Real technology yields peace and the moon

On Wednesday, the United States launched the first manned mission to the moon in nearly 54 years. Artemis II will not land on the moon but soon, very soon, the late Eugene Cernan no longer will be the last man on the moon.

The project began early in Donald John Trump’s first presidency.

NASA no longer is in a space race with the Soviet Union but in a friendly competition with private enterprise. Who will make it to Mars first—NASA or Elon Musk?

Hint: Maybe the one who had to rescue the other one’s stranded astronauts.

This arrangement makes sense because that is how Europe discovered America. Half a millennium ago, European kings and queens hired private ship crews to sail the world and explore the next-to-final frontier.

They found a new world of two large continents populated by backward savages who were horseless, having eaten them to extinction 10,000 years earlier. Yes, civilizations are not equal. While Montezuma was going wild with ritual human sacrifice, Europeans devised a method to travel the ocean blue with zero carbon impact. They called it sailing.

Using that technology requires leadership. Queen Isabella backed Christopher Columbus’s voyage. The opening of The 6 Million Dollar Man—a TV show from 50 years ago—said it best.

Harve Bennett (as the disembodied voice):

“Steve Austin, astronaut. A man barely alive.”

Oscar Goldman (voiced by Richard Anderson):

“Gentlemen, we can rebuild him. We have the technology. We have the capability to make the world’s first bionic man. Steve Austin will be that man. Better than he was before. Better... stronger... faster.”

We lost our way. The Soviet Union already junked its plans to land on the moon upon Khrushchev’s departure as leader. America bought into that low-IQ argument that we should fix the problems on Earth first before wasting it on space.

Our national debt was $427 billion when Cernan left the moon.

It is 85 times larger today. We went from a debt equal to 33% of the GDP to 123%.

Our cities are in shambles, our schools are worthless, we’ve imported 20 million to 50 million terrorists, drug dealers and welfare leeches from other countries and we are butchering our children in the name of transgendering.

Going back to space was the right call.

On Wednesday night, President Donald John Trump declared victory in Operation Epic Fury. He told the nation:

In these past four weeks, our armed forces have delivered swift, decisive, overwhelming victories on the battlefield, victories like few people have ever seen before. Tonight, Iran’s Navy is gone, their Air Force is in ruins. Their leaders, most of them terrorists, regime they led are now dead. Their command and control of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is being decimated as we speak.

Their ability to launch missiles and drones is dramatically curtailed, and their weapons factories and rocket launchers are being blown to pieces, very few of them left. Never in the history of warfare has an enemy suffered such clear and devastating large-scale losses in a matter of weeks. Our enemies are losing and America, as it has been for five years under my presidency, is winning and now winning bigger than ever before.

He laid out well why we went in.

This fanatical regime has been chanting Death to America, Death to Israel for 47 years. Their proxies were behind the murder of 241 Americans in the Marine barracks bombing in Beirut, the slaughter of hundreds of our service members with roadside bombs. They were involved in the attack on the USS Cole, and they carried out the countless other heinous acts, including the blood -- just horrible, bloody atrocities of October 7th in Israel.

Something that most people have never seen anything like it. This murderous regime also recently killed 45,000 of their own people who were protesting in Iran, 45,000 dead. For these terrorists to have nuclear weapons would be an intolerable threat. The most violent and thuggish regime on earth would be free to carry out their campaigns of terror, coercion, conquest, and mass murder from behind a nuclear shield.

I will never let that happen and neither should any of our past presidents. This situation has been going on for 47 years and should have been handled long before I arrived in office. I did many things during my two terms in office to stop the quest for nuclear weapons by Iran first, and perhaps most importantly, I killed General Qassem Soleimani in my first term.

He was an evil genius, brilliant person, a horrible human being, however, the father of the roadside bomb. And he lived -- just horrible, what he did/ Iran would have been perhaps in a far better, stronger position. Had he lived we would have had probably a different conversation tonight. But you know what?

We’d still be winning and winning big. And then, very importantly, I terminated Barack Hussein Obama’s Iran nuclear deal, a disaster. Obama gave them $1.7 billion in cash—green, green cash, took it out of banks from Virginia, DC and Maryland, all the cash they had, flew it by airplanes in an attempt to buy their respect and loyalty but it didn’t work.

He’s being kind. Obama funded terrorism with his eyes wide open.

Trump pointed out, “ It’s very important that we keep this conflict in perspective. American involvement in World War I lasted one year, seven months and five days. World war II lasted for three years, eight months, and 25 days.

“The Korean War lasted for three years, one month and two days. The Vietnam War lasted for 19 years, five months and 29 days. Iraq went on for eight years, eight months and 28 days. We are in this military operation so powerful, so brilliant against one of the most powerful countries for 32 days, and the country has been eviscerated and, essentially, is really no longer a threat.”

Our military accomplished the devastation of Iran’s military without killing millions of Iranians. That is incredible and underappreciated.

Trump’s refusal to re-open the Strait of Hormuz was a diplomatic way of telling our frenemies in NATO to put up or shut up.

Europe will do neither. Keir Starmer will hold meetings to get Iran to open the strait. He said, “The UK will convene 35 countries—excluding the US—to explore ways to reopen the strait of Hormuz, the vital shipping route for oil and gas that has been blocked by Iran.”

In short, they will pay the troll, just as these same Europeans paid tribute to the Barbary Coast pirates.

That ended 200 years ago when Thomas Jefferson sent Presley O’Bannon and Stephen Decatur in to Tripoli. Billions for defense, not one cent tribute.

For a long time, we have had the technology to fly to the moon and to defeat the military of a nation of 92 million people in a country twice the size of France and Germany.

Now we have the capable leader to put the technology to work and we are doing both.