-Caveat Lector- http://www.herald.com/thispage.htm?content/today/opinion/digdocs/037340.htm =============== + ================= OPINION Published Friday, January 26, 2001, in the Miami Herald by Ira Chernus Rumsfeld preparing for war in space? Last century, in times of peace, U.S. military researchers were busy inventing new weapons for the next war. New Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld seems determined to lead us now under the banner of ``While you have peace on Earth, prepare for war in space.´´ As Rumsfeld takes office, we should demand a public debate on his favorite cause: the militarization of space. Otherwise, we may plunge blindly into the era of space warfare that Pentagon-paid scientists already are planning. The military-technology wizards flourish in times of relative tranquillity. From 1871 to 1914, Europeans enjoyed a peace that many thought would never end. Hence their shock when they saw in World War I the horrors of machine guns, tanks, submarines and poison gas. After the war, the shock waves reached the United States. American leaders signed a treaty purporting to outlaw war in 1928; by 1935, thousands of young men had added their names to a formal pledge never to take up arms again. But in the meantime devotees of aerial warfare were designing new armaments: bombers carrying massive bombs, aircraft carriers launching deadly fighter and torpedo planes. Even as newspapers reported in- vestigations of ``the munitions makers´´ of World War I, there was little public notice, let alone discussion, of the new weapons systems. Only sci-fi devotees even imagined the discoveries that were paving the way for the most monstrous bombs of all. When public debate erupted after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it was too late. In the post-Cold War era of peace, weapons development continues at U.S. nuclear laboratories, which plan to test the next generation of bombs on computers rather than under the ground. But who's paying attention? The real challenge with both nuclear and conventional weapons is figuring out where to use them and ensuring that they hit their intended targets. Military-might advocates have a passionate booster in Rumsfeld. The Air Force's Space Command boasts that it can develop computerized satellites that will tell U.S. commanders everything that is happening, at every moment, everywhere in the world. It also promises that these satellites will guide U.S. weapons precisely to the target every time. It has spent billions of dollars preparing for the militarization of space. But it wants much more.Military-might advocates have a passionate booster in the defense secretary. We already have more destructive power than any one nation, or even the world as a whole, could possibly use. We have that power because of another revolution in military technology that went largely unnoticed. During the detente of the late 1960s and 1970s, the weapons designers went as far as they could with big, unwieldy, city-busting bombs. So they invented a new generation of ``smaller´´ strategic weapons, precision-guided by computers, mounted eight or 10 at a time on a single warhead. Apart from a brief flap over defensive-missile systems, there was scarcely any public interest. The Space Command plans to use its satellite-and-computer network not only for guiding these weapons but to destroy enemy satellites. They hope to get a bigger piece of the budgetary pie. George W. Bush's selection of Rumsfeld indicates that the new administration wants to cut the pie very much to the Space Command's liking. The only part of the plan getting scrutiny, now as in the 1960s, is missile defense. Space-war boosters count on National Missile Defense to ensure full-spectrum dominance, to spin off the technology that space wars will require and to get us to pay for it all. Rumsfeld's passions for missile defense and for space weapons are two sides of the same coin. Once the Pentagon tosses that coin, there will be no way to stop an arms race in space, the costs of which, in money and eventually in human lives, is incalculable. Now is the time for a public debate on this subject. Peacetime is the time to pay attention to the new war technology. After the next war, it may be too late. -- Ira Chernus is a religious-studies professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder and a History News Service writer ([EMAIL PROTECTED]). <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! 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