Wednesday, October 18, 2006

Outer space

So, I get up this morning to a rather odd headline on the Washington Post (the internerds edition): "Bush Sets Defense As Space Priority". The long and short of it seems to be that we--more accurately, the Bush Administration--has asserted the right to universal hegemony over outer space. As a hypoetetical, this is, I suppose, something that is worth discussing--weighing the pros and cons, etc. However, the timing, to me, is just bizarre. Matt Yglesias puts it nicely:

This seems like a fairly peripheral concern at the moment -- there's no pressing space-based threat. At the same time, one imagines that countries like Russia and China aren't going to be thrilled with this idea. Coincidentally enough, right now we're trying to secure a higher level of Russian and Chinese cooperation over North Korea, which is a fairly pressing issue. So was it really necessary to announce this just now? Does the White House even think about that kind of stuff -- the idea that we should set priorities and try to avoid pissing people off over third-tier issues right when we're potentially on the verge of accomplishing something important?


I suppose one could think of more sinister explanations for the "why now" question, but that would make my head hurt. For now, we'll go with incompetance.

Posted by jwb at 11:15 AM   

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