As the Millenium Falcon passes through the remains of the planet Alderaan en route to the Death Star, Luke Skywalker utters a phrase that has become as familiar to Star Wars fans as lightsabers, Wookies and the deep baritone of Darth Vader:
“I’ve got a very bad feeling about this.”
We might say the same thing about the Pentagon’s plans to devote hundreds of millions of dollars to developing weapons in space, an attempt to resurrect Ronald Reagan’s misguided Strategic Defense Initiative, or as it’s affectionately known, “Star Wars.”
A missile defense system may have been a good idea during the Cold War, but the Soviet Union is no longer the enemy — in fact, no single nation is. Rather, the greatest threat facing the United States is terrorism by Islamic extremists. Let’s not forget that it wasn’t missiles launched from thousands of miles of away that attacked us on Sept. 11, 2001, but 19 men hijacking a few airplanes; in the future, it may be hijackers again, or suicide bombers, or gunman opening fire in a shopping mall. The tools of terror are varied and adaptable, and it would be foolish to invest significant funding into a space-based system that can’t defend against terrorists.
It is unlikely that new research into space-based weapons programs will achieve any meaningful results; like Reagan’s Star Wars, it will probably just be a colossal waste of time and money. In the meantime, Bush’s Star Wars will be a drain on the Pentagon’s budget, which should be directed towards protecting our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. Among the administration’s errors in going into Iraq was a lack of proper funding for things like armor for the troops; it would be unwise to divert even more money from important areas for something as frivolous as space weaponry.
While we share the sentiment expressed by Luke Skywalker as he approaches the Death Star, there is an important distinction to keep in mind: in Star Wars, the Death Star actually works. The same can’t be said for any farfetched space weapons dreamed up by the Pentagon for our own galaxy.