Christopher Buckley

Dr Spacelove

It’s important to protect America’s satellites and cyber capabilities

Americans traumatised by their current president could be forgiven for thinking that his demand for a ‘space force’ was about protecting the country from aliens. Aliens, that is, of extraterrestrial persuasion, not the ones currently hurling themselves against the southern border. What, really, is implausible these days? As baseball savant Yogi Berra said when told that a Jewish woman had been elected mayor of Dublin: ‘Only in America.’

But as it turned out, Donald Trump’s demand to have a new sixth branch of the US armed services is about protecting America’s satellites and cyber capabilities. A worthy goal.

Per the President’s custom, he didn’t inform the White House that he was going to issue his decree. The citizenry may be traumatised, but what must life be like for his poor chief of staff, General John Kelly? Does his inbox have a sign on it saying, ‘What Fresh Hell Is This?’ And what must have been going through the mind of the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff when Trump pulled this rabbit out of his hat on 18 June at a public event?

‘We are going to have the air force,’ the President said. ‘And we are going to have the space force. It is going to be something so important.’ Whereupon he turned to the chairman and said, ‘General Dunford, if you would carry out that assignment, I would be very greatly honoured, also.’

Also? General Joseph Dunford, a Marine, loyally replied: ‘We got it.’ What else could he say? But oh to have been inside his head at that moment. The Pentagon press secretary emailed reporters after the event: ‘Working with Congress, this will be a deliberate process with a great deal of input from multiple stakeholders.’ This is Washington mush of the highest order. Translation: ‘We’ll have something for you sometime before the next Ice Age.’

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