NASA, Obama's Trick Pony
As they say in Washington, when somebody discovers a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Today the hammer is the need for better relations with the Muslim world, and unfortunately the nail is NASA.
President Obama is trying to pound his way into the hearts and minds of Muslim nations by whoring out America’s revered space agency. Unequivocally, NASA Administrator Charles Boden has publicly stated in an interview with Al Jazeera that among the top three priorities set by the president was the need "to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science, math, and engineering."
His spokesman tried to backtrack from that this week, saying that the mission remains scientific exploration. But Boden’s original statement, coupled with supporting NASA documentation from February of this year that shows engagement with majority Muslim countries is a priority is a bell that can’t be unrung.
This represents political pandering at best. At worst, it is juvenile, naked fear of a part of the world that Obama seems to want to take great pains to engage, no matter if it is the right moment, the right topic, or the right fit. Desperate to engage the Muslim world, Obama has resorted to turning NASA into a trick pony that whinnies and prances for an audience that the president seems naively eager to please.
He doesn’t need to do this. Muslims already have plenty to be proud about when it comes to space:
• NASA is in fact engaged with 118 countries around the world through partnership agreements, including the United Arab Emirates and Pakistan.
• Most people might think it was only a few years ago that the first Muslim hitched a ride into space. Wrong. Try twenty-five years ago, in 1985, when a Saudi came along on a mission to launch an Arab satellite into orbit.
• Other Muslim astronauts have hailed from Syria, Malaysia, and even Afghanistan, a place known more these days for rocket-propelled grenades than Solid Rocket Boosters.
• In 2006, an Iranian-American became the first Muslim woman in space.
• And lest we forget, Obama canceled NASA’s Constellation program which now leaves humankind’s boldest and most successful space agency without its own transportation off this planet. So where do we get a lift? From the Russians who blast off from…Baikonur, Kazakhstan, a majority-Muslim country. Can’t get much more engaged than that.
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