News coming out of the Middle East has reminded me of President Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative, which critics called “Star Wars” — a missile defense system that would protect the United States from attack by intercontinental ballistic missiles. Reagan thought the existing policy known as “mutually assured destruction” or “MAD” was nothing but a suicide pact, and on March 23, 1983, he called upon scientists and engineers to develop a system that would counter the threat of nuclear weapons by destroying missiles before they could hit. The Department of Defense set up its SDI program in 1984. Reagan was ridiculed for thinking that incoming missiles could be taken out before hitting the country.
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