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Missile Defense ShieldWe’re doing a lot of talking these days about a missile defense shield. What headline might you expect to read if we succeed? When you cut through the opposing positions, what seems to be the bottom line to the present Administration is the question: How does a missile defense protect the safety of the citizens of the United States? In other words, whether the Chinese like it or the Russians like it or don’t like it is of no consequence in the final analysis. Why? Because the responsibility of our government is to protect citizens of the United States of America. We have no Constitutional duty to Chinese or Russian citizens. We think that’s a pretty good reason, so before going further, we might as well say flat out that we support the idea of protections against disaster. You’ve probably taken note of the fact that (up till now) no missiles are currently falling on us. Hallelujah! That’s good! Doubtless, the threat is there, and being unprepared courts mischief. But what if smaller missiles were falling on us right now, and our citizens were being killed and injured, and disastrous fallout was enough to damage the foundations of our society? That’s not good! What would you say if someone were to suggest that you might just as well be describing the war on drugs, in which drugs made in foreign lands were falling on our shores, killing and maiming our citizens’ lives, ripping and ruining our social fabric? And yet,we are not considering a missile shield to protect us, even though we have already perfected its technology. Why is that? Why, on the one hand, can we consider a multi-billion dollar expenditure to develop technology that we are not even sure will work, and on the other hand, bury a biotechnology developed at a tiny fractional cost of the former, that we know will work? Doesn’t that seem, from a commonsense viewpoint, to be idiotic? Perhaps even corrupt? Is someone on an evil empire’s payroll? Using taxpayer funds, but at a tiny cost, we have developed plant pathogens to kill the coca plant in South America! We have a shield to use against the coca plant. We don’t use it. If we don’t care what China or Russia thinks, why should we care about what Colombia, Bolivia or Peru thinks? By comparison, they are small fish in a big pond. Meanwhile, across a bigger pond, (the Atlantic) in Africa, people are starving because a pest plant called ‘witch weed’ (also known as Striga) is destroying a major food source crop, sorghum. “Witch weed’ researchers at McGill University in Montreal are using a similar strain of the same pathogen we use on coca, Fusarium oxysporum, to kill Africa’s main pest plant. The Canadians are heroes, perhaps even to win a Nobel prize for feeding the suffering poor of Africa. That’s good! They should be applauded. But, surprise! The U.S. coca shrub researchers are pariahs, devils! That’s not good. How can the almost exact use of science be applauded for saving lives in Africa, but decried of saving lives here? Why is that? Who are detractors speaking for? No one in Africa asks why it’s okay to attack suffering from starving. The question that our citizens should ask is: Whose interests are served by allowing suffering from cocaine to continue? Why is it now possible to have civil debate on the unproven missile defense shield solution and not possible to debate the proven cocaine defense solution? Hello! Is anybody there?
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