A few days ago I read a post on the social news website Digg.com that linked to an online store selling ultra-powerful laser pointers. These laser pointers were so potent, in fact, I’d probably classify them as weapons. They could be seen from miles away, light frickin’ cigarettes, and, of course, blind you quicker than a board-with-a-nail-in-it.

A few hours ago, and, well, pretty much any few hours you care to pick before that, stretching back 3-some-odd years, I saw a news story about more violent deaths in Iraq.

For whatever reason, these two news items ended up intertwined in my psyche. I started thinking about the difficulty world powers have waging wars in current times, what with the new unacceptability of civilian casualties. In these enlightened days we live in, the United States’ vast arsenal of nuclear arms is near-useless, almost certainly regulated to “strike back” territory; the US could never climb its way out of the ditch of worldwide scorn if it were to drop an atomic bomb on a foreign city without first being nuked itself.

So, with our big guns out of the picture, the United States finds itself in the mystifying position of being back on a par with ragtag group of rebels. The insurgents in Iraq know there is no chance of the US using nuclear weapons on the country they have just liberated, and thus their arms stack up reasonably well against those of your average US soldier. Sure, the insurgent’s 80’s-era AK-47’s aren’t as quite as nice as the Marines’ shiny new rifles, but they’re pretty damn close. And insurgents may not have the ability to drop precision, laser-guided missiles onto American HumVees, but their I.E.D.’s have much the same effect.

My point is, with the terrifying technology the United States has used to prop itself up as a superpower for the past half-century out of play, the insurgents don’t fear the military mite of the US in a way we feel they probably ought to.

My solution? Laser beams.

OK, OK, this being the first Cosmonaut News blog entry and all, I’ve probably, with that last paragraph, dashed any chance of this site ever becoming a respectable opinion rag. But hear me out…

What the hell ever happened to laser beams? It wasn’t that long ago that Regan was telling us we’d be using them to shoot Russian warheads out of the sky. It isn’t so far off into the future that we, by sci-fi writer’s accounts, should all be sporting laser pistols. So why is it that that only people who seem to be keeping the death-ray-dream alive are a bunch of freaks with a little store on the InterWeb?

I’m hereby advocating the user of laser weapons by the United States military, either immediately, or as quickly as they can invent them. I want billions poured into this technology. I want every grunt G.I. armed with a head-exploding laser rifle.

Now, you see, I don’t actually think that laser guns are all that much an improvement over bullets and gunpowder. Hell, I don’t know anything about the technology; for all I know there are a million-and-one well-proven reasons they’re inferior to current weaponry. But I say use them anyway, because they’re new. And they’re terrifying.

A well-trained American Indian could shoot off a plethora of arrows in the time it took an American settler to reload his musket, but the settler was wielding a controlled explosion in the palms of his hands. Scary stuff.

A group of insurgents hits a US armored vehicle and come in firing off their AK’s in one of their typical run-and-gun attacks. All of a sudden, the US soldiers start blasting their attackers into bits with their new death-ray laser-beams! You bet your ass that even the suicide bomber’s eyes will go wide with terror and wonderment, and suddenly they’ll remember: “Oh, right, we’re at battle with the United States of American. The country with the most powerful and technologically advanced military in the history of the world …”

The US Military needs to become scary again. And, like I stated before, I’m sure there are several reasons that laser weapons are actually inferior to bullets. But this would be a psychological attack; very likely, a temporary setback in the fight against the insurgents. But it could create the type of foothold that is necessary to turn the tide.