Does this strike anyone else as vaguely disingenuous?
Canada won't fund missile shield:PM
Canada will not put any money into building the missile shield and it will not allow Washington to station rockets on Canadian soil as the price of participation in the multibillion-dollar program, [Prime Minister Paul] Martin told Global National in a year-end interview.
I can only assume they assume we'll shoot down anything hostile that threatens Canadian airspace out of the goodness of our hearts. As such, they don't feel the need to expend any political capital. Granted, big softies that we are, we probably would. It wouldn't look good to let a neighbor get plastered like that, even if they did tell us to buzz off with this talk of "missile defense" and "rogue nations."
What baffles me is the Canadians are our partners in NORAD, which provides air and missile warning for both countries. During the bad old days of the Cold War, I don't suppose they had any illusions about what would happen if an ICBM were to be lobbed their way. We would presumably launch a retaliatory strike, and things would have gotten messy from there. They seemed to be OK with this, or at least I don't recall any press about a "Nuclear Don't Bother On Our Account" movement. Now, when the goal is stopping the missile, not glassing the launching country, they seem less than receptive. Well, maybe they'll come around.
