WASHINGTON (Routers) With his historic speech today, most analysts agreed that the Obama administration made huge inroads in rebuilding America’s relations with the rest of the solar system, reversing anti-terrestrial hostility that had understandably built up in the wake of years of Bush administration arrogance and interplanetary war mongering. In an address before the International Astronomical Union, the president made a moving plea for understanding to all the asteroids that may find our planet in their path.
“This asteroid problem is one that we inherited from the last administration, which not only did nothing about it, but exacerbated it with its cowboy attitude. They were actively belligerent, repeatedly lighting them up with radar and blatantly, even proudly observing their motions without a warrant,” Obama said. “But it was much worse than that. My predecessor not only made a completely unprovoked attack on an innocent comet, but reveled in it, cynically calling it a ‘smashing success,’ and declaring that ‘we hit it exactly where we wanted to.‘ And now there are plans to cruelly exploit these bodies for their resources, without the proper labor safeguards in place or an international regime to ensure that the wealth is spread around.
“With all of this arrogance and blatant disregard for the rights of others, I believe that it is long past time for us to appropriately ask, ‘Why do they hate us’?
“Despite the lack of warning, the most recent incidents were clearly not hostile, but meant to show that they mean us no harm, simply wanting to fire an appropriate warning shot over our bow shock, so to speak, to get us to change our bellicose and oppressive Western ways.”
With the deeply insightful song “Imagine” playing in the background, Obama laid out an inspiring vision of solar peace for the future to the awe-struck crowd of scientists:
Now, I understand that it is a problem that has been growing for millions of years, but particularly over the last eight, and it’s not reasonable to expect us to solve it in a hundred days, but solve it we will. It was caused by reckless talk of deregulation by the previous administration, by things like revisiting the Outer Space Treaty. We can’t allow the greed of the few to result in a righteous retaliation by the oppressed. I recognize that it may not happen in my lifetime, but I want to set a goal of a solar system that is safe for all of its inhabitants and not just the wealthy and sentient.
He went on:
There are those who say that it is futile to attempt to talk non-sentient, even inanimate objects from their deadly course. I say that any object that can slam into the earth with no warning can hardly be characterized as “inanimate,” and that this is just the irrational and mindless prejudice of patriarchal linear thinking. In the coming months, or years, or however long it takes for me to actually get a new NASA administrator in place, we will reach out to our brothers of the sun.
And so I say, to all extraterrestrial rocks, whether carbonaceous or metallic, to all the dirty ice balls that share our star, from the inner system to the Kuiper Belt and the Oort Cloud, I speak not just as an American, or even as a Kenyan or an Indonesian. I speak to you as a Terran and a citizen of the Galaxy. I know that we have much cruel history to live down, from stealing so much of the sun’s resources over the past eons to invading the moon almost 40 years ago with cynical statements about “coming in peace for all mankind.”
Thus I come to you in supplication, to abjectly kowtow to our insensate mineral companions, our fellow travelers around our star. I want to grovel before the gravel and negotiate with you with no preconditions, so that we may discuss our differences and work out the best means of appeasing you while asking little of you.
We know that we are not at war with the asteroids. America does not consider Apophis the enemy. It is simply a Facebook friend that we haven’t met yet. So let us come together, mano en regolith, to build a better future for all of Sol’s children.
As he completed his speech, the president turned to the sun — bringer of Green power, shining brightly in the late afternoon — and got down on his knees. He prostrated himself before the energy god, even deeper than he had before the oil god in Riyadh, and loudly declared, “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do. I weep for my planet, when I contemplate that Sol is just.”
The crowd cheered, knowing that at last there would be peace in our time.
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