If a tree falls in the woods...

Babble on.

Carol Goar is one of the few columnists at Pravda Canada I can actually read without triggering my gag reflex. Today she raises some interesting questions about BMD, and specifically about Canada's role. Her opening line is particularly on-point:

You probably know more about John Kerry's war service in Vietnam than his position on the multi-billion-dollar missile defence system being developed by the Pentagon. So does your Member of Parliament.

While Goar lays out some reasonable concerns, she somehow manages to gloss over what I believe is the biggest issue for Canadians: the 'who cares?' factor. As in, 'we're not contributing anything, and they'll go ahead without us anyhow, so who cares what Canada thinks?' It looks increasingly like the U.S. will deploy a system with or without our support. We hold no veto over U.S. defence policy. So what's to decide, other than whether or not we want to bolster our anti-American credentials?

As Cosh said awhile back, if all we're being asked to provide is "cosmetic political cooperation with a military plan that we don't have to pay for or devote resources to, that is purely defensive, that has a bipartisan consensus behind it in the U.S., and that could enrich potential Canadian military and engineering contractors" then I say we offer the requested cosmetic support. If I was a U.S. taxpayer, I'd certainly have more questions first (like how much is this going to cost, how effective will it be initially, and when will it be up and running at full capability?). But given the fact that it's not my tax dollars being spent, why would I want to annoy the U.S. yet again by disagreeing with something they're going to do anyway?

Oh, I keep forgetting: because the 'weaponization of space' is evil. More evil than the weaponization of land, air, and sea, that's for sure.

Of course, what none of the anti-BMD-crowd ever mentions is that we're not the ones who get to decide if space becomes a battleground - the Chinese do. Ask yourself if you want them unopposed up there, then ask yourself if freeloading on an American program is such a bad idea after all.

Babble off.

Update: we're already funding China's space-weapons program. Every CIDA dollar they get lets them throw more cash into their nuclear-armed military and aggressive space-weapons program. Bet you won't hear a peep out of the Liberal Women's Caucus about that, though.