues that we discuss don't affect me directly anyway. I didn't have a vote in the American election, but that doesn't mean I was wrong to discuss the issue with you guys. I talk about the cost to the American taxpayer because it's money they should not have to spend, and I shouldn't be selfish and think only of myself when it costs you guys money.

The U.S. has the potential to be the greatest nation on the earth. That's something Canada can never be because we don't have the population and industry to affect the world on the scale that the U.S. does. I believe some of the policies put forward by the Bush Administration hurt the United States and the world, and this is a debate board, so I thought I'd mention it for debate in case I was wrong. I don't discuss issues like this on the General Board because there is a time and a place for them, and I feel it is on a Debate Board.

[piñata]

You were correct in your assessment, Elfie... the Debate Board is the perfect place for this discussion.

As for the Missile Defense Program, I don't know much about it myself (*goes to look it up*), but I do know that it's wrong to try to force Canada into something they don't want to do, and if I was running your country I would've already bombed the US years ago for meddling where they don't belong.

[devo2]

Well the U.S. meddles where it doesn't belong all the time, but at the very least part of that is because other countries look to the U.S. to do the meddling because we can get away with it and they can't.

And the missile defense program is a bad idea not because it won't work or because it's expensive. I, as a taxpayer and a government employee, don't mind spending some of my money for safety. Star Wars and SDI is a bad idea because all it takes is one North Korean or Iranian or Pakisatni or whatever to invent a missile that gets around it and the whole thing is obsolete.

And the U.S. is the greatest nation on Earth right now. Perfect, no. Always right?...not even close. Singlehandedly responsible for being the world's police, the world's banker, and the world's grocer? You bet.

[piñata]

Aren't we fucked up enough from a domestic standpoint without taking on the responsibility of world police? We should solve our own problems before forcing our help on others.

[Elfie]

devo2 said:

And the missile defense program is a bad idea not because it won't work or because it's expensive. I, as a taxpayer and a government employee, don't mind spending some of my money for safety. Star Wars and SDI is a bad idea because all it takes is one North Korean or Iranian or Pakisatni or whatever to invent a missile that gets around it and the whole thing is obsolete.

Indeed, but it's the fact that it can only produce two possible scenarios and that both hurt American safety makes it a waste of money, in my opinion. Either it won't work, in which case funding it is diverting funds from projects that could protect the American people better, or it will work, in which case it will trigger a massive arms race to develop working decoys that will throw off the sensor and negate the whole system while giving Americans a false sense of security and wasting their money. In either situation, it will waste a lot of money and even the mention of it has already set off a minor arms race as Iran tries to constitute a nuclear program and North Korea launches missiles into the the Pacific Ocean over Japan to show that they're getting closer and closer to being able to hit America.

devo2 said:

And the U.S. is the greatest nation on Earth right now. Perfect, no. Always right?...not even close. Singlehandedly responsible for being the world's police, the world's banker, and the world's grocer? You bet.

We really don't want you to be the world's police force. We set up the UN to do that.

Out of curiosity, what do you mean by grocer?

[devo2]

Elfie said:

We really don't want you to be the world's police force. We set up the UN to do that.

Yeah, you do. Maybe not you as in Canada, but the rest of the world certainly does. When something goes wrong in a country like a natural disaster, a revolution, a coup, etc, the first place people look for help is the U.S. Nations have come to expect it of the U.S. at this point. And BTW, guess who pays for the vast majority of the U.N. operating costs?

[Elfie]

You make a good point about the operating costs, but I think you're overstating the demands other countires make of the United States. What are some examples of situations where U.S. aid has been requested instead of aid from the whole world community?

[SuperBassX84]

piñata said:

Aren't we fucked up enough from a domestic standpoint without taking on the responsibility of world police? We should solve our own problems before forcing our help on others.

Yes, probably, but we've a long-standing precedent of being policing different geographical regions - first North America with...I believe it was the Monroe doctrine (back before we were fucked up) and more recently (say, post WWIIish?) the world. I think it had something to do with the spread of communism originally, but that's just my ideas.

And I think that, although nations appeal to the international community, they expect the US to come in when they do so. A really bad comparison would be calling the police station and telling them you've found a bomb. You know you're going to get some kind of help, but you expect the bomb squad. I told you it was bad.

[piñata]

Actually, when you said it was gonna be bad I was expecting worse. ;D

[Elfie]

The Monroe Doctrine angered pretty much every Latin American country. Just look at the results in Cuba. During Wilson's administration particularly, U.S. troops were constantly being sent to quell rebellions against the current authority which had been put in place after the U.S. took Cuba and the Philipenes in the Spanish-American War.

[SuperBassX84]

I wasn't arguing that it was necessarily smart, I was simply arguing that it had a precedent. People do stupid things based on precedent and tradition.

[Elfie]

Okay, but now a lot of places are asking you to stop, and I'm not just talking about the places you would be invading. A lot of rest of the world wants a chance to resolve the issues through international organizations rather than through a single country.

On a bit of a tangent, what do you guys think of France?