Don't Worry, Be Happy

To keep Mom and Pop Wrepublican happy with their Xanax...

"Now come the newest stories that echo down the interconnected corridors of the American mainstream media, about “killer satellites” and “death stars” and “Rods from God” bombardment systems — as if the Hollywoodized terminology wasn't a clue that most of the subject matter was equally imaginary.

"Take the opening paragraph of a recent Christian Science Monitor editorial that denounced what it portrayed as “the possible first-ever overt deployment of weapons where heretofore only satellites and astronauts have gone.” But history reveals an entirely different reality.

"Weapons have occasionally been deployed in space for decades, without sparking mass arms races or hair-trigger tensions. These are not just systems that send warheads through space, such as intercontinental missiles or the proposed global bomber. These are systems that put the weapons into stable orbits, circling Earth, based in space. And these systems were all Russian ones, by the way, most of them predating President Reagan's “Strategic Defense Initiative” to develop an anti-missile system..."

Really"? Name one, please. Before Ronald Reagan. Take your time. I don't think so.

"But it's not the equipment that's important (that's why the United States never responded to earlier Russian space weapons); it's the offensive capabilities the hardware is supposed to deliver. That's what must be considered foremost before considering the likelihood of responses.

"So scary tales about U.S. “death stars” hovering over target countries promising swift strikes from space rely merely on readers not understanding the basics of orbital motion in space. A satellite circles Earth in an ever-shifting path that passes near any particular target only a few times every 24 hours, not every 10 minutes. It's quicker and cheaper to strike ground targets with missiles launched from the ground.

"Nor is a space rendezvous robot, such as those under development by half a dozen nations and commercial consortia, a “space weapon” — despite media claims that one of them, the Air Force's XSS-11 satellite, could perform as a weapon. Plenty of productive peaceful rationales for these vehicles exist, from refueling to repair to resupply, and they are going to be deployed in large numbers in coming years.

"Raising unjustified fears about them and other so-far-totally-conceptual space vehicles may be politically or ideologically satisfying to some, but in the big picture, feeding foreign prejudices and stoking the insecurities of some naturally paranoid cultures is a dangerous game."

On the other hand, stoking the paranoid tendencies of our culture is perfectly acceptable.

The problem with lying about weapons of mass destruction in space before Ronald Reagan is that somebody might remember to ask who had the technology to put them there.

It's tough trying to rewrite the history books.

This being a multiverse, of course, there's another problem with the rose-colored It's All Good don't-worry-about-it-if-it's-not-your-problem attitude.

Even if we can't get Star Wars off the ground, even if they want to avoid actually testing all their wonderful toys because, you know, the failures make them look bad, they're still spending hundreds of billions of dollars on their technological nightmares, whether they're Rods from God, Death Stars, Akira-style space-based x-ray lasers, or Cylon fighter drones.

The money's being spent.

Whether it works or is real or even rational. The money's being spent. And my grandchildren will be paying for Rumsfeld's fantasies long after he and I and you are all dead.

So don't give me a lot of Patriotic Jingoist silliness about how people shouldn't speculate about the ramifications of DARPA's latest wet dreams, or worry about the cost, because it's giving aid and comfort to some hypothetical and likely mythological enemy.

Because in the post 9-11 world, USA Today, the only real enemies I see to America are friends of Bu$hCo. The 9-11 attack was planned by a CIA-trained family friend of George W. Bush. The companies that tried to arm Iraq after the Gulf War and sold nuclear reactors to the North Koreans are all controlled by men named Cheney or Rumsfeld.

People like me don't have to stoke the paranoid tendencies of other cultures.

John Bolton and the American Enterprise Institute do that quite well all by themselves, thank you.

Then there's the other issue: if DARPA and Rumsfeld go to press conferences and brag about all this technology, if Congress critters appropriate and paper pushers spend hundreds of billions on this stuff, technologically saavy folks from other cultures just as paranoid as ours might try to make a suitcase nuke. Or a neutron bomb. Or a working hand-held laser or a working civilian aircraft mounted laser that can take out a target 50 miles away.

Because, you know, the press releases say we have it, too.