01/20/01 08:00 PM: Star Wars: Not just a

Star Wars: Not just a movie anymore

You would think $305 billion would be sufficient spending money for the U.S. military. That’s enough for a few more harrier jets and apache helicopters to play around with. But no. Since George Bush had to go through the trouble of digging up the majority of his cabinet, he figured he might as well dust around the Repblican graveyard for some ideas as well. He wants to resurrect Reagan’s Star Wars missle defense system. Wake up! Even Reagan abandoned the program. The U.S. spends more money on its military than do the next twelve biggest spenders combined. Aren’t we already capable of destroying the world several times over? What are we so worried about that we need this missle defense system? Russia? Don’t make me laugh. China? What reason does China have to fire missles at us? We just paved the way for their entrance into the WTO (not that that was a good thing, but what’s done is done). They just loaned us two pandas. You don’t lend someone a panda and turn around and bomb them. What about the “rogue states?” The militaries of Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Sudan and Syria together spend an amount equal to a paltry 4.5 percent of the U.S. budget. We might as well worry about an attack from Antarctica. It would be cruel to wish Alzheimer’s upon anyone, even George Bush, but wouldn’t it be nice if he had a bit of a Reaganesque memory and just forgot about the whole thing?

Kevin Peliusczak