We Surrender.(missile defense systems)

Gloom and doomers have never wanted missile defense to work

When President Reagan first proposed that the United States set itself to building a defense against nuclear missile attack, Democrats and political liberals went ballistic.

The New York Times called Reagan's proposal for a shield against atomic blackmail "a pipe dream, a projection of fantasy into policy." The Chicago Sun-Times suggested it was "an appalling disservice" even to propose such a system. "Never in my wildest dreams could I ever imagine our President taking to the national airwaves to promote a strategy of futuristic `Star Wars' schemes as Mr. Reagan did," sneered Congressman Ted Weiss of New York.

Then-Representative Barbara Boxer, now a Democratic Senator from California, referred to missile defense in 1988 as the President's "astrological dream." Democratic Party standard bearer Michael Dukakis declared that the "Reagan administration's SDI program is a fantasy--a technological illusion which most scientists say cannot be achieved in the foreseeable future. The defenses they envision won't make the United States more secure." Rather, he insisted, missile defense would fuel an arms race and increase the probability of nuclear war.

An even more judgmental Jesse Jackson found SDI pregnant with the possibility of all sorts of disruptions. "Star Wars is a cruel hoax. It offers an impossible technological solution to a political problem. It will cost over a trillion dollars if pursued, and in the end will not produce a defense but an arms race in the heavens. Our coffers will be robbed; our science distorted." Too bad he didn't have a dream.

Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.) howled that missile defense zealots were roaming the hallways of MIT "like vultures," hoping to enlist scientists to aid their crackpot scheme. Washington Post columnist Mary McGrory insisted in 1987 that a report put out by Senators J. Bennett Johnston and William Proxmire "devastated" the claims that missile defense is technologically feasible. Hit-to-kill technology in particular was nothing but a "joke."

Senator Johnston (D-La.) pronounced that building a missile defense would bring national "bankruptcy." Senator Dale Bumpers (D-Ark.) argued that "simply getting the Strategic Defense Initiative system into place could cost about as much as we spend each year for defense and possibly as much as what we now spend yearly for all of the operations of the federal government."