China's Adventures In Space A Major Milestone

Because the American press has all but ignored her accomplishments, the people in the United States still have the impression that China is still a slumbering giant that is of no serious threat.

I do not think our leadership in Washington, or at least in the Pentagon, has been looking the other way. And if they have been, they are a pack of fools.

While we have wasted our time flexing our military muscle and acted as a bully to various little countries that can't fight back . . . at least with conventional style warfare . . . China has been slowly and silently growing as the next great Super Power.

China's navy, once a fleet of rusted World War II era relics purchased from Russia, has been slowly upgraded to a submarine force that may rival our own. Her intercontinental ballistics system, much of it designed and built from data stolen from careless American technologists, is now capable of striking United States soil from across the Pacific. China is a nuclear power.

And now China has joined the world of space exploration. She recently sent her first astronaut around the Earth and announced plans to reach the Moon and beyond. Sadly, however, China's leadership recently expressed shock that the United States is not welcoming their accomplishments in a spirit of friendship and cooperation.

Instead, President George W. Bush announced America's new space exploration program to send men back to the Moon and then on to Mars. Thus, what Bush has done, is to launch a new space race . . . this time with the Chinese instead of the Russians . . . and you can be sure it is not for the purpose of space exploration.

This will be a race for world domination from space. The first team that gets to the moon with the right weapon will be the winner. 

Joan Johnson-Freese, chairperson of the National Security Decision Making Department, U. S. Naval War College, said the Chinese want to work with the United States and Russia in the international space program.

She said the Chinese even went so far as to build a docking ring on their Shenzhou spacecraft so it would be capable of parking at the International Space Station. China's launch complex in Inner Mongolia is on the same parallel as NASA's Kennedy Space Center so China can share an orbit with the space station.

Instead of a diplomatic handshake, the Chinese were snubbed by the Bush Administration. A Reuters news story described it as "a wall of suspicion that the Chinese program, which is under military control, could someday pose a threat to the U.S. domination in satellites used for military communications, reconnaissance and tracking."

As if NASA is NOT under U.S. military control?

In a talk before the 41^st Space Congress in Cape Canaveral, Johnson-Freese noted that while the U. S. is quick to snub the Chinese space effort, "the Europeans are eager to work with them. China is already participating in the European Unions Galileo constellation, a rival to the U. S. Global Positioning System."

Her next observation is ominous, but understandable.

"The rest of the world clearly sees the U.S. as space dominant," Johnson-Freeze said. "This scares a lot of other countries. They see us as having the sword and the shield."

From my humble observation point I see Mr. Bush and his friends in Washington playing a very dangerous game that needs to be stopped. By all appearances they are making all of the mistakes the great dictatorial powers of history made . . . the Romans, Hannibal, Alexander, Napoleon, the Nazis . . . they all got too powerful, they were perceived as a threat to the world, and they all went down in flames.

If Bush would (could) read, he might learn something from the historical record.