Nigeria, March 26 -- Bad ideas do not necessarily die; they retire to museums of failure and folly, awaiting to be revived by the next proponent who should know better. The Iron Dome shield vision of US President Donald Trump, intended to intercept and destroy incoming missiles and other malicious aerial objects, seems much like a previous dotty one advanced by President Ronald Reagan, known rather blandly as the Strategic Defense Initiative.

In its current iteration, it is inspired by the Israeli "Iron Dome" multilayered defensive shield, a matter that raised an immediate problem, given the trademark ownership of the name by the Israeli firm Rafael Advanced Defense Systems. Given the current administration's obsession with all things go...