Straight From The Hart
Joan Rowden Hart
Watching the news coverage of the performance of the Iron Dome over Israel has been a fascinating experience for me. Certainly I support Israel in its defense efforts and regret that the Dome even has to be used for such a thing, but the news reports about the Dome remind me of an exciting time in my life back in the Reagan era.
I served as Laclede County chairman for the Reagan campaigns in the 80’s, and In that context, one of Lt. Gen. Daniel Graham’s associates in the High Frontier organization approached me about becoming a part of the National Speakers’ Bureau for the Strategic Defense Initiative, also known as the SDI.
At that time, the defense policy of the United States consisted of the Mutually Assured Destruction doctrine, appropriately nick-named MAD, which simply meant that the Soviets knew that if they attacked us and killed our citizens, we had more than enough weapons to retaliate and kill even more of them, so in effect both nations were held hostage by the other.
As Ronald Reagan's military adviser in his 1976 and 1980 campaigns, Lt. Gen. Graham was responsible for having President Reagan articulate the crucial question on March 23, 1983: "Would it not be better to save lives than to avenge them?"
President Reagan then proposed the concept of using a ground and space-based defense system, and the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization was set up in 1984 within the Dept. of Defense.
If it had not been for Gen. Graham’s leadership, President Reagan would not have had the vision of a defense against ballistic missiles, and the United States would not have had a project called SDI; and many defense experts believe that had it not been for this project and the threat of what it could do, the Cold War would have been lost.
The following language is taken from one of the tributes offered up in the House of Repesentatives after Lt.Gen. Graham’s death.
“It is now clear that we won the Cold War when Mikhail Gorbachev reluctantly concluded that he couldn't talk Reagan out of SDI (at Geneva or elsewhere), and that the miserable Soviet economy couldn't match U.S. expenditures for building a nuclear defense. When Reagan called on Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall, the media laughed; but SDI turned that "pie-in-the-sky" prediction into reality.”
General Graham had a much-decorated 30-year military career that included service in Germany, Korea and Vietnam and was capped by serving as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. In retirement, he rejected lucrative offers from defense contractors and dedicated his life to American national defense.
So when I was asked to participate as a representative of the SDI project, I thought about Mrs. Mae Riley, one of my high school science teachers, and how it would have thrown her into a tailspin because she knew I had never had a scientific bone in my body and my grades proved it.
But I grew up in the Cold War Era, where we kids often ran outside to look up at low-flying planes to see if they looked like Russian bombers. Some of you will remember those days when we lived in fear of being “attacked by the Russians”, and we had the “duck and cover” drills in elementary school just in case, (as though our little school desks would have shielded us from such a possibility.)
So even as an adult, I have always been a “hawk” with very vocal opinions about the need for a strong national defense.
Plus I always enjoyed a challenge, and the idea of learning about the trajectories of Intercontinental ballistic missiles, and “star war” type defense shields, and all the associated elements of the project was too provocative to turn down.
So I received a grant from the High Frontier, which was a non-governmental, non tax supported, policy organization “think tank” set up by Lt. Gen. Graham, for the purposes of studying and promoting defense systems in space.
The organization sent me to Washington, D.C. for a seminar lasting several days where we met with Lt. Gen. Graham and several retired NATO officials and other defense experts, and were given an intensive training course in the concepts of the Strategic Defense Initiative.
After I returned to Lebanon, I spoke to most of our service organizations here and throughout the state as a representative for High Frontier and the SDI.
So when I learned that the Israeli Iron Dome had been built as a joint venture between the US and Israel and patterned somewhat after the SDI concept, and as I watched it shoot down many of the incoming sub-Scuds from Gaza, it made me proud to have been a very minute part of the whole thing almost thirty years ago, at least to the extent that I still kind of understand how it works
I served as Laclede County chairman for the Reagan campaigns in the 80’s, and In that context, one of Lt. Gen. Daniel Graham’s associates in the High Frontier organization approached me about becoming a part of the National Speakers’ Bureau for the Strategic Defense Initiative, also known as the SDI.
At that time, the defense policy of the United States consisted of the Mutually Assured Destruction doctrine, appropriately nick-named MAD, which simply meant that the Soviets knew that if they attacked us and killed our citizens, we had more than enough weapons to retaliate and kill even more of them, so in effect both nations were held hostage by the other.
As Ronald Reagan's military adviser in his 1976 and 1980 campaigns, Lt. Gen. Graham was responsible for having President Reagan articulate the crucial question on March 23, 1983: "Would it not be better to save lives than to avenge them?"
President Reagan then proposed the concept of using a ground and space-based defense system, and the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization was set up in 1984 within the Dept. of Defense.
If it had not been for Gen. Graham’s leadership, President Reagan would not have had the vision of a defense against ballistic missiles, and the United States would not have had a project called SDI; and many defense experts believe that had it not been for this project and the threat of what it could do, the Cold War would have been lost.
The following language is taken from one of the tributes offered up in the House of Repesentatives after Lt.Gen. Graham’s death.
“It is now clear that we won the Cold War when Mikhail Gorbachev reluctantly concluded that he couldn't talk Reagan out of SDI (at Geneva or elsewhere), and that the miserable Soviet economy couldn't match U.S. expenditures for building a nuclear defense. When Reagan called on Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall, the media laughed; but SDI turned that "pie-in-the-sky" prediction into reality.”
General Graham had a much-decorated 30-year military career that included service in Germany, Korea and Vietnam and was capped by serving as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. In retirement, he rejected lucrative offers from defense contractors and dedicated his life to American national defense.
So when I was asked to participate as a representative of the SDI project, I thought about Mrs. Mae Riley, one of my high school science teachers, and how it would have thrown her into a tailspin because she knew I had never had a scientific bone in my body and my grades proved it.
But I grew up in the Cold War Era, where we kids often ran outside to look up at low-flying planes to see if they looked like Russian bombers. Some of you will remember those days when we lived in fear of being “attacked by the Russians”, and we had the “duck and cover” drills in elementary school just in case, (as though our little school desks would have shielded us from such a possibility.)
So even as an adult, I have always been a “hawk” with very vocal opinions about the need for a strong national defense.
Plus I always enjoyed a challenge, and the idea of learning about the trajectories of Intercontinental ballistic missiles, and “star war” type defense shields, and all the associated elements of the project was too provocative to turn down.
So I received a grant from the High Frontier, which was a non-governmental, non tax supported, policy organization “think tank” set up by Lt. Gen. Graham, for the purposes of studying and promoting defense systems in space.
The organization sent me to Washington, D.C. for a seminar lasting several days where we met with Lt. Gen. Graham and several retired NATO officials and other defense experts, and were given an intensive training course in the concepts of the Strategic Defense Initiative.
After I returned to Lebanon, I spoke to most of our service organizations here and throughout the state as a representative for High Frontier and the SDI.
So when I learned that the Israeli Iron Dome had been built as a joint venture between the US and Israel and patterned somewhat after the SDI concept, and as I watched it shoot down many of the incoming sub-Scuds from Gaza, it made me proud to have been a very minute part of the whole thing almost thirty years ago, at least to the extent that I still kind of understand how it works
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