Ted Cruz Proposes Reviving SDI To Counter N. Korean Nuclear Threat (blastingnews.com)

MarkWhittington writes: One of the more substantive issues that was discussed during the Republican presidential debate in Detroit concerned the latest threat to come out of North Korea. That country's mad, bad, and dangerous to know leader Kim Jong-Un has ordered his nuclear arsenal prepared and is firing missiles in the vicinity of Japan. The United States and South Korea have started military maneuvers, partly as a result of North Korea's actions. Discussions on deploying the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system in South Korea have also become urgent. Sen Ted Cruz, R-Texas would go one step further. He proposed reviving the idea of space-based missile defenses that were part of the Reagan-era Strategic Defense Initiative.

Comments

And by that he means

[JeffOwl]

Spending a bunch of money and making it look like we are making great progress in missile defense so that NK bankrupts itself trying to counter the counter measures? Aren't they already basically bankrupt?

Re:And by that he means

[Anonymous Coward]

Aren't they already basically bankrupt?
 
Yes, the US is bankrupt. 19 trillion in the hole in wasted tax breaks, welfare and wars.

Oh, you mean the North Koreans? Yeah, them too.

Re:And by that he means

[hey!]

You don't know what "bankrupt" means. It refers to liquidity; you are bankrupt when you can no longer meet your current obligations, which the US government has never been close to.

You also seem to be of the delusion that the US spends a lot of money on public assistance. It spends very little. For what we paid for the Iraq war (not including nation building expenses) we could fund US public assistance programs at the current levels for 219 years.

Re: And by that he means

[FictionPimp]

It would be amazing if either of you pointed to a source.....

I guess facts can't be used in political conversation.

Re: And by that he means

[CanadianMacFan]

I guess you haven't seen one of the televised debates lately.

Re: And by that he means

[hey!]

My source is the federal budget. My figures are actually a little bit off, in that the TANF program (the successor to the old AFDC welfare program) has a budget of 17 billion, not the 10 billion I was estimating, but it's still miniscule.

Re:And by that he means

[hey!]

Well, if you're talking about Social Security, you also have to include the fact that it also brings in revenue. Yes, eliminating Social Security would reduce the deficit, but not by the amount we spend on it, and it would have no effect whatsoever on our liquidity.

And "Social Security" is not "welfare".

Re: And by that he means

[myowntrueself]

I guess you haven't seen one of the televised debates lately.

You mean those reality tv shows?

Re: And by that he means

[Anonymous Coward]

Except your wrong

Nevermind that public assistance isn't only an expense, it also boosts the economy and eases the burden on hospitals because people can afford to eat and heat their homes so they don't get sick.

The Iraq war tally will easily reach 6 trillion plus we have a ton of Veterans we aren't taking care of which is costing more and more money to deal with. But by all means, let's keep making more veterans, put more people needlessly into harms way to accomplish what?

Weapons got us into this mess, if we hadn't armed people during Iran Contra there would be a hell of a lot less weapons in the area and if we hadn't toppled the democratically elected Iran the whole region would be a lot more stable.

I have no idea why Reagan is held up as some kind of standard for Presidents. From what I can tell he united Germany, that was about it from what he did that was good. I'm sure there is more but trickle down economics started with him which was horrible, he helped solve Childhood hunger but then cut taxes so we couldn't afford it anymore. He removed our ability to deduct credit card interest rates on taxes. I would say he probably started the battle with the middle class.

Re:And by that he means

[AlterEager]

Wow. Re-write history much? I'm not going to argue that going in to Iraq wasn't a mistake -- it was. But that's based on hindsight.

You are re-writing history. Many people said it was a mistake before the war. Hindsight wad not needed.

Re:And by that he means

[cold fjord]

You also seem to be of the delusion that the US spends a lot of money on public assistance. It spends very little. For what we paid for the Iraq war (not including nation building expenses) we could fund US public assistance programs at the current levels for 219 years.

That is rubbish.

Two-Thirds of All Federal Spending Went to Entitlement Programs in 2014

Federal Spending by the Numbers, 2014: Government Spending Trends in Graphics, Tables, and Key Points

Share of 2013 Spending

23.55% Social Security
18.33% National Defense
15.53% Income Security
14.41% Medicare
10.37% Health
06.39% Net Interest
04.02% Veterans Benefits and Services
02.65% Transportation
- truncated -

The US spends a great deal on public assistance / social welfare. The additional spending for the war in Afghanistan and Iraq was a minor portion of the defense budget, and was dwarfed by social welfare spending every year. And please note that this is only Federal spending. States, counties, and cities also have their own budgets for social welfare spending.

Re: And by that he means

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know what alternate reality you're living in. Social Security and Medicare are not Welfare.

I pay into Social Security and Medicare. While there's some small chance I may be deluding myself that I will ever get any of that money back, I am paying into it with the expectation that I will actually be getting it back. Some day when I start to draw Social Security, I will do it knowing that I paid for it.

You're truth needs a reality check.

Re: And by that he means

[hey!]

Well, to answer your question literally, we'd have to go back to the 1930s, but that's skewed by the Great Depression, so let's look at Lyndon Johnson's "Great Society" programs.

In 1959 the poverty rate for blacks was about 55%. Ten years later it was just over 30%. The poverty rates for whites + hispanics was about 17% in 1959, and about 10% ten years later.

Now saying the Great Society reduced poverty is post hoc ergo propter hoc reasoning. We can't know that for sure. But the one thing we can conclude is that the public assistance programs of the 1960s didn't mire people in government dependency -- at least most people who were targeted. It's conceivable that this may have happened to some people, just as some people are injured by vaccines.

Re:And by that he means

[larkost]

Your NY Times reference appears to be be disagreeing with you. You are technically correct in that there were things that could be called chemical weapons in Iraq, but "All munitions found were left over from pre-1991 Iraqi program". Many of the reports about these weapons were very clear that they were in no way serviceable, and were so dangerous to handle that they were often incinerated on-site to reduce the danger to those handling them.

That link says nothing about Iraq having the ability to ramp up production, and I have never seen any evidence that that was so. There is no denying that Sadam talked about wanting/having it, but that was just talk (and many intelligence agencies said so). And the Bush administration's main justification for going to war was that they had an active program (no evidence at the time, and we now know they did not), with some vague references to them talking to terrorists (al-Qaeda specifically) with the idea that Iraq would be arming them. At the time it was known that there had been a meeting, but all of the intelligence agencies were pretty sure that despite having common enemies, the two groups despised each other on basic grounds (e.g. the Suni vs. Shia strife that is playing out now).

No one is ever going to argue that Sadam Husain was a good man or leader, nor that his son's were going to be when he passed the reign over. But he was holding Iraq together (brutally), and without major civilian casualties. We destroyed the military that was holding it together, and then disbanded all of the local police forces on the theory that they were loyal to the previous regime. Only counting the first 4 years the estimates in Iraq are between 151,000 to over a million civilian deaths. If we had not invaded, those would not have happened.

There was really nothing for us to accomplish in Iraq, and the only thing we did was to open up a cesspool and set fire to the middle east for the next generation or so.

Re: And by that he means

[blue9steel]

The SS receipts aren't general revenue despite the fact that politicians have played fast and loose with the rules over the years.

Re: And by that he means

[shaitand]

You are aware that social security is a retirement plan and medicare is the medical plan that goes alongside it and that participants get distributions based on how much they contributed? It isn't welfare.

Medicaid, that is welfare. Food stamps are welfare. I'm not saying it is welfare I'm opposed to, I actually want to go to my grave having supported making the world a better place. Having grown up the child of a single mother who needed both of those things and having received medical care only because of them as a child they no doubt contributed greatly to me being where I am today.

Are there losers and deadbeats on the programs? Sure there are, most of them, but then that is true of most of those holding large wall street power accounts as well. All the red tape thrown up trying to prevent abuse and minimize these programs costs more in administrative overhead than the abuse itself creating a self-fulfilling prophecy on the inefficiency of government.

If you want to reduce the cost of these programs stop fighting the public option and start fighting to cut the costs and complexity of bringing medical devices and drugs on to the market that keeps the large scale healthcare industry entrenched and raises the barrier to entry.

Re:And by that he means

[dywolf]

And lets not forget that Bush had a hard on for getting Iraq, someway, somehow.

Security briefing on day 1 of Bush's presidency: "How do we get Iraq?"
Security briefing on 9/11 attacks: "Can we use this to get Iraq?"

http://www.motherjones.com/pol...
http://www.timelines.ws/countr...

1/30/01
Saddam's removal is top item of Bush's inaugural national security meeting. Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill later recalls, "It was all about finding a way to do it. The president saying, 'Go find me a way to do this.'" [Date the public knew: 1/10/04]

8/10/01
Major air raid on Iraq. (air defense installations destroyed)

Sep 2001
Curveball granted German asylum, ceases cooperating. British spy agency MI6 has told CIA that "elements of [his] behavior strike us as typical offabricators." [Date the public knew: 11/20/05]

9/11/01
Al Qaeda attacks. Minutes taken by a Rumsfeld aide five hours later: "Best info fast. Judge whether good enough [to] hit SH [Saddam Hussein] @ same time. Not only UBL [Usama bin Laden]." [Date the public knew: 9/4/02]

9/12/01
According to counterterror czar Richard Clarke, "[Bush] told us, 'I want you, as soon as you can, to go back over everything, everything. See if Saddam did this.'" Told evidence against Al Qaeda overwhelming, Bush asks for "any shred" Saddam was involved. [Date the public knew: 3/22/04]

9/20/01
British PM Tony Blair advises Bush not to lose focus on Al Qaeda. Bush replies: "I agree with you, Tony. But when we have dealt with Afghanistan, we must come back to Iraq." [Date the public knew: 5/1/04]

9/20/01
PNAC letter to Bush: "Even if evidence does not link Iraq directly to the attack, any strategy aiming at the eradication of terrorism and its sponsors must include a determined effort to remove Saddam Hussein from power." [Date the public knew: 9/21/01]

11/21/01
Bush collars Rumsfeld physically and asks: "What have you got in terms of plans for Iraq? What is the status of the war plan? I want you to get on it. I want you to keep it secret."—Bob Woodward. [Date the public knew: 4/18/04]

12/9/01
Cheney on Meet the Press: "Well, the evidence is pretty conclusive that the Iraqis have indeed harbored terrorists." Also claims 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta met with Iraqi spy in Prague, a claim he'll repeat long after CIA and Czechs disavow.

12/12/01
Rumsfeld demands plan for war against Iraq. Gen. Tommy Franks proposes softening up Iraq: "I'm thinking in terms of spikes, Mr. Secretary. Spurts of activity followed by periods of inactivity." [Date the public knew: 8/3/04]

12/28/01
Gen. Franks briefs Bush on Iraq war plans. [Date the public knew: 3/5/03]

Feb 2002
"I was asked by one of the senior commanders of Central Command to go into his office. We did, the door was closed, and he turned to me, and he said, 'Senator, we have stopped fighting the war on terror in Afghanistan. We are moving military and intelligence personnel and resources out of Afghanistan to get ready for a future war in Iraq.'"—Sen. Bob Graham. [Date the public knew: 3/26/04]

March 2002
"Fuck Saddam. We're taking him out."—Bush to Rice and three senators. [Date the public knew: 12/8/03]

3/13/02
Bush on Osama: "I'll repeat what I said. I truly am not that concerned about him."

3/22/02
Downing Street memo: "US scrambling to establish a link between Iraq and Al Qaida is so far frankly unconvincingWe are still left with a problem of bringing public opinion to accept the imminence of a threat from IraqRegime change does not stack up. It sounds like a grudge between Bush and Saddam." [Date the public knew: 9/18/04]

3/24/02
Saddam "is actively pursuing nuclear weapons at this time."—Cheney on CNN

3/25/02
Downing Str

Re: And by that he means

[dinfinity]

Please explain how this is not an example of the broken window fallacy

Please explain how more sick people is better than or equivalent to fewer sick people, with regard to the economy, even taking into account the cost of the financial aid.

Additionally, I'd like to reiterate an oft forgotten point. Poor people are great at putting their money to work for the economy. Give a poor person money and you can guarantee that it will be spent almost instantly, locally and generally on something that we consider part of the real and essential economy (yes, some of them buy drugs, but on average it goes to food, clothes, transport and other necessities). They sure as hell aren't going to put the money in a bank in the Cayman islands or import Russian caviar.

LiHEAP for instance would parcel out assistance based not on degree-days or income, but on funding levels.

Anecdotes, my friend. Do you have any argumentation towards why a federal government cannot efficiently do this on a fundamental level?

the poor will move where they have a chance.

The only place poor people can easily move to is the street. And that is exactly what happens in places like the US. Americans coming to our 'socialist' country always (with great surprise) ask us where all our homeless people are. The number of homeless people, let alone the many people obviously on the brink of being so, I saw when I recently visited the US was disheartening and morally disgusting.

"But our country is different!'
True, many Americans have a very Darwinistic view of how a society should work (which is ironic, given how few people 'believe' in biological evolution). They fail to see that even though it feels really unfair, it is objectively better to spend money to have 'moochers' sitting at home than to leave them to fuck up their lives and those of friends and strangers around them by roaming the streets, committing crime and seeking refuge in terrible drugs. And that doesn't even take into account the (economic!) benefits to society when poor people actually use the aid to grow and become tax-paying members of society.

I will readily admit that even in our 'socalist paradise' the exact same lack of insight is all too present, but as always: everything is bigger in America.

Re: And by that he means

[hey!]

Well yes, there's always confounding factors as I noted. But I think the argument that welfare automatically makes people dependent on government handouts isn't supported by the data. That it may make some people dependent I don't doubt, but if the effect were as powerful as commonly suggested then you wouldn't see so many people lifting themselves out of poverty during the heydey of the welfare state.

Might actually make some sense now

[JoshuaZ]

This actually makes a bit more sense than it did in the 1980s. The technology has improved but more importantly this will be only defending against a small number of missiles. One of the big issues was that it wasn't feasible to scale up a system that could defend against a massive number of advanced missiles with good countermeasures and decoys from the USSR or China. But this would only need to defend against a very small number of missiles without sophisticated countermeasures. Probably not worth the cost but it at least makes more sense than it did in the 1980s.

Re:Might actually make some sense now

[Brett Buck]

Unable to achieve 100% intercept rate with SDI was not a "big issue". It was hyped as a big issue by people wanting to discredit the effort, mostly by smart-ass journalists and other ivy-league "intellectual" types to mock Reagan and make him seem like an imbecile. Achieving even a 10% intercept rate would be materially useful and save millions of lives, 50% tens of millions, and 75% a few hundred million.

          That's what they were mocking - a man trying to save American lives. In the end, he ended up more-or-less ending the threat of world destruction from the Cold war.

          Brett

Re:Might actually make some sense now

[hey!]

Well, how close you get to 100% matters, and the amount it matters depends on the scale of the threat you're dealing with.

Suppose you are 90% effective. That's well worth it when you're talking about an adversary with the capability of striking you with ten, or even a hundred warheads, especially if they're small and unreliable. Russia currently has 1800 deployed warheads, with a stockpile of some 8500. But let's say conservatively in a period of high tensions the Soviets have a thousand warhead targeted at the US. 90% effective would mean we get hit with about 100 warheads, which in the Soviet era ICBMs were in the 3-5 MT range, or 200x to 300x the yield of the Hiroshima bomb. Two or three, or even a half dozen such warheads would be survivable for a certain value of "survive", but a hundred would mean a highly probable total collapse of our society.

Now at the risk of sounding like a scare-quotes-intellectual, you really ought to consider how the opponent in this game will perceive and react to your missile defense system. If a hypothetical missile defense system is 100% effective or very close to it, it's game over; your enemy's missile arsenal is just useless junk. But if we're talking 90% effective, we're talking about a system which cannot stop the enemy arsenal from destroying us, provided that arsenal is intact.

So if you are a defense planner in the Kremlin, what is your assessment of this situation? That the Americans are stupid? Or that they intend to whittle down your arsenal with a first nuclear strike and then whittle down the survivors with the missile defense system? And if you are in a tense situation with the Americans, how does this affect your decision making? Do you use your arsenal early or risk losing it later?

So yes, those of us "intellectuals" with the handicap of being educated do rather think how close a missile defense system gets to 100% matters quite a bit. How close it has to be varies by situation of course. A 10% effectiveness rate would be materially useful against North Korea; it would have been merely destabilizing against the Soviets.

Re:Might actually make some sense now

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think you understand how many bombs and missiles Russia had during the Cold War. In 1988, Russia had ~45,000 nuclear devices, spread across ICBMs, submarine launched missiles, bomber dropped bombs, etc. Many of them were MIRV designs, which had up to 14 active warheads (and possibly dozens of decoy warheads) in them, all of which were substantially more powerful than the Hiroshima nuke.

In a full scale nuclear war, most of those would be launched. If you took out 99% of them, that would still be 450+ nuclear detonations substantially more powerful than the bombs dropped on Hiroshima. If civilian population centers are the main targets, and they managed to hit each of the 450 largest cities in the U.S., that's a detonation in every city from Scranton, PA up, covering a huge percentage of the population with direct explosive effects, and the suburbs of these cities would all be within the range of lethal radioactive fallout.

And that's before we get into the nuclear winter issues. The models for a nuclear winter that could devastate global food production (a drop of several degrees Celsius) only require about 50 Hiroshima sized detonations in a "small", regional exchange. If 450 U.S. cities burned to the ground, and a similar number of Russian targets, it would cause a decades long ice age. And that's with 99% success rates shooting down missiles. With a 75% success rate? You're dead. Live in a bunker in the middle of nowhere? Better have enough canned food to last a few hundred years, and seed stores for your great-great-great-great-great-grandchildren to plant.

Sure, it's better than the whole planet's surface being nuked directly. But it just encourages your enemy to build even more nukes (you'll notice, the Russians hit peak missiles at the end of Reagan's term in office) to get through the defenses. Which raises the risk of a malfunction leading to a missile launch, or one of the many missiles getting lost (or stolen, or sold for profit to terrorists). If either side had wanted to destroy the world, they could have, and SDI (particularly 1980s tech SDI) was never going to change that.

Presumably so he can call them "Cruz Missiles"

[Jahta]

I'm here all week :-)

Crazy Cruz

[OzPeter]

A small government conservative proposing pork barrel politics to counter a non-realistic threat in order to seem like he is the big man on the international stage solely for the purpose of getting elected.

As has been mentioned a lot of times before Kim thrives on crazy threats, and China needs a relatively stable NK (that doesn't actually carry out stupid shit) in order to maintain a buffer.

Re:Crazy Cruz

[myowntrueself]

...China needs a relatively stable NK (that doesn't actually carry out stupid shit) in order to maintain a buffer.

This brings up a fun question:

A "buffer" against... what? Puny South Korea? A Japan that is too demographically old/rich/disinterested in China to bother invading? The Philippines? Mongolia?

Historically, I get it - post-WWII, fears of Japan and such were rather justified. But it's been what, 70 years and a metric shitload of geopolitical changes? Pretty sure the whole buffer idea is a bit, shall we say, outdated.

The main reason for the existance of NK was to break up Korea and prevent a unified Korea from being an economic powerhouse dominating North Asia.

People look at NK today and its a basket case. But if Korea hadn't been broken up and that unified Korea had been under an economic management such as developed in South Korea, the agricultural wealth of the south and the mineral wealth of the north would have resulted in a nation which would be able to challenge even China, would have dwarfed Japan and would have been seen by the Soviet Union as a threat to their Eastern maritimes. South Korea has been doing pretty well industrially, great shipbuilding and other heavy industries. But thats nothing compared to what Korea COULD have been.

Consequently it was in the interest of all the regional powers, including the USA, to ensure that Korea was broken up.

For the Chinese, NK isn't a buffer in the normal sense of the world; its a handicap they are imposing on Korea as a whole.

Re:We should do it

[Anonymous Coward]

Although I share your sentiment about the ludicrosity of SDI, I would like to debunk the myth of massive civilian benefit from defense spending. Money purposefully invested in civilian research programs (antibiotics, medical imaging, public health strategies providing healthcare for all Americans if I might be parochial, roads, bridges, trains, and space and lasers as you say, etc.) would have a much LARGER impact than hoping for trickle-down technology from Halliburton, after they enrich themselves.

Re:Technology continues its rapid advance

[Ol Olsoc]

Meanwhile, more and more unstable third world dictatorships and Islamic theocracies are either on the path to developing or already having nuclear weapons.

This is what happens when you won't get along with your neighbors. Trotskyist Neocon Nirvana.

Anyhow, thanks for revealing your fearful nature.

I support missile defense because I trust American engineers far more than third world lunatics.

They've all been replaced with H1-B visa holders from India. Make certain you trust them.

The original Star Wars was a feelgood pork project. A new version would be much the same. The problem of course is that you have to kill the missile early in the boost phase of operation. That phase doesn't last long, and if you go detonating your enemy's missile over another country, you almost certainly make yourself another enemy. If it makes it to your airspace to be detonated, you still have a failure what with EMP and radioactive snowflakes and all. How are people going to access their facebook? Ooops, sorry, cheap shot.

Are we any better now? Electronics certainly is, but there still isn't much time to react. And in a country where everything is considered "too expensive" any more, And the political situation abroad, I don't think planting the equivalent of ABM's right against the borders of our enemies - which in your case, appears to be everyone - will happen.

These considerations are't even political - they are some physics issues, which in the past have proven remarkably resilient to votes on whether they were true or not.

Re:Trump 2016!!!

[CanadianMacFan]

That's why Bill went to Monica.

Re:We should do it

[convolvatron]

my guess is you weren't involved in the last SDI development effort.

just contractors lining up at the trough. an unequivocal waste. they tried to
keep it open for as long as they could after notable people came out and
said it will never be useful, but they had to shut off the spigot eventually.

Riding the corpse of Zombie Reagan

[Beavertank]

I know the GOP is the party of pimping out Zombie Reagan, and they're favorite past-time is cherry picking things about the man to back up what they want to do now, but reviving Star Wars? Really? They're not even trying to pretend they didn't jump the shark now.

Too much high tech

[NotQuiteReal]

We should just build a wall around NK.

And get MX to pay for it.

Re:What?

[operagost]

I love when some amateur internet "economist" dismisses a great economist as an idiot and, as proof, holds up public assistance programs as if they are net wealth creators.