Editor, Gazette-Journal:

This past December, 41 Senators wrote President Obama and urged him to initiate a program for modernizing our nuclear arsenal. The senators tied their support for the START treaty to a renewed emphasis to modernize our nuclear weapons.

Unfortunately, the senators appear to have lost sight of the necessity for that modernization. President Obama appears to be dead set against modernizing our nuclear deterrent. According to Frank Gaffney Jr. of the Center for Security Policy, the U.S. nuclear deterrent arsenal contains weapons that contain vacuum tubes, a technology long since surpassed.

Today children’s video games contain a more advanced and reliable technology than our nuclear deterrent, the deterrent has protected this nation through the Cold War and into a new century, yet this administration places little emphasis upon maintaining a strong deterrent.

The Obama Administration is neglecting the nation’s nuclear deterrence while emboldening our enemies, and denigrating our allies. Thomas Jefferson once said, "single acts of tyranny may be ascribed to the accidental opinion of a day, but a series of oppressions, begun at a distinguished period, and pursued unalterably through every change of ministers, too plainly prove a deliberate, systematical plan of reducing us to slavery."

Jefferson’s words could well be applied to the current and previous neglect of our nation’s defense and borders. No doubt eliminating nuclear weapons is an admirable aspiration. But it is not a viable strategy in today’s world.

Likewise, it is foolhardy to permit our nuclear deterrent to deteriorate from neglect. This administration appears to be ambivalent and without a strategy. You simply cannot ignore the threat and fail to maintain a credible deterrent and expect to survive and remain a free people. It was Iran’s Ahmadinejah who said, "A world without America is not only desirable, it is achievable."

Obama became President of the United States at a critical time for the country and the world. With two plus years remaining to this president, the security and defense of this country can be restored; however, continued neglect of our nuclear deterrent and relegating acts of terrorism to "a man-caused disaster" simply will not meet the many threats confronting this nation and people.

Andrew Maggard

Port Haywood, Va.