Coyne on missile defense

I'm a day late on this one, but it's still more than worth it:

It would be sad, if it weren't so silly. We weren't being asked to do anything, the system doesn't depend on us doing anything, and we've already done whatever it was they needed us to do, through NORAD, though that in itself amounted to doing what NORAD does anyway....

It was a free throw, a layup, a cost-free gesture of solidarity that might repair some of the damage done by our refusal to participate in Iraq (although in fact we did, we just said we weren't). But there is a rule in Ottawa: you can say you are doing something without doing it, or you can do something without saying it, but under no circumstances is it permissible to say and do the same thing at the same time...

We could have taken our place alongside the United States, Great Britain and Australia, that historical alliance that fought two world wars and to whom literally dozens of countries owe their freedom. Instead, we have chosen to side with our new best friends, the Chinese, the Russians, the Germans and the French, who between them have never liberated a single country, including their own. How very sad. How preposterously silly.