“The president’s continued adherence to [SDI] constitutes
one of the most reckless and irresponsible acts in the history of
modern statecraft.”
— Senator Joseph Biden on
Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative, designed to protect
against nuclear attacks from nuclear armed enemies like North
Korea
“Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel said the U.S. will add 14
interceptors to the 30 in its missile defense system by fiscal
2017, sending a signal to North Korea after the totalitarian regime
threatened nuclear strikes.”
—
Bloomberg Business Week on the Obama-Biden Administration
decision to belatedly deploy an underdeveloped SDI against a
potential North Korean attack
Joe Biden had a headache.
And, alas, that’s what’s always remembered.
Now, America has a headache. A big one, too.
That would be the threat of a nuclear attack from North
Korea.
Back in the wayback of March, 1987, Senator Joe Biden was busy
running for president. What’s remembered, aside from his plagiarism
problem, was that the young Senator was in the middle of a speech
to a New Hampshire Rotary Club audience in Nashua when he was
stricken with a shooting pain in his neck and had to stop in the
middle of his speech. After a time-out, overcoming a feeling of
nausea, the Senator returned to the podium and with difficulty
finished his speech. It turned out that Biden had suffered from an
aneurism, which he would need surgery to fix.
The surgery was successful, the rest of the Biden story to date
is known as the now-vice president sits as the number two in an
Obama Administration that is today coming to grips with the actual
threat of a nuclear attack from North Korea.
Which is to say: North Korea nukes Hollywood. And potentially a
bit of California or the rest of the West Coast.
What’s forgotten in the tale of Biden’s aneurism-induced
headache was the topic of his speech that winter day in Nashua:
An attack on the Reagan Strategic Defense Initiative.
Or, as Biden and his fellow liberals of the day disparaged the
President’s idea of defending the United States by hitting a
missile with a missile – Star Wars.
March 23 of this year – two days from now – marks the 30th
anniversary of President Reagan’s
historic speech announcing his intention to pursue a “Strategic
Defense Initiative.”
As the Heritage Foundation noted five years ago on the occasion
of SDI’s 25th anniversary, Reagan had three core principles at the
heart of SDI.
- ·Principle #1: Refuse to accept U.S.
vulnerability.
- ·Principle #2: Operate from a position of
strength.
- ·Principle #3: Recognize that the U.S. will never be
secure if its enemies are able to use space as an avenue for
attack.
Said Reagan in announcing his idea:
“We are launching an effort which holds the promise of
changing the course of human history.”
Indeed. Which is precisely what infuriated Biden and his liberal
allies.
What so offended Biden was that Reagan was making a direct
challenge to the liberal sacred cow that was nuclear deterrence
doctrine – mutual assured destruction. Or MAD as its appropriate
acronym had it. In short, the liberal idea – the conventional
wisdom of the day – was “if you kill us you will die too.”
Reagan was appalled at this thinking – and had no hesitation in
challenging the conventional wisdom. It is hard to realize now how
much the idea of “arms control” had essentially developed into a
liberal religion, its practitioners considered more priests than
bureaucrats.
As history now records, SDI became a central player in ending
the Cold War. It was SDI that brought the Reykjavik
Reagan-Gorbachev summit to an abrupt end as Gorbachev sought to
effectively end the program. Reagan would have none of it, and
walked out rather than be pressured to stop SDI.
None of this impressed Biden, although he was shown to be
demonstrably wrong. Thus his opposition to the program continued
through the years.
By the time George W. Bush arrived in the White House to keep
SDI moving, Biden was still doing his best to thwart the
program.
As the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman, Biden called
a July 24, 2001 hearing on a Bush budget request for $8 billion in
SDI research.
Biden made plain his opposition, opening the hearing with a
reference to a Wall Street Journal editorial on SDI that
referred to Biden as “Dr. No.”
The then-Senator immediately raised the Bush administration’s
specific insistence that at some point in the future North Korea
could have a nuclear missile and threaten to use it against
America.
Biden ridiculed the very notion of this possibility. He was
nothing if not an avid believer in the sanctity of the arms control
priesthood. To push forward SDI was an attack on arms control, said
Biden and he would have none of it.
Scorned the future vice president:
The threat has variously been described as a crude missile
threat by a rogue state…. The threat has variously been described
as a crude missile threat from North Korea, Iraq, or Iran, the risk
of an accidental launch of a sophisticated Russian ICBM, or of the
danger posed by missiles which might menace U.S. forces deployed on
the Korean Peninsula, or some other hot spot around the world….. It
seems to me that answering the “why” question on missile defense
requires a discussion not only of the threats, but how real they
are, how damaging to U.S. interests they are, how immediate they
are, and also the alternatives available to meet those threats.
…
Have we seriously explored a diplomatic solution to North
Korea’s development of and
export of long-range missiles? For if there were no immediate
possibility of North Korea having the capacity to launch a
long-range missile to strike the United States, there would be no
need to initiate a test program that in the minds of some experts
is of questionable utility and costs billions of dollars…
Got that?
North Korea should be dealt with by “a diplomatic solution”
because the very idea of North Korea attacking the U.S. with a
nuclear missile wasn’t “real.”
So it came as no surprise that in 2012 as Vice President Biden,
the eternal Senate critic of SDI was presiding with President Obama
over requested SDI budget
cuts to the tune of $810 million in 2013 with projected cuts of
$3.6 billion over the next five years.
Then… then… with all the predictability of the sun rising in the
East, the North Korean threat Biden insisted wasn’t there suddenly
appears.
So, of course, the Obama-Biden administration is now in a mad
scramble.
Reports CNN:
The United States will deploy additional ground-based missile
interceptors on the West Coast as part of efforts to enhance the
nation’s ability to defend itself from attack by North Korea,
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel announced Friday.
Still relatively new in his post, the Pentagon chief told
reporters that 14 additional interceptors to be installed by 2017
would bring the total to 44. It is part of a package of steps
expected to cost $1 billion, officials said.
“The reason that we are doing what we are doing and the reason
we are advancing our program here for homeland security is to not
take any chances, is to stay ahead of the threat and to assure any
contingency,” Hagel said.
… Part of the move announced by Hagel would involve reopening a
missile field at Fort Greely, Alaska.
In 2011, the Pentagon mothballed Missile Field 1, acting on
direction from the Obama administration. Instead of permanently
decommissioning it, the Defense Missile Agency placed it in a
non-operational state.”
So this defense will be in place “by 2017.” Which is to say four
years from now.
And say again, Secretary Hagel, why is this suddenly urgent $1
billion infusion into missile defense needed? Why was the missile
field in Alaska being reopened – after being “mothballed” by a
Pentagon “acting on direction from the Obama administration”?
“The reason that we are doing what we are doing and the reason
we are advancing our program here for homeland security is to not
take any chances, is to stay ahead of the threat…”
A threat? From North Korea? But how could this be? What happened
to those diplomatic efforts then-Senator Biden said would defuse
North Korea? If the VP wants to take some non-sequestered travel,
why isn’t he in Pyongyang hanging out with Kim Jong-un instead of
Dennis Rodman?
When one cuts to the chase here, what’s at play is the liberal
mindset on national security issues. There is nothing new with
Biden – or the now highly predictable results of his lack of common
sense about the threats to the United States and how to deal with
them.
Biden’s record as a senator included his support for the nuclear
freeze, cutting off funding for the Vietnam War (launching the
infamous killing fields of Cambodia and the murderous overtaking of
South Vietnam by the North), opposing the first Gulf War in 1991
and so on… and so on… and so on.
Now, as the sitting Vice President of the United States, the
irony is that the Biden chickens are coming home to roost. North
Korea is in fact threatening America with nuclear missiles, and now
the U.S. government has to scramble to reverse the damage done to
American missile defense done by Biden’s work.
Will there be a war with North Korea? Will Californians and
others on the West Coast suddenly find themselves watching their
televisions and computers in horrified fashion as a North Korean
missile flies towards them, making of Hollywood or San Francisco
the new Israel? Their citizens nervously scanning the sky for
incoming?
We will see.
But if in fact this scenario plays itself out, it’s safe to say
that whatever else follows will have a name:
Biden’s War.
Photo: UPI (“Vice President Joe Biden Visits the USS Ronald
Reagan”; May 16, 2009)
