One of the strangest schemes in our long, tired, sports-bar loudmouth of a foreign policy is the European Missile Shield, purportedly intended to protect the soft underbelly of the Mighty Continent against an Iranian missile attack.

Say... what?

And we can expect, perhaps, the next exceedingly bright idea down the 'pike an anti-gang task force for Martha's Vineyard?

Iran?

Not that any dolt this side of Michele Bachmann bought that whopper. The missile shield was designed to pressure Russia to pressure Iran to roll over, play doggie and become our vassal in the Mideast. Like our Iran crusade in general, it's an on-again, off-again project. Obama dropped this Bush-era vestige when Russian President Medvedev indicated last month he'd OK Iran sanctions, then it was back "on" in a new, mobile-missile configuration when Russia cooled on the hardball idea (Iran is a key trading partner). Now Poland says it likes the new pocket-rocket layout, and on and on.

That "we'll protect you from Iranian missiles" ploy must've gotten big laughs in that part of world not contained in the Washington Post editorial pages; it's the definition of geopolitical overreach - trying to kill two birds with one expensive, unpopular stone. We sling Russia on the wall and emphasize the "danger" of an armed and "nuclear" Iran at the same time. We've evolved, diplomatically, to the point where we can't determine reality from our own perfervid fictions.

Speaking of international pie-fights, as if we don't already have enough egg creme on our face, there's this:

The splits inside NATO over the Afghan war have turned the alliance into a rotting corpse that will be virtually impossible to revive, says the former head of Canada's armed forces. General Rick Hillier also said the 28-member alliance was "dominated by jealousies and small, vicious political battles" and bemoaned its "lack of cohesion, clarity and professionalism" at the start of the Afghan mission.

Is this the end of NATO?! Can we be so lucky?!

Here's the bigger question I have for Gen. Hillier: Why in the world does this Cold-War relic still exist? Created after World War II to protect Europe from the Soviet Union, it goes cranking along, two decades after the fall of the Iron Curtain and 18 years since the USSR toddled off to the ash heap of history. Why? What is it's function? What are the reasons it occupies real estate throughout the world, prints its own letterhead with its own logo, and blows money like a Jeep full of GIs on whorehouse patrol?

In the field, when the cumbersome dinosaur has sallied forth to slay our dragons-du-jour, its performance has been straightforward: It sucks. Even in terms of member countries honoring their troop commitments, NATO's record in the Afghanistan quagmire apparently is so bad, we even duck assessments, so no one here back home will note the general crappiness, and perhaps wonder about its overall value.

To top it all off, our dues for staying in the ponderous, obsolete old-soldiers' club is about half a billion a year - chicken feed, really, if you're a Wall Street hedge fund manager or mid-size banker.

But, why?

Is NATO also there to protect Kosovo drug cartels and Polish pig farmers from... Iran?

Bwah-hahahahhahahahaha!!!

Sure... there are interests in America's still-potent military-industrial complex who are mighty nostaligic about the Cold War - to the point of wanting to reinstall it. Islamo-Fascism just doesn't have the heft, as perennial foe, that does a nuclear-armed colossus. China's out, for now; those international military appraisals haven't upgraded the People's Army since it was ass-kicked in a border skirmish with Vietnam 30 years ago.

Nope. The aerospace R&Ds and big contractors want back the fat days of the Evil Empire, when they got huge, huge federal contracts for weapons systems that didn't have to work, or, at least, would never be put to any ultimate tests, God help us all. It's gotta be Russa. And... that means NATO must bucket along. Sure.

Or... we pull the plug. Not only on our "Western Allies" club, but on the whole idea of playing with fire in international affairs.

Unlike Iran's phantom arsenal, some nukes are real...