Our secession from the ABM Treaty is due to the fact that the treaty prevents the active development of the StarWars System, a Reagan Era boondoggle that folks like Lockheed-Martin had already invested tons of money in. Bush is using the current justifiable atmosphere of patriotic defense mania to dredge this Cold War concept out of the deep freeze, because any opposition in today's climate can be characterized as anti-American. This is a way for Bush to pay off some election debts while rapping this ridiculous and exorbitantly expensive project in an American flag. He points to the WTC attack as evidence for our vulnerability and the need for Starwars, but has yet to explain how this system will prevent exactly that kind of low-tech internal terrorism.

This to me is a prime example of the problem we are talking about : we are hooked on technological magic that promises simple answers to complex questions. And our government is too often committed to selling us those very concepts, and in the process greasing the palms of industries which are set up to provide and profit from those products. Currently, companies like Lockheed-Martin are adept at producing products for war, and not peace, and as long as that is the case, in this country you'll get conflict solutions like Starwars.

Here's the challenge : make the pursuit of Peace as profitable as the pursuit of war. Before you can have a Department of Peace, you're going to need a Peace Industry.