Tuesday January 13, 2004 at  3:03 PM

Congressman Feeney Out In Space

Appearing in  Politics

Today’s Progress Report included an item related to President Bush’s upcoming proposal for a manned mission to Mars. Although the plan has been generally met with skepticism, Republican Congressman Tom Feeney of Florida had a different reaction.

Feeney appeared on Fox News’ Scarborough Country and had the following remarks:

“Somebody is going to dominate space…[and]…whoever is able to dominate space will be able to control the destiny of the entire Earth. And I think America is the only country with the moral capability and authority to establish what I consider a Monroe Doctrine in space, guarantee all free nations can use space, but no hostile nation will use it to take us over.”

Congressman Tom Feeney
Scarborough Country
January 9, 2004

Echoing the President’s comments following the capture of Saddam Hussein, Feeney puts forth the frightening, dangerous, and ridiculous notion that the United States possesses some sort of unique moral authority that grants us the right to “control the destiny of the entire Earth.” Can it be any wonder that we find ourselves increasingly isolated with more and more of the world’s people against us?

Elsewhere in the interview, Feeney even went so far as to suggest that if the U.S. didn’t dominate space it would somehow be taken over by terrorists, as if bin Laden was assembling a space port somewhere amongst the caves of Afghanistan.

“But somebody on the face of the Earth is going to control and dominate space in the next several decades and centuries.  If it’s not the United States, it may be a hostile nation, a hostile set of nations, or even a hostile or rogue terrorist group. ¶ This is a matter in part of national security and homeland defense. If we lose our dominance of low Earth and high Earth orbit, bottom line is, we’re going to risk our very security in the United States of America.”

Congressman Tom Feeney
Scarborough Country
January 9, 2004

Unfortunately, although this line of rhetoric is so obviously absurd as to be virtually comical, it underscores the fact that many of our leaders will recklessly feed the cycle of fear in order to quell any meaningful debate or rational response to the real threats we are facing. It is also evidence, that like President Bush, Congressman Feeney has neither the desire nor the resources to face the difficult ethical questions of who owns space, whether it should be militarized by anyone, or even whether Mars is mankind’s to colonize.

Finally, it can’t be ignored that NASA’s two major facilities, the Kennedy Space Center and the Johnson Space Center, just happen to be located in the states of Texas and Florida. Are we really supposed to believe that’s mere coincidence?

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