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Right-Wing Pundits React To Obama's Missile Defense Move

Eric Kleefeld | September 17, 2009, 4:42PM

Pres. Barack Obama

Missile Defense

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As you can imagine, conservative pundits have not been taking kindly to President Obama's decision to scrap the Bush administration's planned missile defense sites in Eastern Europe.

National Review is turning into a hub of criticism. In its official editorial, the magazine says that any possible decrease in the relevant threat from Iran would have happened because of this program itself -- and they favorably quote the wisdom of Don Rumsfeld:

If Iran has in fact slowed down its work in this area -- a claim that national-security experts have questioned -- it may have been in response to American determination to construct a NATO-approved system in Eastern Europe. Today's announcement may persuade Tehran to reconsider and look for ways to exploit a new vulnerability. As Donald Rumsfeld once warned, weakness is provocative.

John Bolton also spoke to National Review, and as you an imagine he's not very happy. "This is just pre-emptive capitulation, although like everything else, the rhetoric is that we're doing the opposite," said Bolton. He also said that intelligence showing a low potential threat from Iran is "inadequate." And he criticized Sec. of Defense Robert Gates, who is of course a holdover from the Bush administration: "Gates was a problem in the Bush administration on missile defense. He was always weak on this."

National Review's Mona Charen offered this description of Obama's foreign policy: "Coddle Your Enemies; Betray Your Friends."

Mitt Romney used National Review's Corner blog as a platform to air his statement. Key quote:

Iran is not cooperating with the IAEA. It is rushing headlong towards nuclear capability -- it may already have enough enriched uranium to build a bomb. And it may well have secured access to missile technology from other nations. North Korea is, of course, much further along. And Pakistan, a state threatened from within by jihadists, has extensive nuclear capabilities. In such an environment, it is alarming and dangerous for the president to walk away from our missile-defense commitments.

Over at the Weekly Standard, Michael Goldfarb said this was "based purely on ideology," and that administration was promoting "smears of missile defense." He also attacked Obama for having always opposed missile defense -- and ridiculed Obama as "an Illinois state senator":

What did an Illinois state senator know about proven or unproven missile defense systems? Nothing -- but it was totally conventional left-wing politics to be against Star Wars type systems. He may have dodged the issue during the presidential campaign, but no one had any doubt where this was headed. No Republicans thought that those installations would survive Obama's gutting of the Pentagon's procurement programs. Republicans should not give up hope though. Unlike most other Democratic initiatives, this one is not irreversible. We will have missile defense someday and there is nothing the Democrats can do to stop it. They can only delay it. We will have to hope they do not delay past the moment when we most need it.

From Jennifer Rubin at Commentary:

It will be interesting to see if any in the president's party leap to his defense. This embarrassing display of weakness at the expense of allies who have stuck by us, and supplied troops to aid in America's war efforts when their Western European neighbors did not, may be a bridge too far even for most of them.

Max Boot, also at Commentary, concedes that the missile defense sites themselves were not actually important -- but says this represents a display of weakness to Russia:

The Obama administration's decision to scrap the missile-defense sites planned for Poland and the Czech Republic is bad news. Not so much because the sites are vital to the defense of America or our allies. The administration is undoubtedly right when it says that the immediate threat posed by Iranian missiles is more short-range and that it will be a while before Iran has longer-range missiles capable of hitting Europe. Thus it makes sense to concentrate for the moment on building shorter-range missile defenses. And even longer-range sites don't necessarily have to be located in Eastern Europe for maximum effectiveness.

All that is true. It is also irrelevant. For the issue of the missile-defense sites had long ago taken on a life of its own. They had occasioned endless bluster and threats from Putin and his gang in the Kremlin who believed, or pretended to believe, that this small number of interceptors was somehow a threat to Russia. How a purely defensive system could threaten another country remains to be understood. The Russians apparently think they have a divine right to threaten Europe with nuclear annihilation and anything that interferes with this is "destabilizing." Actually the missile-defense sites posed no threat to Russia's vast missile arsenal, and Putin undoubtedly knew this.