Poles Not Worried About Iranian Missiles

Flickr/<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/49403380@N00/2658316482/">cowicide</a> (<a href="http://www.creativecommons.org">Creative Commons</a>).

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski spoke to Foreign Policy‘s Josh Rogin last week about his country’s cooperation with American missile defense plans. The Bush administration’s plans to put missile defenses in Poland was sold—as these things generally are—as a bulwark against missile launches by a rogue state (in this case, Iran.) As Rogin explains, this was all poppycock: the interceptors were designed to shoot down long-range missiles and would have had a lot of trouble shooting down anything launched by Tehran. And as it turns out, Sikorski isn’t all that worried about the Islamic Republic nuking Warsaw. “If the mullahs have a target list we believe we are quite low on it,” the foreign minister told Rogin. 

All this reminds me of Rep. Barney Frank’s (D-Mass.) arguments against spending gobs of money on missile defense in Europe. Frank likes to talk about Prague, not Warsaw, but the analogy holds. “I will confess that I am not a regular reader of Iranian-issued fatwahs,” Frank quipped last year. “And probably one of the ones I missed was the one where they threatened devastation against Prague. We plan to spend several billion dollars to protect the Czech Republic against Iran. That’s either a great waste of money or a very belated way to make up for Munich.” Is Sikorski thinking along the same lines?

WE'LL BE BLUNT:

We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't find elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't find elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate