Bush promises the Moon (and Mars) but offers only rhetoric

[Euphen]

Bush promises the Moon (and Mars) but offers only rhetoric
By Walter Gilberti and Patrick Martin
19 January 2004

President George W. Bush delivered an address to NASA on January 14, outlining his plans for the US space program and calling for NASA to reorganize itself to establish a permanent settlement on the Moon and an eventual manned mission to Mars.

Bush’s speech suffered from acute contradictions of both style and substance. White House speechmakers crafted flowery phrases about the “spirit of discovery” and comparing the US exploration of space with the Lewis and Clark expedition 200 years ago that explored the vast territory that later became the Louisiana Purchase.

Such words cannot transform a pathetically narrow and limited individual into a visionary, no matter how much a servile media tries to pretend otherwise. Bush’s indifference to considerations of both history and exploration (geographical or intellectual) is notorious. He never visited the European continent during the three decades of his adult life before he entered the White House, despite countless opportunities provided by wealth and family connections. He cannot even be induced to “explore” the pages of an American newspaper.

Bush and his political handlers clearly timed the speech to cash in on the spectacular success of the latest NASA mission to Mars. But the substance of the Bush administration’s policy is diametrically opposed to proposed goals of returning to the Moon and sending a manned mission to Mars. It would have been more honest, although entirely out of keeping with the Bush administration’s usual practice, if the president had simply announced that he was scrapping NASA and that its thousands of scientists and engineers should start looking for other jobs, preferably with the Pentagon’s space-based missile defense program.

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http://wsws.org/articles/2004/jan2004/bush-j19.shtml

[hatrack]

1. This is right on target

Probably the best single editorial response I've seen on the topic.