Missile Defense and Immigration

* Re “Proposals for a Limited Missile Defense Create a Political Minefield,” Commentary, Dec. 1:

The Pentagon wants to scuttle the ABM treaty so it can build a space defense against “rogue nations” that might hurl atomic-tipped missiles at the U.S. If a rogue nation were to nuke a U.S. city, the delivery vehicle would probably be a rented truck or suitcase bomb, like every other terrorist uses. It certainly wouldn’t be an ICBM, which would easily be traced to the country of origin, resulting in all-out retaliation. Dictators like Saddam Hussein may be crazy, but they aren’t that stupid.

Scrapping the ABM treaty is provocative and ultimately dangerous. In the 21st century I think we should be much more concerned about suitcase bombs and rented trucks, rather than ICBMs.

MARK McINTYRE

Los Angeles

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Many acts of government tend to irony. Take our own government: While our nation slowly balkanizes due to mass immigration, our government contemplates protecting the brewing chaos with a missile defense system. The terrorists and renegade states that might threaten us pose little danger compared to the social imbroglio and environmental calamity that mass immigration without end threatens us with.

Do we want to live in a country that is protected externally from missiles abroad but which is disintegrating internally due to mass immigration and its attendant social and environmental ills?

Unhappy irony is more satisfying in literature than in actuality.

TOM C. WALKER

Santa Barbara