During the campaign, Barack Obama was ambiguous, at best, on whether as chief executive he would support completing development and deployment of the U.S anti-ballistic missile defense system first proposed in 1983 by President Reagan. Now this ambiguity has now become a destabilizing factor because it encourages strategically risky probes by powers like Russia in seeking to determine the incoming president’s real position. That’s why Obama’s half-hearted pledge on the campaign trail of support only for missile defense technology that has been “proved” was so disturbing. The pledge led Time magazine last summer to list Obama as a missile defense supporter, but his use of “proved” suggested he only supported infalliable systems. To demand infallibility is to demand the impossible.

Obama should not wait till Jan. 20, 2009, to clarify his position. The moral case for completing the world’s first functional missile defense is compelling. Ballistic missile attacks on the U.S. homeland could kill millions of Americans if the weapon carried a nuclear, chemical, or biological warhead. If we can knock down those incoming missiles as soon as possible after they are launched, countless lives would be saved. Saving lives, especially in defense of human freedom, is a moral good. And missile defense is workable. On Nov. 1, the Navy successfully tested the sea-based components of the missile defense system, destroying an incoming missile target. On Sept. 28, the Army tested its land-based system, killing another incoming missile target. This was the sixth success in ten tests of the missile defense system. The liberal line that missile defense is a fanciful “Star Wars” scheme is so outdated as to be either a delusion or a purposeful lie.