But I have to do a third rant today. I have to.
Michael O'Hanlon is just ... off. I don't know what it is. He seems like a perfectly rational guy and when I've seen him on TV he doesn't come off as a lunatic or anything. Sure, his commentary tends to the banal but he clearly is educated on the subjects he comments on. Yet, I have trouble taking him seriously. But then every once in a while he gives me a reason to not take him seriously. Like his solution to the North Korea problem that he offered some months ago. He saw that North Korea was bribed to stop its nuclear programs and they took the brobes while pursuing nuclear programs. Problem, right? So what was O'Hanlon's solution? Offer them bigger bribes. And demand even more from them? Gee, North Korea would never consider accepting even more money while continuing to pursue their nuclear programs, right? It was such a boneheaded solution that I was stunned. (sorry for no link--I couldn't find my post regarding this on my old site with 5 minutes of searching)
And here we have another O'Hanlon column where he says that it is our fault that Canada isn't participating in our missile defense shield program:
Many are viewing this as a slap in the face from Ottawa to Washington, and a change in the position Canada seemed to be taking a year ago. They expect it to poison relations between the two neighbors - ensuring, among other things, that next month's three-way summit with Mexican President Vicente Fox will fail to make progress in broadening NAFTA. It would seem that the knee-jerk liberal Canadians just could not get over their nostalgia for the ABM Treaty, as well as their visceral dislike of missile-defense systems.
This interpretation is badly mistaken. The Bush administration made major diplomatic errors in handling this topic with Canada. It asked for blanket endorsement of an open-ended US missile defense program, rather than for specific help with specific technical challenges and defensive weapons. This was a fundamental mistake, and the US has mostly itself to blame for the resulting fallout.
O'Hanlon says that we were mistaken in asking for an endorsement that envisoned a completed system. Instead we should have asked just for bits:
If Bush had wanted help with a specific missile defense test, further cooperation at NORAD, the right for a US ship hosting a missile defense radar to call at Canadian ports, or something else specific and finite, he probably could have gotten it. But instead, he asked for the moon, and was surprised when the answer was "no."
So if we had followed this path and then when it came time to ask Canada to participate in the final system they said no thank you, might not critics have decried the waste of resources when Canada clearly wasn't prepared to go all the way? Is it inconceivable that critics would have seized on the short-sightedness of a strategy that sought little bits without agreeing on the big picture? Would they have not said it was a fundamental error not to get Canada on board for the end game instead of just the first easy steps?
Look, the problem isn't in how we coaxed a timid little squirrel to approach us and take the bit of bread crust we offer. This wasn't a question of of playing "mother, may I" with Canada and figuring out just the precise way to ask them to help defend both our nations from nuclear missiles.
This is a problem of whether Canada considers itself an ally of the US or a mere trading partner. This isn't a wordsmithing program. And at least we know that we must build our defenses without the cooperation of Ottawa.
And I do hope the Canadians will forgive us if a missile aimed at Seattle goes off course and heads for Vancouver and we still shoot it down without saying "please" to Ottawa.
Come on, Canada, be an ally.
As for O'Hanlon, I await his solution of offering more money to Ottawa to participate in smaller parts of missile defense so in the end they can still walk away and keep the money.
