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Please take a moment to visit and log in at the subscriber area, and submit your city & country location. We will use this information in future to invite you to any events that we organize in your area. On NASA's Strange Prioritiesby Daniel Pipes http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/2010/07/nasa-strange-priorities
Barack Obama's grand speeches in Istanbul and Cairo as well as his repeated insistence on "respect" made Americans very aware that he hopes to win Muslim favor. But we did not know how deeply embedded this impulse has become in U.S. policy until this: "Obama's new mission for NASA: Reach out to Muslim world." Byron York of the Washington Examiner uncovered an interview on Al-Jazeera in which the head of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Charles F. Bolden, Jr., explained how Obama charged him to pursue three decidedly non-scientific objectives:
NASA, he went on, is pursuing "a new beginning of the relationship between the United States and the Muslim world." York also located a speech by Bolden, who is a retired United States Marine Corps major general and a former NASA astronaut, on June 15 at the American University in Cairo. There, Bolden related that Obama
Bolden averred that, indeed, "NASA has embraced this charge." In his colorful wording, "NASA is not only a space exploration agency but also an earth improvement agency." In response to the firestorm these comments have caused, the White House and NASA, according to Fox News, "stood by Bolden's statement that part of his mission is to improve relations with Muslim countries — though NASA backed off the claim that such international diplomacy is Bolden's 'foremost' responsibility." This unexpected turn of events prompts several reactions.
First, it is inordinately patronizing for Americans to make Muslims "feel good" about their medieval contributions to science. This will lead to more resentment than gratitude. Second, Muslims at present do lag in the sciences and the way to fix this is not condescension from NASA but some deep Muslim introspection. Put differently, accomplished scientists of Muslim origin — including NASA's Farouk El-Baz, who is of Egyptian origins — do exist. The problem lies in societies, and include everything from insufficient resources to poor education to the ravages of Islamism. Third, polls indicate that Obama's effort to win Muslim public opinion has been a failure, with his popularity in majority-Muslim countries hardly better than George W. Bush's. Why continue with these farcical and failed attempts to win good will? Finally, it's a perversion of American scientific investment to distort a space agency into a feel-good tool of soft diplomacy. Just as soldiers are meant to fight, not carry out social programs, so scientists must work to expand the frontiers of knowledge, not to make select people "feel good." Related Topics: US policy This text may be reposted or forwarded so long as it is presented as an integral whole with complete information provided about its author, date, place of publication, and original URL. | ||||||
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