"Provide for the Common Defense"

It's time to tell Americans the truth about their vulnerability. More important still, it's time to defend them.

by Rod D. Martin
November 13, 1998

There is very little our government does which actually falls within those powers granted by the Constitution, but among those things which do is national defense. And as one might expect in the looking-glass world of Washington, national defense, for all the billions spent on it, is one of the powers Washington exercises least.

Nowhere is this more true than in the field of ballistic missile defense.

While American troops patrol more than one hundred foreign countries, not one air defense battery, not one Patriot missile site, defends America itself. America actively helps Israel build its missile defense system, and Bill Clinton just promised to fund a defense for Japan; and yet at home he dismisses the idea as "Star Wars." It simply boggles the mind.

The danger is acute. Late this summer, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's bipartisan Ballistic Missile Threat Commission finally reported to Congress. According to the commission's report, hostile …