Newt Gingrich and Nuclear Weapons

According to Newt Gingrich, Barack Obama is running a fantasy foreign policy.  His bases this on Obama's stated goal of eliminating nuclear weapons and by his response to North Korea's missile launch.  I think that Newt is way off here.  

I don't think that there is anyone who disagrees that the elimination of nuclear weapons is a good thing.   And while it may not be achievable anytime soon, it is not a bad thing to shoot for.  Obama did say that it may not happen in his lifetime.  And let us that forget that Obama is only echoing the words of Ronald Reagon who, in his second inaugural, called for an elimination of all nuclear weapons.  

Newt was also upset about Obama's response to North Korea's missile launch.  It's true that calling on the UN Security Council to act against North Korea didn't accomplish anything.   The United Nations is not that effective, but that doesn't mean that we ignore it.  I'm sure that Obama himself knew that the Security Council was unlikely to do anything.  The reality of situation is that until America is able to convince China to come along, it is going to be difficult to do anything about North Korea.  And it wasn't practical to take up Newt's idea to disable the missile before it launched.  I don't know if anyone is really interested in launching a military strike on North Korea at this point in time.  Even if we had disabled the missile it wouldn't have accomplished anything.  North Korea would still have nuclear weapons and they wouldn't just forget how to build missiles.

Let's not start comparing Barack to Jimmy Carter just yet.