Defending Missile Defense
Bush takes on the 9/11 critics.

By John J. Miller & Ramesh Ponnuru
October 12, 2001 2:50 p.m.

he smoke was still rising from lower Manhattan and the Pentagon when opponents of missile defense started suggesting that one of the great lessons of September 11 was that the United States shouldn't pursue anti-ballistic technology. "Eventually there will come a realization that these planes were missiles that a defense could not defend against," said Democratic senator Dianne Feinstein of California.

They always do this. Last year, right after the terrorist attack on the U.S.S. Cole, Newsweek's Jonathan Alter drew this lesson: "Last week's events were, if anything, an example of the limits of certainty and the inadequacy of missile defense, which (even if it eventually works) could obviously do nothing to stop a boat loaded with explosives from hitting the soft underbelly of American power."

It's a silly argument — like saying we shouldn't pursue anti-terrorism measures because they won't protect us against missile attacks. Of course, missile-defense supporters have never said anything so foolish.

Last night, a questioner at President Bush's press conference came at the matter from a slightly different angle. Doesn't maintaining the international coalition against terrorism require that Bush set aside his opposition to the ABM Treaty because Russian president Vladimir Putin and others so desperately want to keep it? Bush responded with the most convincing words he's spoken in support of missile defense: "I can't wait to visit with my friend Vladimir Putin in Shanghai to reiterate, once again, that the Cold War is over, it's done with, and that there are new threats that we face. And [there is] no better example of that new threat than the attack on America on September 11. And I'm going to ask my friend to envision a world in which a terrorist thug and/or a host nation might have the ability to develop — to deliver a weapon of mass destruction via a — via rocket. And wouldn't it be in our nations' advantage to be able to shoot it down?

"At the very least, it should be in our nations' advantage to determine whether we can shoot it down. And we're restricted from doing that because of an ABM Treaty that was signed during a totally different era. The case cannot be even — the case is more strong today than it was on September the 10th that the ABM is outmoded, outdated, reflects a different time."