U.S. MISSILE DEFENDERS NEED TO KEEP ON SHOOTING: My latest Creators Syndicate column. Yesterday’s test of the Ground-based Missile Defense system was successful. The interceptor downed an ICBM target missile. That’s good news. However, ugly domestic politics has slowed development and deployment of missile defense systems. (bumped)

BACKGROUND: This update includes a good discussion of the Ground Based interceptor that was tested yesterday.

U.S. MISSILE DEFENDERS NEED TO KEEP ON SHOOTING: My latest Creators Syndicate column. Yesterday’s test of the Ground-based Missile Defense system was successful. The interceptor downed an ICBM target missile. That’s good news. However, ugly domestic politics has slowed development and deployment of missile defense systems.

For over two decades, often-hysterical opposition from the American political left stalled deployment of an operational missile shield. Their hysteria was a fossil rite drawing on their Cold War opposition to President Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative.

During the Clinton Administration, left-liberal Democrats ritually demonized missile-defense. Testing and development slowed. In 2003, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi opined: “The United States does not need a multi-billion-dollar national missile defense against the possibility of a nuclear-armed ICBM. What we need is a strong nonproliferation policy with other nations to combat the most serious threat to our national security.”

Hey Nancy, do you mean a strong nonproliferation policy, like the Clinton Administration’s 1994 Agreed Framework? That deal gave Kim Jong Un’s grandfather, Kim Il Sung, heavy fuel oil and technical assistance if Pyongyang shutdown its nuclear reactors producing weapons-grade plutonium. That charade failed, Nancy, utterly and completely.

Enjoy the whole thing.