Back in 1983 President Reagan announce his Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) ... an intended ground-based and satellite-based protective shield against hostile ICBMs ... which was often credited with ending the Cold War with the Soviet Union ... since it knew that it couldn't make an equivalent investment. Democrats in the United States, along with their media acolytes, dubbed Reagan's effort with the derisive term "Star Wars". That was 34 years ago! ... more than three times the span of our efforts to land on the moon. And, since then, this snide attitude toward Star Wars has kept this now-critical technology underfunded and under-researched.
Now, faced with an ICBM threat from North Korea, the U.S. does have an anemic SDI ... but relatively untested and under deployed. Four presidents have come and gone since Reagan, two Democrats and two Republicans, none of which have showed a gut-level commitment to this anti-ballistic missile system ... resulting in our current weak posture. Shame on us! We should have had an impenetrable system by now against such threats ... one which would keep North Korea, China, Russia, Iran and other potential bad actors from threatening America's resolve.
The fact that we are so relatively unprepared for North Korea's bluster is a shame that both political parties share ... having spent trillions of dollars on everything but our most critical investment ... our defense against despots.
