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Bush Unveils Faith-Based Missile Defense

By Gregg Easterbrook
Posted Wednesday, Feb. 21, 2001, at 9:00 PM ET
Illustration by Robert Neubecker

WASHINGTON—President George W. Bush announced an initiative to develop a faith-based missile defense. "For too long, military planners have been denied the use of the supernatural in attempting to protect American citizens from attack," Bush declared today in a speech to the National Association of Amateur Submarine Captains. "There is no reason why we cannot maintain a healthy separation of church and state while still calling on divine intervention for the Pentagon budget. Faith-based missile defense will be constitutional and fully consistent with the way the Founding Fathers expected this great nation to handle ICBM threats," the president said.

The faith-based defense would be nondenominational and designed to protect Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, and Wiccans, as well as Christians, officials said. (For technical reasons, it is unclear whether nonbelievers can be protected.) Pentagon sources say the system is code-named Rapture.

Initial plans call for Rapture components to be hidden in the steeples of churches, which are about the size and shape of rockets, and possibly in Catholic cardinals' miters. "If we put a Rapture anti-missile missile in every church steeple in America, even small towns will be defended, and the spending will be distributed to all congressional districts," an informed official said. The schedule for development and construction is uncertain, depending on how quickly cost overruns can begin.

White House officials insisted the system would pose no threat to the religions of other nations and said that leadership at the Vatican, Constantinople, Mecca, Amritsar, and other key world-faith sites would be fully briefed on the project. "However there is some concern about what would happen if this technology fell into the hands of the Lubavitchers," one senior aide said.

While operational details of the system are apparently still being worked out, during an attack by an ICBM launched by a "rogue state" or possibly by Marc Rich, computers for the faith-based system would rapidly activate a "prayer circle" of persons who will register with a database as being willing to pray for national survival. Automated cell phone and instant-messenger messages would instruct the persons in the prayer circle on the altitude, azimuth, velocity, and orbital trajectory of the incoming threat; they would then employ prayer to guide the Rapture defensive missiles to the intercept point. "It's a pretty cool concept technologically, although there is a danger of fire when each missile blasts out of its housing in the steeple," one official said.

Critics said the system could be fooled if incoming warheads were surrounded by a cloud of Torahs, Korans, Upanishads, and Gospels as decoys. In secret tests conducted last month on a remote Pacific Ocean island, a prayer-circle guidance team proved unable to distinguish between a dummy nuclear warhead and a specially reinforced hymnal when both were re-entering the atmosphere at speeds in excess of 8,000 miles per hour.

President Bush also authorized the creation of an Office of Faith-Based Research and Development at the Pentagon and named evangelist James Dobson to head the project. (Lockheed Martin will provide management services.) Dobson told reporters that he envisioned moving the Defense Department beyond tanks, fighters, and aircraft carriers into an entire new generation of faith-based munitions. "Lightning and swords will be the weapons of Armageddon, so America must begin to stockpile the most lethal, technologically advanced blades and energy-bolt projectors that our science can design," Dobson said. "Saddam Hussein isn't working on plutonium, he is trying to develop seven-headed dragons and gigantic armored locusts. We're going to have a little surprise ready when he tries to use them."

Dobson displayed a prototype faith-based infantry weapon—a gilded staff that, he said, could hurl a powerful lightning bolt, scorching into powder whatever it was pointed at. He urged onlookers to try the weapon at a hastily arranged demonstration range. But when several reporters attempted to fire the staff, nothing happened. "That's because you're all journalists," Dobson said. "It only works for believers."

Separately, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said that George W. Bush favored changing the slogan on U.S. coinage and tender from "In God We Trust" to "God Help Us." This phrasing "better reflects the president's feelings about the coming four years," Fleischer said.

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Gregg Easterbrook is the author, most recently, of The Progress Paradox: How Life Gets Better While People Feel Worse.
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[Notes from the Fray Editor: More than 3,000 comments on this to date. We decided not to feature the ones that say "Easterbrook is a tool of Satan" (for example here), the ones asking if the article was a joke, the ones that said they found it funny, the ones that didn't find it funny, and the ones that said it was disrespectful. This is what remained:]





Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch! Faith based missile defense! And I thought GW had no imagination. However, the technology is the least of the problems, as implied by your unfair crack about the Lubavitchers. As long as strict parity with the Satmars is maintained, there will be no problems. (Besides, they don't do all that singing and dancing for nothing. I think they have something up their sleeves already.) The real problem will be maintaining the aforementioned parity. Forget about Catholic vs. Protestant, Jew vs. Muslim, Sikh vs. Hindu, etc. Think of the outcry (or worse) when believers of Aum Shinrikyo feel slighted by their failure to obtain a fair share of funding. Especially since their own nuclear missile program is already so advanced without state funding. The Heaven's Gate program, while primitive, was highly effective. Unfortunately, as a defensive system, it is quite unsatisfactory and even self-defeating. If not generously funded, their feelings will be hurt, also, and there's no telling what they'll do then. Therefore, the only way to keep everyone happy, and to avoid the inevitable lawsuits, will be to give every religious group the same funding. If supplying the Mujahaddin with TOW missiles and high explosives was a dicey experiment, faith based missile defense would be as dangerous as letting the Chinese get our missile and nuclear secrets. (Especially if the dark horse Millennialists win the arms race, and a religious missile gap emerges.) I am not in favor of it, and I hope the spineless Democratic leadership will stop it.



--Cato the Censor



(To reply, click here.)





It's hard to see who the writer offended more in this article. People of faith. Defenders of Bush's. Or those in favor of missile defence shield. Now many Fraysters are saying religion is off limits to Slate, unless they use praise and piety. Somehow, the writer overstepped his bounds by examining a politician's faith, when exploring every other part of his life is allowed--in many instances, required.



Bush chose to make his religious faith a national topic of discussion by making his faith a campaign promise. By proclaiming Jesus Christ his favorite philosopher. And by mixing church and state in a way that makes many non-Christians very uncomfortable. And more importantly, this is a joke, an attempt at humor. You can call into question the writers use of language, but the topic needs no defense when it is only there to amuse. Many of you are secure enough in your belief that you can take a little ribbing. Lighten up!



--X



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I can only say that I hope Mr. Easterbrook finds a way to stockpile laughter before the true end times as he will need something other than his faith when his judgment comes.



As a former Department of Defense engineer, I fully realize more than many that the anti ballistic missile program (THAAD or TMD or your favorite acronym) is something that is easily laughable and hopelessly unworkable with politics as is, I would definitely think very carefully before poking such sacrilegious fun of the Sovereign God of the universe with the end days ever drawing nearer.



My prayers are with Mr. Easterbrook and the many others that I'm sure find a great deal of humor with this article for as a very wise one once said "Forgive them, for they know not what they do".



--Alpha Wolf



(To reply, click here.)

[Phillip Wickstrom made a similar point here: "Trust me, you will wish that you had placed your faith in something other than your own intellectual capabilities."]





We all need to write Congress to support a prayer based program for Civil Defense as a component for the Faith Based Missile Defense System, because that is the only defense we have today against any present or future ballistic missile threat. I wonder if the government will install automatic bell ringers in all steeples, prerecorded calls to prayer in all minarets, and direct the radio listening audience to the locally available 'Hour of Power' in event of a reported launch from a submarine just off shore, which will only allow a 3-5 minute prayer effort to avert national disaster?



The Easterbrook article was perhaps more accurate in his assessment of U.S. capacities than he may have initially intended.



--Tom R



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