Should national missile defense be considered a moral issue?
A. Yes. Missile defense is a moral issue because the government’s first duty is to provide for the common defense. A policy that purposely leaves a nation’s citizens vulnerable to attack, when the means for defending them is readily available, is an immoral policy. Moreover, the United States’ exclusive reliance on retaliatory threats to dissuade aggression is morally questionable in light of the availability of defensive technologies that can serve the same purpose. If a state attacked the United States with missiles, the President would have no alternative but to retaliate, which likely would result in the deaths of many innocent civilians, or to capitulate. The deployment of a national missile defense presents a morally sound alternative between these two extremes. As President Reagan emphasized in his initial SDI speech in 1983, it is better to have a policy based on saving lives rather than avenging them. Q. The United States still has thousands of nuclear weapons. Why isn’t the t
