Yesterday’s lead editorial in the Wall Street Journal, available here, makes many of those same points, asking yet again why it is that Democrats oppose the defense of the United States:
When President Bush announced the U.S. withdrawal from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty five years ago, Democrats howled. Pulling out of the treaty to roll out missile defense would, they predicted, lead to a new arms race, undermine American security and in any case was unnecessary. "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.
Apparently no one bothered to translate "specious" into Korean. North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il has now defied world opinion by test-firing a Taepodong-2 missile capable of hitting San Francisco. The fact that the missile failed is small consolation, since we are also now seeing in Lebanon a further proliferation of missiles from Syria and Iran that can reach deep into Israel. Does anyone doubt that Iran, or some other adversary, will build an ICBM capable of hitting the U.S. as soon as it is able?
An excellent question, and one worthy of a cogent answer. The only answer offered last week was some nonsense about “article of faith” and a plaintive wail that “it won’t work” – an argument much more suited to the embryonic stem cell research position of liberals argued with such vehemence this past week.
In conclusion, the Journal editorialist makes an excellent point, one that I had completely overlooked:
By investing in this capability, the U.S. may even deter the world's rogues from investing heavily in missile technology. Defense dollars are limited, even in terror regimes, and they won't invest their money in weapons that won't work. With the expanding North Korean and Iran missile threats, it'd be nice to think Democrats would acknowledge their mistakes. But we'd gladly forgo any apologies if liberal Democrats would finally admit that missile defenses are a necessary part of America's antiterror state arsenal.
One of the principle reasons Americans are so reluctant to entrust the nation’s defenses to Democrats is the left’s blatantly willful lack of seriousness about the subject. If the North Koreans’ demonstrated determination to develop a full ICBM capacity can’t stir the party of Truman and JFK from their lethargy, one has to wonder if a Syrian Vx warhead hitting Haifa or Tel Aviv would make any difference either.