THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume XII, Issue # 118, July 6, 2010
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
NASA'S STRANGE PRIORITIES
By Dr. Daniel Pipes
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA'S NEW MISSION FOR THE NATIONAL AERONAUTICS & SPACE ADMINISTRATION:
REACH OUT TO THE MUSLIM WORLD -- ENGAGE MUCH MORE WITH ISLAMIC COUNTRIES TO HELP THEM FEEL GOOD ABOUT
THEIR HISTORIC CONTRIBUTIONS TO SCIENCE, MATHEMATICS, & ENGINEERING -- WINNING MUSLIM FAVOR: AN
IMPULSE NOW DEEPLY IMBEDDED IN THE POLICIES OF THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION -- WHAT THE POLLS INDICATE:
OBAMA'S EFFORT TO WIN MUSLIM PUBLIC OPINION HAS BEEN A FAILURE.
FULL STORY:
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:
"One was he wanted me to help re-inspire children to
want to get into science and math, he wanted me to
expand our international relationships, and third, and
perhaps foremost, he wanted me 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."
NASA, York 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, 2010, at the American University in Cairo. There, Bolden related that Obama --
". . . asked NASA to change…by reaching out to
non-traditional partners and strengthening our
cooperation in the Middle East, North Africa,
Southeast Asia, and in particular in Muslim-majority
nations."
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."
© Daniel Pipes 2010
Originally Published in National Review Online, July 6, 2010
Republished with the Permission of Daniel Pipes
Reprinted from the Daniel Pipes Mailing List, July 6, 2010
Article URL: http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/2010/07/nasa-strange-priorities
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
Islamism & Jihadism -- The Threat of Radical Islam
Page Three
Page Two
Page One
Middle East -- Arabs, Arab States,
& Their Middle Eastern Neighbors
American Foreign Policy -- The Middle East
International Politics & World Disorder:
War, Peace, & Geopolitics in the Real World:
Foreign Affairs & U.S. National Security
Page Two
Page One
Islamist Terrorist Attacks on the U.S.A.
Osama bin Laden & the Islamist Declaration of War
Against the U.S.A. & Western Civilization
Islamist International Terrorism &
U.S. Intelligence Agencies
Counterterrorism & U.S. National Security
U.S. National Security Strategy
Dr. Daniel Pipes, a Ph.D. in Islamic History (Harvard University, 1978), is Founder and Director of the Middle East Forum,
Founder of Campus Watch, Taube Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University, a
signatory of the Project for the New American Century, a former board member of the U.S. Institute of Peace, a former
adjunct scholar at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a Golden Circle supporter of the U.S. Committee for a Free
Lebanon, a former member of the U.S. Department of Defense Special Task Force on Terrorism and Technology, and a
former lecturer at the U.S. Naval War College, Harvard University, the University of Chicago, and the University of
Pennsylvania. Dr. Pipes was the Director of the Foreign Policy Research Institute from 1986 to 1993.
Author or co-author of eighteen books, Dr. Pipes is a regular columnist for National Review Online, Front Page
Magazine, the New York Sun, and the Jerusalem Post. His analyses of world trends and of forces and
developments in the Middle East have appeared in numerous North American newspapers, including the Washington
Post, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal. He frequently appears on American network
television, as well as at universities and think tanks, to discuss the Middle East, Islam, and the Islamist threat to the
U.S.A. and the West. He also has appeared on BBC and Al Jazeera, and has lectured in approximately
twenty-five countries.
Dr. Pipes is a Polish-American Jew whose parents fled Poland in 1939, immigrated to the U.S.A., and assimilated well into
American society and culture. His father is Richard Pipes, an American historian specializing in Russian and Soviet history
and serving as Professor of History at Harvard University from 1950 until his retirement in 1996. During the Cold War, the
worldview of Richard Pipes was strongly anti-Soviet and anti-Communist.
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