IV. "Defense Wins Championships"
No metaphor is big enough to en- compass the vastness and scope of our missile defense shield. There is only description. The glossary of acronyms provided by the Pentagon to students of missile defense is a list of abbreviations, like SBX or MIRACL (Mid Infrared Advanced Chemical Laser). The glossary is typed on letter-size paper with single-spaced entries and common type size. It is 327 pages long.

The multiple technological "layers" of the shield are not its only overlapping elements: As an argument, missile defense is also layered with a host of Beltway anxieties, rivalries and fears. And no one describes the origin of this complexity better than Lt. Gen. Henry Obering, the director of the Missile Defense Agency. Known to his friends as "Trey," Obering is quick to call you by your first name, lively in conversation and not given to cheesy TV spin. A good soldier, he is eager to plow right into the reality.

Obering ticks off a few of what he refers to as the "many sensitive areas" that have sparked opposition to missile defense. First, the program has been carved out of the Defense Department and given its own budget authority, prompting territorial ire from the service's existing branches. Second, he notes, there are the diplomats who fear it will upset the "delicate balance between the Soviet Union and the United States and lead us into World War III." Third, it enrages the arms-control folks, who are trying to reduce the world's nuclear arsenal. And fourth, there are the scientists.

"They said this is pie-in-the-sky, this will never ever work," Obering tells me. "There were serious scientists who garnered real support for that position."

At its core, the fight over missile defense is a struggle between American optimism and American skepticism. From the start, the main opposition focused on a set of complex technological critiques that were summed up with a devastatingly simple analogy: "You can't hit a bullet with a bullet."

In 1991, during the Gulf War, the Patriot missile was widely perceived to have done just that, knocking down Saddam's Scuds with ferocious effectiveness. The initial reports were glowing: "The age of Star Wars," The Los Angeles Times declared, "had arrived." But it was later revealed that the good news was spin: Most of the time, the Patriot missed its mark. And in 2003, at the start of the Iraq War, Patriots killed two British soldiers and an American pilot, Lt. Nathan White. It turns out that even the Patriot -- the only part of missile defense that has actually been battle-tested -- suffers from basic problems, sometimes mistaking our own planes for enemy missiles.

In recent years, the technological argument against missile defense has changed a bit in its details but remains principally the same -- the opponents have only had to update their "bullet" metaphor. It is now accepted, for instance, that any enemy firing an ICBM would camouflage the nuclear warhead with a bunch of decoys. "It's more like stopping a shotgun blast with a shotgun blast," says John Pike, director of the defense-research firm Global Security and one of the shield's veteran critics.

By this point, the folks on either side of the missile defense debate have been at it for so many years that they are like an old married couple who have heard each other's stories a million times. Pike, for instance, has routinely squared off against Keith Payne of the National Institute for Public Policy. "We got so good at having this argument," Pike says, "that we often joked that at our next appearance together, we'd switch sides just to keep it interesting."

The cheerleaders, at least, have added a few colorful players to the bench. Riki Ellison, the former linebacker for the San Francisco 49ers, now heads the Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance. He likes to use football metaphors to explain missile defense, comparing an enemy ICBM to the captain of the offense. "The launcher is a quarterback," Ellison told The Hill. "What's the best way to stop the quarterback from throwing the ball? You use your defensive linemen. If you can tackle him before he launches the ball, there's not a threat. That's what we call our boost-phase defense." Midcourse interceptors "would take away the long bomb, the long pass." It all makes perfect football sense: "I think defense wins championships. A great defense gives you the ability to win, the ability to protect. I obviously am conditioned that way."

The other figure who has been pushed into the limelight by supporters of missile defense is Jeff "Skunk" Baxter, the former guitarist for the Doobie Brothers and Steely Dan. He's sort of missile defense's Bono. In 2005, Baxter got Wall Street Journal front-page treatment, where he explained that his work in the music studio coupled with his hobbyist obsession reading Aviation Week led him to write a paper that persuaded the Pentagon to turn its sea-based offensive technologies into the Aegis defense system we have today. Baxter believes the era of deterrence is over. Sure, missile defense might not be fully operational right now -- but that ambiguity by itself could be a strength. "The argument is that missile defense is not a 100 percent guarantee," Baxter says. "My response is, 'Are you feeling lucky, punk?'"

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