Daniel Henninger
WSJ, Apr. 17, 2024
“If we have learned anything the past three years, it is that Mr. Biden is saturated in the don’t-provoke-a-response school of foreign policy.”
Allow me to identify who saved the people of Israel last weekend from Iran’s missile barrage: Ronald Reagan.
In 1983, President Reagan in a televised speech proposed what he called the Strategic Defense Initiative. Its core idea was that the U.S. would build defence systems that could shoot down nuclear-armed ballistic missiles, then expected to be fired by the Soviet Union at the U.S. mainland.
Democrats and much of the defence establishment mocked the idea, with Sen. Ted Kennedy naming it “Star Wars.” Sen. Joe Biden summed up the opposition in a 1986 speech to the National Press Club:
“Star Wars represents a fundamental assault on the concepts, alliances and arms-control agreements that have buttressed American security for several decades, and the president’s continued adherence to it constitutes one of the most reckless and irresponsible acts in the history of modern statecraft.”
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