Luke, I am your father.

From this Reuters piece we get this delicious quote from the prez:

Bush said those who oppose the system "really don't understand the threats of the 21st century. They're living in the past."

HAHAHAHAHA. George W. Skywalker wants to build Star Wars and his opponents are living in the past? To anyone with a funtioning brain, it should be clear that if our enemies attack us with a nuclear weapon, it will be in a suitcase. Or it will be a dirty bomb. If we are attacked by a chemical weapon, it will be in the ventilation of an office building. It will not be in a ballistic missile warhead, almost certainly. And even if it were, tests on anti-missile systems has yielded disappointing results at best, even when rigged to make it easier.
Missile defense systems are a defense department boondoggle, a waste of billions of dollars better spent on programs that actually serve to protect America from harm, and that serve our larger interests. There are only a few explanations why Bush would cling on to a Cold War relic like Star Wars, and none of them reflect well on the man.
It may be that he thinks it's to his benefit politically to give yet more pork to defense, and defense contractors. Or it could be that he actually believes both that the systems will work and are necessary for our collective safety. Or he may believe that a missile defense systems will intimidate our enemies, in particular rogue states like Iran and North Korea. Which would mean he's still wedded to state-centric foreign policy thinking and the bizarre taste for brinksmanship that characterizes the neoconservatives- he's married to a fanatical and already discredited ideology. Perhaps he thinks the idea of giant missiles shot into other missiles at high speeds is just the thing to excite the death-worshippers who make up his base. But there's always a possibility that he's just a slave to his own muddleheaded sense of consistency and determination.
Any way, we have a president whose defense and foreign policies seem contingent on a world that no longer exists, and perhaps never existed. The dangers to this country, despite what our president may think, are primarily from non-state and extra-state actors. And what serious dangers remain from state actors have not been resolved by his ham-handed and insensitive approach. Iran and NK have blossomed as nuclear dangers, and Pakistan, the country we have entrusted to deal with South Asian Al Qaeda, may have deliberately sabotaged our opportunity to tear their organization wide open. We have turned a largely isolated Arab tyranny into a factory for Arab radicalism, and lost more than 900 soldiers in the bargain.
What we need is a foreign policy that actually knows what century it is, not just one that claims to. We need a president and a vice president who understand that diplomacy is not a dirty word, that you catch more flies with honey than H-Bombs, that going around and calling everyone who disagrees with you a sissy makes you look like a dick.