Onward Christian Soldiers — And All Other Americans:
Gary Bauer Joins the Fight to Defend America

(Washington, D.C.): In what may prove to be a decisive moment in the struggle to bring to
an
end America’s dangerous policy of “assured vulnerability,”⁽¹⁾
Gary Bauer — one of the Nation’s
most dynamic and influential spokesman for its families, their values and interests — made a
stirring announcement in Chicago last Friday: Before a large audience assembled by the Heritage
Foundation’s Resource Bank, Mr. Bauer, president of the Family Research Council,
declared his
determination “in the months ahead…to do everything I can to arouse the pro-family and
pro-life movement around America to see [the issue of defending America against missile
attack] as a pro-family and pro-life issue.“

Highlights of the address made by Mr. Bauer, a former Assistant to President Reagan for
Policy
Development, included the following:

Well-Springs of Ronald Reagan’s Commitment to Defend America

“…Back in 1979, Ronald Reagan went out to NORAD in Colorado Springs — the
defense command center — he wanted to brief himself on issues he knew would come
up in the presidential campaign. And so he talked to the head of NORAD and he said,
‘Now, walk me through this, what exactly will you guys do if that warning system ever
tells you that an intercontinental ballistic missile is headed toward the United States?’

“The commander looks at Reagan and he says, ‘Well, I’ll get on the phone and
I’ll call the mayor of the city it’s headed to and I’ll tell him he’s got fifteen
minutes to get out of town.’ And Reagan said, ‘Well, of course, I know you’ll
try to give a warning to governmental officials. But what are the other
things that will click into action?’

“And this guy kind of shrugs and says ‘Well, uh, Mr. Reagan, we don’t
have any way to bring an ICBM down. If an enemy fires that missile at the
United States, and it is technologically a sound missile, and its guidance system is
correct, it will land on its target.

“And so Ronald Reagan, who was already obsessed with the idea he needed to
liberate Eastern Europe if he ever became President, now became obsessed with
another idea: that he would do something to end this morally bankrupt policy
that exposed Americans — our families and our communities — that left us
naked to the whims of our enemies. And so, as we all know, Ronald Reagan
came up with the Strategic Defense Initiative as a system. And SDI, along with
Ronald Reagan’s moral critique of the Soviet Union, not only ended the Cold
War; it brought the Soviet Union down.”

The Liberals’ Resistance to Defending America

“Now, what did American liberalism do? Well, you’ve got
to give them credit, I mean
here they are: They’ve lost their worldview on the Cold War. They’ve watched
Ronald Reagan triumph. They’ve watched the Soviet Union unravel. And [then] they
used the victory in the Cold War to help lull America back to sleep on the need
for a missile defense system. So SDI has been put on the back burner. And we know
we’re not going to get any action from the President on it. And we’ve gotten precious
little action from the Congress of the United States….”

The Present Danger

“The evidence is overwhelming that the threats to American lives and the lives
of
our friends are anything but remote. They are recent and they are real — whether
it is the basement of the World Trade Center or the driveway of the Central Intelligence
Agency, or whether or not it is a ballistic missile that could be fired by one of our
enemies or terrorists [operating] against the United States.”

What Can Be Done: The AEGIS Option

“Now, those who reflexively defend the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty know that
Americans, if ever they understand what’s going on, will be
outraged. And so, our
opponents tried to convince the American people that the technology doesn’t exist to
do anything about this problem. Or that it is so costly that we can’t afford to do it.
And both of those things are a lie.

“The truth of the matter is that we already have major progress in this area. The
technology is there. In fact, right now, as we meet in the heartland of America, a
thousand miles from any ocean, our Navy is on remote assignment around the
world, very close to the kind of threats that I am talking about. And those ships
on the high seas around the world have a high level of protection from cruise
missiles, from bombers and other offensive weapons, because of something we
call the AEGIS system….And that technology from the AEGIS system can be
used to accomplish what we want to accomplish to defend American
families.

“In fact, a blue-ribbon panel put together by the Heritage Foundation concluded
that virtually all of the necessary infrastructure, for a robust global missile
defense, has already been developed [and deployed] and, at a cost of several
billion dollars, [the needed upgrades] could be deployed.”⁽²⁾

What Must Now Be Done

“It seems to me that this is not only a defense
imperative. This is a moral
imperative. And our movement, and the politicians that claim to speak for our
movement, have got to find the courage to go to the American people, explain it to
them, and count on their common sense to know what we ought to do. I intend to
do
everything I can to make that happen.

“Let me take a moment to say a few words about the Anti-Ballistic Missile
Treaty that we signed in 1972 — a treaty that was signed with the now-defunct
Soviet Union. This treaty is what stands in the way of us deploying an effective
missile defense system. In my view, the treaty ought to be declared null and
void. It was made with an entity that no longer exists. And it now
handcuffs us from doing the moral thing that we ought to do to defend the
people and the families of the United States.

“…Over the years, I have been associated with a number of domestic moral
issues: the sanctity of human life, defense of the American family. I will obviously
continue to work on those issues, but I want to tell you today that the main
reason I came here at Heritage’s invitation was that I wanted to tell you that in
the months ahead I am going to do everything I can to arouse the pro-family
and pro-life movement around the country to see this as a pro-family and
pro-life issue.

“Yes, I want to save a million-and-a-half babies a year, but we also have a
moral
imperative to make sure that some morning we don’t wake up and find the
most horrible headline imaginable has taken place — that a missile has fallen
on a defenseless American city. And, my friends, I am telling you that if that
day ever comes, the American people will demand to know who was asleep at the
switch, how did this tragedy happen. This is a fight worth having, this is a
fight worth putting our political capital in, and I will do everything I can to
work with you to make sure that we do the moral thing on this issue.“

The Bottom Line

The Center for Security Policy joins the Heritage Foundation in saluting Gary Bauer — and in
welcoming the millions of Americans for whom he speaks as partners in the effort to change the
official policy that effectively requires the United States’ to remain vulnerable to weapons of mass
destruction from any and all quarters. With Mr. Bauer’s moral leadership and the
power of those
who share his commitment to this country’s families and communities, an end to the posture of
“assured vulnerability” may at last be at hand.

– 30 –

1. See the Center’s Decision Brief entitled
Memo to the President (No. 98-D
71, 27 April 1998).

2. The Heritage Foundation’s study can be accessed via the World
Wide Web at the following
address: href=”https://www.heritage.org”>www.heritage.org. See also the Center’s
Decision Brief entitled Words to Live By: Speaker Gingrich
Asks Clinton to Use Speech to the
Nation to Begin Protecting It From Missile Attack (No.
98-D 15, 23 January 1998).