Cutting Missile Defense An Unwise move

Joe Bell

Today America has the costliest government in its history. This year the federal budget weighed in at a gargantuan $3.9 trillion, which is twice the level of spending eight years ago. Even as it frolics in the midst of a mammoth spend-a-thon, the Obama Administration is cutting spending on items Washington should finance.

One of the more reckless examples of spending reductions is with respect to America’s missile defense program. The Constitution directs the federal government to “provide for the common defense” yet the administration calls for a $1.6 billion cut in missile defense spending. The Heritage Foundation recently reported that the administration calculates the defense budget to “amount to less than 3.3 percent of GDP in 2014, a sharp reduction from today’s 3.8 percent.”

As President Obama and the Democrats toss cash at the automobile industry, increase the budget of the Department of Education (a federal bureaucracy that shouldn’t even exist), and plot to take over and consequently ruin America’s health care system, the people should be more than a little disturbed that Washington’s leaders are simultaneously reducing spending in an area that is arguably their primary responsibility.

Washington Democrats cannot pay for the things they want and refuse to fund the things they are obligated to do. On February 26, the Wall Street Journal observed President Obama “left the impression that we need merely end ‘tax breaks for the wealthiest 2% of Americans,’ and he promised that households earning less than $250,000 won’t see their taxes increased by ‘one single dime.’ This is going to be some trick. Even the most basic inspection of the IRS income tax statistics shows that raising taxes on the salaries, dividends and capital gains of those making more than $250,000 can’t possibly raise enough revenue to fund Mr. Obama’s new spending ambitions.”

So we cut missile defense.

Even the most superficial review of global events indicates the need for a national missile defense system. This year North Korea tested a nuclear device and launched a long-range missile that has intercontinental range potential. There is speculation that Pyongyang is developing a warhead to place on a ballistic missile that could hit the United States.

Iran already has missiles capable of reaching any point in the Middle East as well as portions of Europe. Earlier this year Iran launched its first satellite, which places it on the road to developing an ICBM. It is strongly suspected that Tehran has a nuclear weapons program.

The current issue of Policy Review warns that within the decade the United Kingdom might find its nuclear stockpile surpassed by those of Pakistan, Israel and India. The article cautions France could meet the same fate and “China, which has already amassed enough separated plutonium and highly enriched uranium to easily triple its current stockpile of roughly 300 deployed nuclear warheads, also is likely to increase its deployed numbers, quietly, during the coming years.”

The world is an unstable place. Rogue nations and America’s competitors either have or desire nuclear weapons. Terrorist groups also seek the most dangerous weaponry on the planet and history teaches there are those who will place their nuclear knowledge on the market.

Nonproliferation is a futile strategy. The six-party talks failed to bridle North Korea and the so-called EU-3 negotiations (between France, Great Britain, Germany and Iran) did not produce the desired results. Few want to concede that the international community will do nothing of substance to halt the spread of nuclear weapons and fewer want to ponder the eventual results of inaction.

It is not unimaginable that America might one day find itself in a similar situation as it experienced the morning of September 11, 2001. No one expected a terrorist attack on American soil, yet it happened. America’s leadership should be vigorously moving forward with a missile defense system to protect the nation against the next, probably larger and more destructive, unthinkable attack.

After the 9/11 attacks, more than 2,800 were dead and the economic loss totaled more than $100 billion. The cleanup at Ground Zero in New York cost more than $600 million. Those numbers, staggering as they are, are miniscule compared to a nuclear attack.

Distance makes people feel safe. For centuries America was protected from danger by two large oceans. We seem oblivious to the reality that time and technology have clipped the amount of security they provide. The distance between 9/11 and today has also dulled our safety concerns. The nation has not been struck since that September morning and Americans are occupied with Wii and “American Idol.” Should a mushroom cloud ever rise over an American city the nation will be irrevocably changed and millions will demand to know “how did this happen?” The answer will be simple and it will echo the “failure to connect the dots” conversation that transpired after 9/11. It will have occurred because those who were charged with preventing such an attack failed to meet their duties.

The U.S. defense budget is roughly $700 billion and missile defense costs about $8 billion. The Heritage Foundation points out that is “less than one-70th of national defense spending.” That’s an insignificant amount of revenue considering the calamity missile defense could prevent.

By funding America’s missile defense system, Washington would be helping improve a program that is already a proven winner. In recent years 37 of 46 missile defense tests have been successful. The Obama administration is spending trillions of dollars where it should not; it is cutting expenditures where it should not. This is the road to fiscal ruin and security disaster.

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Joseph Bell has hosted a radio talk show and is a former editorial writer/columnist for several Connecticut newspapers. A former liberal Democrat, Bell has not been on the conservative side of the aisle for very long. He voted for Clinton/Gore in 1992. Abandoning the convictions that he had held and defended through adolescence and into adulthood was not easy. Sincere soul-searching and a commitment to distinguish fact from fiction compelled him to accept that liberal ideology was bankrupt.

jbellopedresponse@hotmail.com