The Coastal Post - January, 1996
Tom Clancy take note. I'm giving you some free ideas.
A Red Chinese tanker approaches the California coast while still in international waters and launches a nuclear-tipped Cruise missile at a population center. A rental truck parks in Dallas with a nuclear device. A Russian submarine launches from international waters. The missiles are coming in at an altitude of ten feet. Beeline Washington D.C. How do you stop it?
A space-based "umbrella" is one of the stupidest (and dangerous) ideas that has ever been put forward by our defense thinkers. What we need to do is ignore the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty (we won the Cold War, right?) and begin the construction of a "shotgun" perimeter defense using sophisticated, ultra-high speed interceptor missiles that are ground-, air- or sea-based. Satellite tracking systems and enemy launch detectors are a legitimate part of this kind of defense. But let's keep actual weapons out of outer space.
There are two reasons. First, the Russians and Chinese (Japanese, Koreans, French, Iranians, etc.) would have every right to feel very paranoid with the realization that U.S. particle-beam or rocket-launching satellites are in geo-synchronous orbit above their nations. Little Sputnik scared the crap out of us. How can we expect others to not be equally alarmed? An armed satellite is the ultimate "high ground." Any military tactician soon acquires the understanding that the high ground has been the key in many a battle throughout history. The Russians would be justifiably stimulated to re-build their offensive capabilities if they had armed U.S. satellites hovering overhead. Armed satellites are far more de-stabilizing than anti-ballistic missile systems deployed on and around American soil. If the Russians brought an armed satellite into orbit over America, it would be shot down immediately. Any sovereign nation has this right. Refit our submarines with interceptors and reduce their patrol patterns to the offshore waters of this nation. And while you are at it, iron the bugs out of the Patriot system. It didn't work during the Iraq War, and all our potential enemies know it.
The second reason that Star Wars is so ominous is its obvious potential for authoritarian use. Those at the control console of an armed space satellite would be able to dictate their demands to the humanity below with complete impunity. Call it a sheep herder in the sky. The Greek gods on Mt. Olympus would be envious of the power.
Armed space satellites are the wettest dream of the elitists who want to force a "New World Order." The plum is the United States. Barring space weapons aimed at Americans from above, there are several immense difficulties facing a police state takeover of America.
There are more than two hundred million privately-owned firearms in America. A significant number of these are unregistered. The rest are recorded only on the dealer form #4473, which by law remains in the exclusive possession of the gun shop or sporting goods dealer. A fascist government in America would have to get possession of these yellow sheets of paper to initiate a house-to-house search for guns. Such a move would trigger an armed revolt in this nation. More and more Americans are getting hip to what happened to the Soviet, Red Chinese, German, Cambodian, Guatemala, Ugandan and Armenian Turkish citizens in the last century. Gun registration, gun confiscation, and genocide. That has been the pattern that resulted in the murder of 56 million human beings by their own governments.
If every soldier and cop in America turned on the people, it would amount to about a million armed men. These traitors would immediately face, on a completely amorphous front, the intense hostility of at least ten million armed and desperately determined American citizens. The Jewish resistance in the Warsaw ghetto is a history lesson that all American gun owners should study. Add to this the defeat of the Russians by the Afghans and the damage done to U.S helicopters by Viet Cong guerillas in Vietnam, and you can understand that taking over an armed populace is not an easy task.
The fact is that more than half our soldiers wouldn't fire on their fellow Americans. The same goes for the cops and the FBI agents. I can't make that statement for the idiots in the ATF, because any law enforcement officer worth his or her salt will tell you that those goons are the slime at the bottom of the barrel.
But what if a space-based satellite fired on an American town and incinerated it in a tenth of a second? The self-anointed global overlords demanded complete obedience...or your town was next. Every soldier, jet fighter, tank, helicopter, and armed citizen on American soil would be impotent. Resistance would be hopeless. Space-based lasers could pinpoint single houses, or even individuals. Sound far-fetched? Well, they laughed at that funny little man with a weird mustache, didn't they?
I'm for a powerful defense for America. Anything less invites trouble.We should be capable of disintegrating any overt enemy. But we had better watch how this Star Wars scheme unfolds over the coming years. Big Brother in orbit leaves us and our freedom up Fecal Creek with zero paddle. Pit bulls are great guard dogs only if the leash is short and strong.
