Missile Defense Watch: The LEFT’S Revisionist History on Missile Defense

Austin Bay: the Leftâ€™s new history on missile defense

Thatâ€™s Rep. Ellen Tauscherâ€™s line on C-SPANâ€™s Washington Journal this morningâ€“ liberal Democrats have always supported missile defense. Hogwash. The LibDems have spent over two decades demonizing those of us who do support missile defense. The NoKo bomb has changed the LibDem tune. Thatâ€™s good, but please, letâ€™s not try and change history â€” the history of hysterical opposition to strategic missile defense. (Tauscher comes on about 2 hours into the show. Two hours and one minute into the program. Her comments on missile defense crop up about 2:25 into the show. Toggle forward at the C-SPAN site.)

Tauscher says sheâ€™s for a â€œmissile defense systemâ€ that works. Hah. These folks have fought funding and testing tooth and nail. Sheâ€™s also something of a â€œunilateralistâ€ when it comes to diplomacy vis a vis North Korea. (Engage North Korea!) Sheesh.

Yeah right.

Austin Bay points out the DOUBLESPEAK of the LEFT.

The Democrats ridiculed Ronald Reagan when he gave his famous speech on the Strategic Defense Initiative. Remember they called it STAR WARS with a deprecating tone.

President Reagan Addresses the Nation from the oval office on National Security (Strategic Defense Initiative speech) March 23, 1983.

Writings from the LEFT and the past:

A Shield in Space? Technology, Politics, and the Strategic Defense Initiative

In ”A Shield in Space?” Sanford Lakoff, a political scientist at the University of California, San Diego, and Herbert York, a physicist with long Government experience, outline how we got into ”this mess,” and what the American and international political communities have done with it over the past six years.
Their thesis is both simple and persuasive. Because S.D.I. is not just a man-against-nature problem (like going to the moon) but also a man-against-man contest, there will always be a countermeasure or another move. To suggest that effective strategic defenses can be developed and installed at a particular time is both dangerous and misleading.

From Answers.com:

SDI is believed to have been first dubbed “Star Wars” by opponent Dr. Carol Rosin, a consultant and former spokesperson for Wernher von Braun. Some critics used that term derisively, implying it is an impractical science fiction fantasy, but supporters have adopted the usage as well on the grounds that yesterday’s science fiction is often tomorrow’s engineering.

Ashton Carter, a fellow at MIT, assessed SDI for Congress in 1984. He said there were a number of difficulties in creating an adequate missile defense shield, with or without lasers.

Physicist Hans Bethe, who worked with Teller on both the atom bomb and the hydrogen bomb, both at Los Alamos, claimed a laser defense shield was unfeasible. He said that a defensive system was costly and difficult to build, but simple to destroy, and claimed that the Soviets could easily use thousands of decoys to overwhelm it during a nuclear attack. He believed that the only way to stop the threat of nuclear war was through diplomacy and dismissed the idea of a technical solution to the Cold War, saying that a defense shield could be viewed as threatening because it would limit or destroy Soviet offensive capabilities while leaving the American offense intact. In March 1984, Bethe coauthored a 106-page report for the Union of Concerned Scientists that concluded “the X-ray laser offers no prospect of being a useful component in a system for ballistic missile defense.”^[27]

“This premise, that one day Kim Jong Il or someone will wake up one morning and say ‘Aha, San Francisco!’ is specious,” Senator Joe Biden told AP in May 2001.

Meanwhile in the Senate, Carl Levin (D., Mich.) offered in June to cut off funds for the ground-based interceptor program that Mr. Bush recently activated in Alaska in anticipation of the North Korean launch. Mr. Levin wants to stop new interceptors from being built, but Senate Republicans wouldn’t bring his proposal up for a vote. Mr. Levin has been waging his own private war against missile defenses for a generation, to the point of outflanking Russian objections on the political left.

In May 2001 the Boston Herald‘s Woodlief wrote that John Kerry “wants to croak the hugely costly nuclear missile defense system.” And just one day before the 9/11 attacks J oe Biden (D., Del.) gave a National Press Club speech outlining Democrat opposition to national missile defense.

In May 2001, John Kerry himself outlined some of these arguments on Meet the Press by saying that he wanted “a very limited…highly verifiable and mutually agreed-upon (missile) defense system.” And he complained about the cost. “We’ve already spent $68 billion and have almost nothing to show for it,” noted Kerry.

On May 3, 2001, John Kerry called national missile defense a “mythology” on Don Imus’s radio show.

On June 14, 2001, John Kerry told Hardball‘s Chris Matthews that a “missile shield that could defend the United States against any incoming missile is a fantasy, it is too expensive, it won’t work, and that’s what people believe will drive an arms race.”

Nancy Pelosi:

â€œThe United States does not need a multi-billion-dollar national missile defense against the possibility of a nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missile.

â€œWhat we need is a strong nonproliferation policy with other nations to combat the most serious threat to our national security and to the safety of the world â€“ weapons of mass destruction falling into the hands of terrorists who would smuggle them into our cities.

The LEFT and Democrats cannot have it BOTH ways. In the past, the Left Democrats have NOT supported national missile defense. In fact, many of them have voted to CUT the program. Now, with North Korea threatening on the 4th of July to launch an ICBM pointed at Hawaii suddenly they GET religion?

Doubtful

For your reading pleasure – some experts on missile defense.

Austin Bay, Thomas Karako, Ilan Berman and Jed Babbin have Symposium: Star Wars Defense