THE ROBERT W. WHITAKER ARCHIVE

THE STRATEGIC DEFENSE INITIATIVE, AKA STAR WARS | 2006-07-04

SDI, which Senator labeled "Star Wars," was a fake at the time. But it helped bring down the USSR.

Back during World War II the Navy issued "shark repellant." No shark even noticed the stuff, and it was entirely to give sailors some comfort. SDI, the defense system for knocking out incoming missiles, was much the same. But this myth was a major help in bringing down the Soviet Union.

Reagan announced the Strategic Defense Initiative research program, and he promised to give it to the Soviets as soon as we developed it so that nuclerar war would be impossible. Since he had not the slightest suspicion that it WOULD be developed, that was a safe proposition.

Here was the problem the Soviets and their friends had:

The USSR depended ENTIRELY on its spies to get its military technology for it. Yes, I know about all those special projects and the cluster of high-level scientists and the whole that existed in the USSR. I also know something others do NOT know: They didn't PRODUCE anything important. Everything Russia had was from spies and poor duplicates of the work the spies reported. They would have no trouble getting anything SDI produced, but they couldn't even REPRODUCE things at that level.

This was a crisis. Suddenly, as complete historical accident, a Nuclear Freeze became an obsession of the leftists. They made a special TV movie about it. The entire political left all over the world demanded that all all nuclear weapons be frozen,

The same marchers demanded an end to "Star Wars." They used two arguments:

1) SDI wouldn't WORK, so it was a waste of resources and

2) SDI WOULD work, and by making hte world safe for nuclear war, it would make the world safe for total war.

You will see both these themes in almost every Soviet speech on the matter and in every American leftist speech on the matter. Media commentary on both subjects used both lines. But it didn't work, and SDI was a major factor in bringing down the USSR, though the media agree it was a historical accident that the USSR went down only when it faced the Reagan Administration.

The reason I bring this up is to warn you of an interesting change that will soon take place on the American left. Suddenly they are going to start declaring that missile defense is something American has been neglecting.

Do I really have to explain why?

Iran will soon be within missile distance of Haifa.

COMMENTS (4)

#1 LibAnon | 2006-07-04 20:52

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"Iran will soon be within missile distance of Haifa."

If your assumption here is that American left = pro-Israeli Jews, you are quite out of date.

All of the effective political organization in America today against Israeli policies, and against the war that America is currently waging on Israel's behalf, is on the left. The most vehement of this opposition is on the communist and Trotskyite left.

Why? Because the serious Jewish money is no longer on the left. It is now on the Republican right. Isn't this obvious?

After decades of bloody internecine warfare, Zionism's right wing finally triumphed over its left wing with the election of Menachem Begin in 1977. The Reagan and Thatcher revolutions followed shortly thereafter. The rapidly dwindling number of left-wing Jews that remain today are merely sentimentalists for the institutions they grew up with, and the purpose of rabid ex-revolutionaries like David Horowitz is to scare these remaining diehards into the Zio-fascist fold by screaming that the Left is now anti-Semitic.

#2 LibAnon | 2006-07-04 22:58

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I just realized that I probably misread what you wrote.

You said Iran will soon be within range of Haifa, not Haifa within range of Iran.

So are you saying that American left will soon advocate missile defenses for the sake of Iran?

If so, you should meet David Horowitz. You two would get along famously.

#3 Elizabeth | 2006-07-05 13:58

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And California will soon be in range of the nut in Pyongyang.

There's all that politician bait ($$$$$) on the West Coast,

namely Seattle, Silicon Valley and Hollywood.

#4 LibAnon | 2006-07-05 15:08

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I found the Stormfront version of your post, and you were a lot clearer there. I now see that I was right the first time. You're saying that the American left will about-face on Star Wars because missile defense is now good for Israel.

Either way, I disagree with your analysis. You seem to think Left and Right are distinct movements. They are not. They are distinctions WITHIN movements. Every political movement -- Zionism, liberalism, communism, even Nazism -- has both left and right wings. When a movement achieves its objectives, one of those wings is purged. It never fails. That is how political movements work.

It is to the credit of idealists that they tend to misunderstand this, but even if they're wrong for admirable reasons, they're still wrong. Jews who remain on the Left today are good examples. They all grew up denouncing racism and fascism. So now that Israel has become the world capital of racism and fascism, they condemn Israel. This is very naive. The more worldly-wise among them, like David Horowitz, know that the difference between Left and Right is a matter of tactics, not principles. So like chameleons, they know how to change color when the environment changes. Idealists who cannot do this end up fighting for their enemies, and are finally thanked by being destroyed.