Reagan SDI Anniversary Exposes Obama's Weaknesses
IBDEditorials.com
National Security: Saturday marks the 30th anniversary of perhaps the most consequential presidential announcement in history. But Reagan's visionary SDI speech was about more than missile defense.
It's strangely appropriate that President Obama ends his trip to the Mideast, featuring an overdue visit to staunch U.S. ally Israel, with an outing Saturday to Jordan's stunning ancient city of Petra.
Carved into a rock face 2,000 years ago, Petra was a commercial crossroads linking southern Arabia, China and India with Egypt, Greece, Rome and Syria.
The president visits this man-made embodiment of world history three decades to the day after a wiser predecessor set world history on a new path of hope.
No one judged the consequences of a national security decision more deftly than Ronald Reagan did on March 23, 1983. And with the possible exception of Jimmy Carter, no president has ever misjudged the effects of his naive foreign policy more disastrously than Obama.
In his first year as president, Obama went to Cairo University and told Muslim Brotherhood members and others of the "new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world" he sought.
He apologized for the U.S. "role in the overthrow of a democratically elected Iranian government" in 1953 — an act that saved Iranians from Soviet domination.
Less than four years later, only 10% of Israelis view this U.S. president favorably — while Muslims with whom he sought a new beginning deface Obama's image in demonstrations against his Mideast visit.
Islamofascist Iran is now, according to the White House, a year away from nuclear arms, and the "Arab Spring" Obama's apologies helped spawn has turned Egypt from a U.S. ally into a possible foe under the control of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Compare Obama's failure to realize the havoc he was wreaking to the astonishing prescience of Ronald Reagan. Addressing the nation, he asked, "What if free people could live secure in the knowledge that their security did not rest upon the threat of instant U.S. retaliation to deter a Soviet attack, that we could intercept and destroy strategic ballistic missiles before they reached our own soil or that of our allies?"
He knew missile defense was "a formidable technical task, one that may not be accomplished before the end of this century."
But by committing America to it, Soviet communism was a few years later relegated to "the ash-heap of history," as Reagan had promised the year before.
He walked out of the 1986 Reykjavik summit when Mikhail Gorbachev insisted that the U.S. abandon missile defense, which made America's commitment crystal clear to Moscow. When Ronald Reagan gathered his papers and walked away from the table in Iceland, that was the moment the Free World won the Cold War.
As much as President Obama has undermined or canceled missile defense projects like the airborne laser, Reagan's SDI speech underlines a more fundamental difference between the 40th and 44th presidents: Reagan had historical foresight rooted in wisdom and common sense, both sadly lacking in our current leader.