Obama Will Forget Reykjavik as He 'Resets' Relations with Russia

The world watched on as two men who controlled enough explosive power to destroy the world negotiated. There was hope that peace would be developed between two nations whose alliance ended after World War II. Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev had previous made progress in other summits, but this one would be different. The cameras would show Reagan walking out, and they story lines centered around the dangerous cowboy with his trigger finger ready on the button. Nothing could have been further from the truth, but that was the spin.

Reagan walked out because he didn't want to compromise future peace by working to make nuclear weapons obsolete. Reagan knew as long as there was a threat, you could never have peace from the threat of nuclear weapons. Gorbachev wanted Reagan to agree not to develop what the media dubbed Star Wars, the Strategic Defense Initiative. SDI is a defense system that would protect from a nuclear attack and give hope that if a foreign madman attacked the United States that our country would remove the threat. Reagan even saw the possibility of sharing the technology with his Soviet counterparts to further bring peace, but that wasn't good enough.

Gorbachev kept demanding the United States walk away from missile defense, and Reagan kept saying I won't do that. Reagan's leadership shined that day in Reykjavik, Iceland. He saw peace in the form of strength, and Gorbachev and Reagan agreed to reduce nuclear weapons before Reagan left office without walking away from SDI.

Today, we have proven technology that will destroy a missile heading towards the United States. Consider this interview with Lieutenant General Trey Obering:

Our testing has shown not only can we hit a bullet with a bullet, we can hit a
spot on the bullet with a bullet. The technology has caught up. What we have
discovered is, a lot of those folks that have not been in this administration
seem to be dated in terms of the program. They are kind of calibrated back in
the 2000 time frame.

The problem is not that we have the technology, but that we have Obama. Obama believes he can make friends with the most despicable people on the planet by sacrificing strength. This week he during his fourth international trip, he will be in Russia. At the meetings, once again the Russians will ask us to walk away from a defense system designed to protect, not attack. I fear we won't see the leadership we saw in Iceland in October 1986. Obama's desire to befriend those who don't have America's best interest in mind places missile defense on the bargaining table, and in doing so, he sacrifices the safety of all Americans. I hope I am wrong, and Obama sees the necessities of the results of Reagan's SDI program. I don't hold my breath.