‘Star Wars’ Sounds Like Pie in the Sky to Some
Re “Finally, U.S. Gets a Nuclear Umbrella,” Oct. 3:
Heritage Foundation fellow Baker Spring writes, “The American people must insist that their government defend them against ... current threats.” It seems that the folks at the Heritage Foundation overlook that the most successful terrorist attacks on U.S. soil were in Oklahoma City using fertilizer and the World Trade Center using box cutters and our planes.
While the current administration is wasting money on “Star Wars,” our ports and borders are virtually unprotected, our policies are making more terrorists and who knows where Russia’s nuclear weapons are. It is the drivel that the Heritage Foundation gives to Bush et al that seems to be the American people’s current threat.
Warren F. Bacon Jr.
La Mesa
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I would have thought having a dozen guys take down the World Trade Center using just guts and box cutters proved the silliness of national missile defense. But Spring proudly declares that our “vulnerability to missile attack will be reduced when Bush declares operational the first elements of a ballistic missile defense” and proceeds to argue that NMD is essential to our safety.
It would be nice if President Bush’s declaration would make the system work, but that’s not the case. No effective NMD system exists outside of the fantasies of people like Spring, and none ever will because the technology of evasion is always easier to develop than effective defenses.
In fact, even if NMD worked, it would reduce one danger but drastically increase others. Our enemies see NMD as an encouragement for a U.S. first nuclear strike, because we could hit them without them hitting us. They are no doubt already thinking of other means to deliver weapons.
And because we will have spent untold billions of dollars on NMD, we’ll have fewer resources to defend ourselves in other ways.
For example, if I were North Korea, I might make it look like I’m building ballistic missiles when I’m really delivering a nuke in a shipping container, to be placed in a large city and left waiting until I feel like a bit of blackmail. The United States would waste its resources on NMD, providing an endless stream of pork for the aerospace companies, and I could attack at any time.
Jeremy Anderson
Redlands