Wars of the future will be very different if President Bush has his way, says matthew carr |
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With US armed forces locked into the doomed 'surge' in Iraq, the world was given a revealing glimpse last week into the ways in which the American military-industrial complex intends to win the wars of the future.
First the US military unveiled a 'heat ray gun' known as the Active Denial System which is intended to project intense heat as a 'non-lethal' way 'to repel enemies or disperse hostile crowds'. The same week, the Bush administration proposed its own novel solution to global warming: reduce the sun's rays by placing giant mirrors and 'reflective dust' in space.
This maniacal proposal is a variant on the old Reaganite Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) known as Star Wars, which first contemplated placing giant mirrors in space that would reflect laser beams to shoot down incoming enemy missiles.
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| America’s neo-con hawks display a boyish enthusiasm for futuristic military scenarios and technology |
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The Star Wars project fell into disuse after the end of the Cold War, but it has recently found a more positive reception from the Bush administration, which has authorised research into a National Missile Defence System on Star Wars lines.
This decision is partly due to the lobbying efforts of the military contractors tasked with researching the new technology, such as Boeing and Lockheed Martin. But it also owes much to the neo-con hawks at the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), whose influential 2000 document, Rebuilding America's Defenses, displayed a boyish enthusiasm for futuristic military scenarios.
Some of these fantasies appeared to have borrowed directly from Hollywood movies like Terminator, such as the prediction that invincible US soldiers would one day be equipped with 'encapsulated, climate-fighting suits' and 'skin-patch pharmaceuticals' that would 'regulate fears, focus concentration and enhance endurance and strength'.
Other scenarios were more alarming, such as the coolly genocidal proposal to 
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