March 12, 2008 | By Nathaniel Ward

Cheney marks missile defense anniversary at Heritage

	Featured video Vice President Cheney speaks at The Heritage Foundation’s missile defense event. More videos »

Ronald Reagan’s push for the Strategic Defense Initiative helped win the Cold War and laid the groundwork for today’s missile defense program, Vice President Cheney said Tuesday at a Heritage Foundation event celebrating the 25th anniversary of the SDI.

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), former Attorney General and Heritage Ronald Reagan Fellow Ed Meese, and Heritage President Ed Feulner also spoke to mark this special occasion in Washington, D.C.

» Watch the video of Vice President Cheney’s remarks

» Read a transcript the Vice President’s speech

President Reagan inaugurated the missile defense program when he announced the Strategic Defense Initiative on March 23, 1983. He proposed a plan that would allow us to “intercept and destroy strategic ballistic missiles before they reached our own soil or that of our allies”

“Reagan’s vision of missile defense surely helped accelerate our victory in the Cold War,” Cheney said.

But even though the world has changed, the need for missile defense remains, he continued. “The world has changed dramatically since the Reagan years. There is no more Soviet Union, and Russia is no longer an enemy. Yet President Reagan would also recognize the other dangers that have emerged, and the urgency of defending ourselves against those dangers. Yes, he would say, the world has changed, but the need for missile defense is still great.”

“It’s plain to see that the world around us gives ample reason to continue working on missile defense,” he added.

» Take our poll: Has America’s missile defense program made the nation safer?

How Heritage advanced missile defense

Heritage national security Baker Spring points out that The Heritage Foundation was critical to the Reagan administration’s adoption of the SDI.

The Heritage Foundation is proud to have been there before the President’s historic speech. In 1982, The Heritage Foundation sponsored the release of the High Frontier study. The study proposed using the U.S. technological lead in space to field just the sort of missile defense proposed by President Reagan. As the study’s primary author, the late Lt. Gen. Daniel O. Graham, put it, “In the fall of 1981, High Frontier became a project of The Heritage Foundation where it has profited from the strong support of Mr. Edwin Feulner, Jr., President.”

By taking on the challenge of missile defense, Spring continues, President Reagan brought America “immediate and long-term advantages, ranging from hastening the end of the Cold War to establishing the foundation for a U.S. strategic policy that accounts for and adapts to the perplexing challenges presented by a multi-polar world.”

“The enduring power of a good idea is an amazing thing to behold,” Spring concludes.

Other Heritage work of note

• Entrepreneurship and Entitlements. The 2009 budget proposed by liberals in Congress would raise taxes by $3,135 per household annually, Heritage’s Brian Riedl reports. Furthermore, the budget increases discretionary spending by eight percent, does nothing to curb runaway government spending on entitlements, and paves the way for further tax increases down the line. Meanwhile, J.D. Foster points to a tax increase hidden in the budget’s fix for the Alternative Minimum Tax, and Shanea Watkins warns that the budget could cause “about one million fewer jobs to be created, and could lower economic output by more than $100 billion compared to what it would have been.”

• Protect America. “No phrase has done more to confuse the public and distort informed debate over foreign surveillance than ‘warrantless wiretapping,’” Heritage legal expert Andrew Grossman points out. In fact, the important terrorist surveillance legislation that Congress recently allowed to lapse “has nothing at all to do with domestic wiretapping and has only an incidental relation to Americans' communications.”

• First Principles. The New York Times recently echoed inaccurate left-wing arguments that in-person voter fraud is practically nonexistent. In a new Heritage paper, former Federal Election Commissioner Hans von Spakovsky points out that a major case of documented voter fraud took place right in the Times’ backyard. Voter identifications requirements are a sensible solution to this problem, he concludes.

In other news

• President Bush has promised to veto any legislation restoring the so-called “Fairness Doctrine.” The government abandoned this pernicious regulation, which stifled free speech on the airwaves, in the 1980s.

• Liberals in Congress are pursuing compromise legislation that would grant temporary visas to illegal immigrants, Roll Call reports. Lawmakers should keep in mind the principles of immigration reform that Heritage experts outlined last year.

• Mohammed Jawad faces arraignment today before a war crimes tribunal.  Jawad allegedly used a grenade to injure two soldiers and an interpreter in Afghanistan.

• Enemy combatants detained in Guantanamo Bay will soon be allowed regular phone calls to family members.

• New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer has resigned after revelations about his ties to a prostitution ring.

• An independent panel will now be tasked with investigating ethics violations by members of the House of Representatives, according to rule changes passed Tuesday.

Coming up at Heritage

To attend these or any other events at Heritage please RSVP at Heritage’s website.  Or you can view these events live online.  All times are Eastern.

• On Thursday, March 13 at noon, author Os Guinness explains the need for civility in public debates.

• On Monday, March 17 at noon, a panel of experts including Claudia Rosett of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies discusses censorship of news critical of the United Nations.

Nathaniel Ward is the Editor of MyHeritage.org—a website for members and supporters of The Heritage Foundation. Chris Albright contributed to this report.

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