So Long, "Star Wars"

President Obama has surprised me again, totally breaking pattern on another national security challenge that he had previously not come up with solutions for.

The President effectively erased all hope for those in Washington that wanted to see the initialization of President Bush's aim to create Ronald Reagan's dream of a missile defense network to guard against nuclear attacks aimed at the United States. Hawks lovingly referred to the proposed program as "Star Wars" in honor of President Reagan, but the technical term is the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI).

The SDI Program's technology combines the use of satellites with x-ray lasers, aerial reconnaissance, tactical missiles, and a whole host of other toys to shoot down Inter-continental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) armed with nuclear warheads or even biological agents. 

Upon first taking office, President Obama was proposing putting a missile defense shield in the areas around Poland, and the Czech Republic, nudging up dangerously close to the Russian border with Eastern Europe.

Not so, anymore, though, as President Obama yesterday gave a very encouraging speech that drew approval from Russia's biggest power-wielder. The U.S. will scrap the original plans for the missile shield and instead focus on having medium and short-range antimissiles that can reach Iran to protect Israel. The Russians would also take down a proposed defense base on their border in Kaliningrad.

To me this is a giant step forward in normal diplomatic relations with the Russian Federation. I don't doubt that if the program had continued on its original course, the United States and Russia would have been in a (Cold) War of not defense buildups but words and oneupsmanship. President Reagan always called the Soviet Union the "Evil Empire," but there's so much more information available about Russian politics during the 1980s and 1990s that it just makes them look like a nation trying to find its place in the world and to define their nation itself.

Bravo, Mr. President.

<3 Bioware <3

The first substantial footage of "The Old Republic" from Gamescom '09

Of course Blogger doesn't like G4's videos, so link here.

I'm curious to know if they're planning on having players from both "sides" be able to go through that same quest at (nearly) the same time. It would be really great if among those Republic troopers popped out a human-controlled player to fight with...but maybe they've thought up another way to do that.