Category Archives: Political Commentary

Political Commentary

“When Good Men Did Nothing”

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It’s the seventieth anniversary of Kristallnacht.

While many Americans would also claim they were unaware of the atrocities committed by the Nazis during the Holocaust, the events of November 9-10 were well documented. The New York Times ran a front-page story on November 11: “A wave of destruction, looting and incendiarism unparalleled in Germany since the Thirty Years War and in Europe generally since the Bolshevist Revolution swept over Great Germany today as National Socialist cohorts took vengeance on Jewish shops, offices and synagogues for the murder by a young Polish Jew of Ernst vom Rath, third secretary of the German Embassy in Paris.” Another Times story was headlined, “All Vienna’s synagogues attacked.”

FRANKLIN ROOSEVELT made no immediate comment after Kristallnacht, referring questions about it to the State Department. Only after five days of widespread public outrage did he take any action: recalling the US ambassador from Germany and stating in a press conference, “The news of the past few days from Germany has deeply shocked public opinion in the US. Such news from any part of the world would inevitably produce a similar profound reaction among American people in every part of the nation. I myself could scarcely believe that such things could happen in a 20th century civilization…”

Roosevelt agreed to allow 15,000 German Jews already in the United States to remain, but resisted all calls to increase the overall quota of immigrants from Nazi-occupied countries. Equally significant, his failure to take any action against Germany, or to mobilize an international coalition to challenge Hitler, sent the message that the world would not intervene to save the Jews. How much he could have done given the isolationist and xenophobic mood of the American public at that time is debatable, but the consequences of his inaction were catastrophic.

If President Obama continues to show signs of coddling Ahmajinedad and the Iranian mullahs, he will be sending a similar signal. If this history ever repeats itself, it won’t be farce–it will be tragedy anew, because we inexcusably forgot it.

[Update a few minutes later]

Synagogues around the world are being asked to keep their lights on tonight, in remembrance.

Political Commentary, Space, Space and Campaign 2008

Goodie

7 Comments

Senator Nelson is urging Barack Obama to keep Mike Griffin on:

“He called Lori Garver and said that until they had a surefire choice, they should continue with Griffin. And he thinks Griffin is doing a good job,” said Bryan Gulley, a Nelson spokesman. Gulley would not say who Nelson would support if or when Obama picks a new NASA administrator.

Well, obviously, you don’t want to leave the post vacant, or put in a loser. But it should be a high priority to find a good replacement for him, not to mention come up with a new policy (the two will no doubt go together). The Ares/Orion debacle is entirely Mike Griffin’s baby at this point. I know that if I were named the new administrator, I’d can Ares, ramp up COTS and COTS D, and get started on R&T, and then (not much later) RDT&E for a propellant depot, and let ULA, SpaceX and others worry about earth to orbit. With a prop depot, the weight margins on Orion and Altair become essentially unlimited, so I’d start designs over from there.

But for many reasons, I’m not going to be named administrator. I just hope that whoever is has their head screwed on right.

Oh, and I should also add (as I commented over at Bobby Block’s site) that people who should know better (like Senators who have actually flown in space) seem to continue to ignore the reality that extending Shuttle doesn’t give us independence from the Russians, because the Shuttle can’t act as an ISS lifeboat. All it does is cost billions more while putting crew at high risk. Until they get Dragon or Orion, or something else, we are going to have to continue buying Soyuz if we want to continue to have US astronauts at ISS.

[Saturday morning update]

There’s more discussion on this topic over at Space Politics.

Political Commentary, Space, Space and Campaign 2008

An Absence

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One of my ongoing themes is that space is not politically important. Apparently the incoming administration agrees. It isn’t mentioned anywhere at the transition web site. I poked around in “Technology,” “Energy and the Environment,” and couldn’t find anything about civil space, or NASA. The only discussion of space that I could find was under “Defense”:

Ensure Freedom of Space: An Obama-Biden administration will restore American leadership on space issues, seeking a worldwide ban on weapons that interfere with military and commercial satellites. He will thoroughly assess possible threats to U.S. space assets and the best options, military and diplomatic, for countering them, establishing contingency plans to ensure that U.S. forces can maintain or duplicate access to information from space assets and accelerating programs to harden U.S. satellites against attack.

A “worldwide ban on weapons that interfere with military and commercial satellites” would be unenforceable–it’s pie in the sky. And there’s no way to “harden U.S. satellites against attack” unless we come up with much lower costs to orbit. Does the new administration consider Operationally Responsive Space to be part of the solution? And will they take it seriously?

In any event, space policy in general seems to be a tabula rasa, other than campaign promises, so maybe there’s an opportunity to write some and get it added to the site.

Political Commentary

Defense Acquisition Issues

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It’s a mess:

Right now, the current trends are not good. The US Navy is smaller than it has been in decades, currently has no viable shipbuilding programs for surface combatants, and has credibility issues in Washington. The US Army has a clear modernization strategy, but faces a maintenance overhang, challenges with both program management of its $160 billion Future Combat Systems meta-program and the very premises behind it, and other issues. The USAF has become concerned about its institutional future, even as its aircraft continue to see their average ages rise and respected outside organizations slam its procurement plans as fantasy. A recent Pentagon Defense Business Board report that examined programs from 2000 – 2007 throws the problem into stark relief: cost increases on 5 major weapons programs accounted for $206 billion, or 22%, of the total jump in spending for new arms so far this decade. The Defense Procurement Death Spiral is biting, hard, across the board.

NASA has similar problems. Norm Augustine
saw a lot of these problems coming a couple decades ago. I wish that I could believe that an Obama administration will take defense seriously enough to do something about it.