U.S.-Japan anti-ballistic missile test in the Pacific
Source: Honolulu Star Bulletin

OK so the U.S. and Japan don’t have such great soccer teams this year. The trans-Pacific allies seem to do other things better.

Like blast incoming nuclear missiles out of the sky.

In news that just feels good to wake up to, a U.S.-Japan team near San Diego shot down an incoming medium-range test missile off Kauai in six minutes, 100 miles high, demonstrating to the madman ruling North Korea that his technology and his nuclear threats are obsolete. And that we mean victory.

Source: Navy Times

We are not all the way there to being able to shoot down long range missiles, but we are getting closer and we are working closely with Japan, so this may be historic. For Kim, this means that any of our cruisers and destroyers will be capable of anti-missile platforms.

There is a perception out there that the U.S. can be defeated by its own democracy and its own technology. And further, that the West can be defeated by its own democracy-induced softness, which can be worn down by homocidal lunatics, so there’s no point in defending oneself.

The logic goes that U.S. can invent or improve nuclear weapons all it likes but once North Korea gets hold of them, all its efforts are nullified, and the world is a more dangerous place than ever, so resistance is futile. (Not to mention the Western-side contradictory argument that only the U.S. is warlike enough to use nuclear weapons and North Korea and Iran are places of ‘peace.’) In either case, the U.S. bears the brunt of the threat and the burden of proof of its intentions, while iron-fisted tyrants, unfettered by accountability to any people, see nukes and bombs as their ticket to power and influence.

Lunatics like Iran and North Korea believe this, which gives them the courage to carry on. This week, North Korea threatened to test-fire a 9000-mile range test missile at the U.S. Pacific coast. The currency markets felt it. President Bush was on the phone with Japan and the men and women with radar screens and supercomputers were on high alert in classified installations around Vandenberg, Point Loma, Colorado, Fort Huachuca and in the places we don’t know about. But no one knew for sure if they could do anything.

And the rest of the world shivers, wondering if freedom and not appeasement is worth it.

Why be democratic? Why develop technology? Why use your mind and think freely and invent and be accountable for your actions to be able to develop these missiles against utterly menacing tyranny?

Victory over the enemies of freedom is why.

This missile test shows that the U.S. and Japan also can move the goalposts set by the world’s most odious tyrants and reverse the whole picture as surely as any grimy terrorist resplendent in a bomb belt can. For everything they can imitate and steal, for every weapon they can capture and turn on us, we can move faster to come up with something new.

Suddenly, North Korea’s Lil Kim doesn’t look so powerful. Suddenly Iran is wondering if menace and nukes are the best thing for their perpetration in power. They just woke up to a Thunderbird-fueled hangover.

And the world outlook for freedom and democratic revolution this morning just got brighter.