Andropov doesn’t like President Reagan’s new plans to build a defensive anti-missile system to protect the United States. Neither does Ted Kennedy or Mark Hatfield or a bunch of liberal scientists.
But unless they come up with some better arguments than the hysterical, silly, and contradictory complaints they have used so far, they will continue to sound like they simply don’t want the United States to be defended against enemy attack.
Sniping that Reagan’s proposal is like “Star Wars” or “Buck Rogers” won’t score many points with the American people. Some of us belong to the generation that grew up waiting eagerly for each exciting installment of the Buck Rogers radio program, and our children belong to the generation that is infatuated with Star Wars.
Moscow charged that Reagan was “bellicose.” The Kremlin thinks anyone is bellicose who doesn’t roll over and play dead in the face of their advancing troops. The Afghans and the Poles are examples of other “bellicose” peoples.
An MIT scientist labelled Reagan’s proposal “extremely dangerous and destabilizing.” In the same breath, he admitted that, if the Soviets develop a missile defense first, “we would be completely defenseless.” Any logical person would come to the conclusion that, even if we don’t need or want a defensive system ourselves, we had better hurry up and develop one before the Soviets develop theirs.
A Stanford scientist called the Reagan plan “somewhat spiritually troubling.” There is no evidence that he is spiritually troubled by the threat to our freedom and independence from Soviet missiles.
Another scientist worries that Reagan’s proposal might be construed to be in violation of the SALT I Treaty. However, he doesn’t express any worries about the massive violations of the SALT I Treaty by the Russians.
Senator Mark O. Hatfield said he was “deeply troubled” by Reagan’s “terrifying proposals” for defensive systems. One wonders why he is not deeply troubled by the terrifying Soviet weapons against which we have absolutely no defense.
No argument against Reagan’s anti-missile proposal makes any sense. How could anyone call “dangerous” a system that can’t kill anyone, and is designed simply to shoot down enemy missiles before they kill us?
If the Russians are upset by Reagan’s proposal, that must mean that they have some plans which Reagan’s ABM will frustrate. If that is so, then we should proceed full speed with Reagan’s plans; we have no time to waste.
Reagan’s proposal is like the local jewelry store putting in a burglar alarm system in addition to its armed guards. Anyone who objects to the burglar alarm system must be planning some actions that will be frustrated by the purely defensive burglar alarm.
What Reagan’s critics are really alarmed about is that he has shown our nation how to avoid the gloom-and-doom future predicted by the freezenik fearmongers. We don’t have to live in a world in which offensive weapons face each other forever in a balance of terror, threatening mutual destruction.
Instead, American technology can lead us into a future in which “free people can live secure in the knowledge that our security does not rest upon the threat of instant U.S. retaliation to deter a Soviet attack; that we can intercept and destroy strategic ballistic missiles before they reach our own soil or that of our allies.”
The world has always had naysayers who cry “it can’t be done.” America had scientists who told the Wright Brothers that heavier-than-air flight was impossible; and scientists who told President Roosevelt that splitting the atom was impossible. Fortunately, we have had other scientists whose vocabulary did not include the word “can’t.”
President Reagan offers the vision: “Is it not worth every investment necessary to free the world from the threat of nuclear war? We know it is.” He also offered the challenge: “I call upon the scientific community who gave us nuclear weapons to turn their great talents to the cause of mankind and world peace; to give us the means of rendering these nuclear weapons impotent and obsolete.”
President Reagan offers our nation the choice: living in terror of nuclear war based on a strategy of retaliation and revenge, or living in freedom based on a strategy of rendering attacking nukes obsolete. In simpler terms, our choice is fear or freedom; and I’m betting that the American people will choose freedom.
