Take and hold the high ground!

Today's Washington Post carries an article by Marc Kaufman about the United States' dependence upon satellites for various purposes and our consequent vulnerability to attacks upon that space-based infrastructure:

For a U.S. military increasingly dependent on sophisticated satellites for communicating, gathering intelligence and guiding missiles, the possibility that those space-based systems could come under attack has become a growing worry -- and the perceived need to defend them ever more urgent. And that, in turn, is reviving fears in some quarters that humanity's conflicts could soon spread beyond Earth's boundaries.

We can see things begin to go wrong here. We do find out later who these people who "fear . . . that humanity's conflicts could soon spread beyond Earth's boundaries" are (I'll give you a hint - they are the left-wing socialist usual suspects), but we are never told why this is something we need to "fear".

After all space is outside of Earth's biosphere. Blowing up bombs, even nuclear bombs, there will not cause any collateral damage to anyone or anything on Earth. You see nobody actually lives in space. Mr. Kaufman never bothers to explain why moving warfare into the cold sterile reaches of outer space where not even so much as one snail darter or spotted owl could be inconvenienced is something we should be fearing, rather than working to achieve.

Some Democrats and representatives of other nations are becoming more vocal in their concern about the administration's rhetoric and possible plans regarding space defense. Although the 1967 U.N. Outer Space Treaty, signed by the United States, allows only peaceful uses of space, some believe that the United States is moving toward some level of weaponization, especially related to a missile defense system.

Both the new space policy and Joseph's speech "left a lot of room for weaponization of space, which is something that our members have been very concerned about for a while," said Loren Dealy, spokeswoman for the Democratic majority on the House Armed Services Committee. "It also took a very unilateral approach and did not address the issue of multinational agreements to protect satellites that are there."

Told you. The same sorry list of left-wing socialists who can be reliably counted upon to oppose anything which is in the best interests of the United States or freedom and prosperity in general.

I hope you caught the part about how we are supposed to depend upon "multinational agreements to protect satellites that are there". You see to the Democrat Party, and the left in general, having an "agreement" is all you need. Of course Neville Chamberlain found out how much an "agreement" with a tyrant is worth. What is it about the character of Kim Jong-il or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that makes anyone think that they can be trusted when men like Hitler and Stalin could not be?

The fact is that a rogue state like North Korea or Iran could cause a greater disruption of American life by using their nukes to attack our satellites than they could by destroying a city. The fact is that the "weapons in space" genie is out of the bottle and is never going back in again. Just as we are finding out that efforts to control nuclear proliferation are ultimately useless we will see that efforts to avoid the militarization of space will also prove useless.

The fact is that the most fundamental duty of a nation is to protect its people from enemies, foreign and domestic. The United States has the ability, due to its scientific and technological superiority and its vastly stronger economy, to develop a space-based military infrastructure.

There is no excuse not to do this. The benefits to the US are are almost incalculable. I don't have the time or space here to go into every scientifically possible "High Frontier" weapons system that could be built but suffice it to say that if the US and its allies developed the full potential of space-based weaponry even at the level of technology available today waging any kind of conventional warfare against the US or its allies would become impossible.

It would be impossible for Red China to cross the Strait of Formosa with one ship, plane or missile, unless the US allowed it. It would become impossible for Russia, no matter how imperialistic and totalitarian it decides to once again become, to reabsorb any of its former satellite countries, unless the US allowed it.

And before anyone starts to worry about an arms race in space remember this. The first nation or alliance of nations to build the basic framework of an orbital military presence can deny any other nation or group of nations permission to develop its own orbital military infrastructure. The fact is that getting from Earth to space is hard while moving around in space is easy. If you are already there it is not all that difficult to keep anyone else from following you.

Russia opposes any US militarization of space because the only thing it has left to give it any kind of international clout is its nuclear arsenal. China opposes any US militarization of space because it knows that its plans to achieve hegemony in Asia and challenge America on the world stage will evaporate if its military power becomes moot. Europe opposes US militarization of space because of their own inability to participate with us as anything but charity case hangers-on. Their domestic welfare states are at the point where they consume so much of their GDP that they simply can't afford to undertake anything of that magnitude. The UN will oppose us because of the reflexive anti-Americanism of a body which is predominantly made up of representatives sent by various Third World despots.

I would say that the quality of the opposition to US efforts to militarize space alone guarantees that it is the right thing to do. After all when the "rogues gallery" of the UN, Europe, China, Russia and (I'm sure) the Islamic World think something is wrong it almost has to be right.