December 6, 2001	Thursday	Ramazan 20, 1422

WASHINGTON: Before the Sept 11 attacks supposedly changed everything, the Bush administration deemed a July 14 missile-defence test over the Pacific Ocean a success, even though the impact of the “kill vehicle’s” direct hit of a dummy missile was not all it was cracked up to be. The Los Angeles Times later revealed that the prototype radar used to measure the collision between the interceptor and a mock warhead had malfunctioned.

Uncertainty characterizes future tests as well. “It’s not clear we know how we’re going to do that,” said Robert Snyder, the executive director of the Ballistic Missile Defence Organization, when describing a test scheduled for 2005 or 2006 that would involve deploying a space laser and firing it back at a target in the Earth’s atmosphere. The $329-billion fiscal 2002 defence budget includes appropriations for a space-based laser targeted at missiles in their boost phase three to five minutes after launch, and George W. Bush continues to make a missile shield the centrepiece of his defence policy - although, as we are all aware, the Sept 11 attacks had nothing to do with intercontinental ballistic missiles. And well before weaponized domestic planes fell from the sky, a missile shield was being looked at skeptically by many scientists and even some Pentagon officials.

Why are so much money and energy being spent on wild and crazy - and even science fictional - technological schemes? One major reason is that science fiction has permeated American culture, and Bush appears to be under the influence of its most predominant strain.

Science fiction addresses US unfounded fear that some monstrous alien will emerge from an unknown dark depth to attack it. When Orson Welles broadcast “The War of the Worlds” on radio in 1938, people really believed that the Martians were coming. This summer, sharks caused a similar kind of hysteria very likely rooted in “Jaws” and just as unfounded scientifically. There were no Martians landing in New Jersey; there are no great white sharks conspiring to turn us into fast food. And it is entirely unclear that what Bush and his supporters refer to as “rogue states” are about to attack the United States with nuclear missiles, although lots of books and films would have us believe that this is quite likely.

Science fiction also feeds the US desire to find a technological solution to every problem. Sometimes, of course, science fiction ideas become very real. Jules Verne predicted the submarine; Arthur C. Clarke the communication satellite. Pamela Sargent described the Internet. AIDS, cloning and ozone-layer decay are all science-fiction scenarios. Capt Kirk’s communicator, the cellular phone, is in all of our hands.

The Bush idea comes right out of science fictional depictions of warfare fought in outer space with technology whose fascination for Americans (predominantly males) has extended from Flash Gordon to “Star Wars.” The difference is, this science fiction is not connected to reality.

Bush can only imagine that there is a feasible way to shield the entire US from attacking missiles with a technology built in outer space. Bush seems to be under the influence of the kind of science fiction that generates the power fantasies that captivate male adolescents when they imagine themselves firing ”Star Trek” photon torpedoes. It is all in the mind. In fact, it is most likely terrorists within the US and in cyberspace (a term coined in science fiction by William Gibson), not missiles from rogue nations, that are America’s enemies. —Dawn/LAT-WP News Service (c) Newsday.