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I'm not really sure how to respond to the first part of your post, Sean. However, if we are going to wish away nuclear weapons, can we wish away chemical and biological weapons too? And (on a personal note) can we wish away tyrants and people who only seem happy if they are bossing other people around?

Seriously, though, look at some comparisons:
The firebombing of Tokyo killed almost as many people as both atom bombs combined.
The death total at the "Rape of Nanking" was more than double that of the firebombing AND the atom bombs combined! And that massacre was carried out largely with bayonets. It seems to me that when we blame the evils in the human heart on our tools, we blind ourselves to the true danger. "The fault lies not in our stars, but in ourselves."
Durring WW2 there was a popular saying. "I don't know what the most important weapon in the next war will be, but I know the most important weapon in the war after that...The bow and arrow." In "The war to end wars" the death toll was in the millions. In the war after that, it was in the tens of millions. Look at the state of the world at the end of WW2 - do you really doubt that the death toll in the next war would have been in the hundreds of millions? No one doubted it then. Just as no one doubted that there would be a "next war". It was enevitable, they thought. It was The Logic of Empire
For better, or for worse, the cold war ended that cycle. If we hadn't develpoed nuclear weapons in that war, we would have in the next... or the one after that. It was the enevitable result of the aforementioned "logic". And if you would force that genie back in the bottle, could you? And would you even want to?
I read how some visionaries wanted to control that genie back in the fifties, before it had spread. They advocated a "Pax Americana". We would demand an end to all war and weapons research through the would. Countries would be forced to let our inspectors in to verify. Anyone who refused, or anyone who was found building atomic bombs, would be annihilated in a Nuclear Firestorm.
In the sixties that changed to having the UN hold the reigns with orbitting "death stations" to enforce the peace at the point of nuclear armaggedon. Same idea. Less trustworthy steward.
Of course, if you have a better idea, I'll listen.

As far as the SDI idea, I think that comes from a search for ways out of the proliferation inherent in the MAD plan. You see MAD (Mutual Assured Destruction), the philosophy behind the ABM treaty works well to preserve the peace - as long as there are only two players. It gets increasingly unstable as the table gets more crowed, though. Consider the math:
Two counties each have 1 arsenal (which is enough nukes to ensure the other's destruction). Total nukes in world = 2.
A third country gains nukes. Now, because that third country could side with "the other guy", each country must have 2 arsenals to ensure "Mutual Destruction". Thus total nukes in world = 6. (two for each country)
When a fourth player enters the scene, each country has to be able to destroy the other 3 for MAD to keep functioning. And total number of nukes = 12.

As you can see, the logic of MAD is the logic of ever increasing proliferation. And while that may have been the best strategy available 50 years ago (and I admit, it did preserve the peace for half a century), the situation is changing now. Two men in a room pointing guns at each other may be able to get (uneasily) along. They may even be able to agree to lower the weapons a little. But fifty guys in that room with guns pointed at each other - some of them trully unstable - are in trouble. Sooner of later, someone is gonna sneeze. And trying to get them to ALL agree to lower their weapons founders on the basic fact that some dork, somewhere, is gonna try to be clever and cheat. You ever tried to get 5 people to agree on what to put on a pizza? Now make it fifty people and make the pizza topping a "life or death" issue for them. THAT is arms control in a nutshell.

SDI is an attempt to find another stategy besides "assurred destruction" to deal with the fact that pretty soon everybody is gonna have nukes...or worse. I honestly don't know if it would work, but I would feel better knowing that a rogue element in the Pakistani army (which is deeply divided on supporting Osama) couldn't launch one missile "to start the holy war". Mutual assurred destruction doesn't seem to mean much to the guys who crashed the plane. The idea that a high officer in the Pakistani military might have sypathies to Bin Laden scares the bejeebers outa me.

I'm not actually bothered by the fact that a missile defense wouldn't stop a terrorist because I also know that all the ant-terrorist measures in the world aren't gonna stop a missile. To each threat, it's own response. There is no one-size-fits-all answer. You wouldn't send your army to sink a battleship, would you?
So, I guess my feelings are; that I am OK with researching the idea. Reseach is usually a good thing by itself. Deploying it would depend on what the research reveals. How much it costs (in both dollars and it's effects on world opinion) vs how great the threat level is projected to be when it's finished. SDI is like a bomb shelter, if your shovelling when the bombs are falling, it's too late.
Plus, I'd want to think about the strategy invovled in using it. Even the best tool isn't worth much without a plan for it's use. Right now we need to wage this war on terrorism and see what kind of international agreements we can build out of it. We need to find out who our friends and enemies are and assess the threats in the next century.
And, since I can't answer those questions clearly yet, I can't give you a clearer answer on the SDI issue. Sorry.