Ronald Reagan the Anti-Nuke Activist

By Douglas V. Gibbs

Neurotic Liberal Tom recently left a string of quotes by Ronald Reagan in my comment section to show how Reagan was some kind of anti-nuclear weapons activist. I did not post the comments, I deleted them, and then Tom left a new comment taunting me and saying that he was surprised I didn't post the comments since I love Ronald Reagan so much.

The reason I didn't approve the comments are because they were out of context.

The context is, any sane individual alive would love to see a world without nuclear weapons, no different than any sane individual alive would love to see a world without war. But that does not make everyone a bunch of peaceniks, in the sense that Tom looks at it. The intentions of leftists are reasonable. It is their methods that are not.

Reagan knew that to achieve a world without nuclear weapons it could not be accomplished through unilateral disarmament. You can get rid of your weapons all you wish, but the enemy will still be armed. And you aren't going to be able to convince the enemy to disarm anytime soon. So, Reagan thought about the situation, and realized that in the face of a strong enemy, we had to maintain our own strength by being superior when it came to nuclear weapons, in order to keep the peace.

So, what is the best way to rid the world of nuclear weapons?

Ronald Reagan reasoned that the best way to get rid of nuclear weapons was to make them obsolete, hence, the reason for his pursuit of the SDI technology. SDI is a missile defense system, Star Wars some might call it, that would create a defense grid that would shoot missiles out of the air, or cause them to detonate when they are at an altitude that would make such an explosion harmless. That would make nuclear weapons obsolete.

Now, that wouldn't necessarily make them completely obsolete. We would still have to worry about the terrorists with nuclear weapons that are not deployed by missile systems, but the primary terror of nuclear war would be averted.

That is the context of Ronald Reagan's anti-nuke comments.

Yes, of course Reagan wanted to eliminate nuclear weapons from the face of the Earth. Everybody alive would prefer that (or at least every sane person alive). There is nobody alive, and sane, that would not want a world without nuclear weapons. But it all comes down to methods. What is the best way to achieve that goal. You don't do it by unilaterally disarming yourself, and then setting yourself up to be a sitting duck, like Obama is pursuing.

That creates too much risk. The enemy will not disarm just because you decided to.

Peace is achieved through strength, and if you have the strength to pursue policies that create systems like SDI, and in turn make the weapons of the enemy obsolete, isn't that a lot better than unilaterally disarming and waving a big white flag?

The Strategic Defense Initiative that Reagan created then would achieve two goals: Peace, and the elimination of Nuclear Weapons.

Leftist Propagandists like Tom, however, are too stupid to recognize that. People like him are so busy trying to spin things that they are unable to recognize the obvious, and that is a real shame.

-- Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary