New York Times on the Web Forums Science

Missile Defense

Nazi engineer and Disney space advisor Wernher Von Braun helped give us rocket science. Today, the legacy of military aeronautics has many manifestations from SDI to advanced ballistic missiles. Now there is a controversial push for a new missile defense system. What will be the role of missile defense in the new geopolitical climate and in the new scientific era?

dirac_10 - 02:13pm Jan 11, 2001 EST (#564 of 573)

zero_pattern - 11:42am Jan 11, 2001 EST (#562 of 563)

...will not be "gee, I wish we spent a little more on missle defense," it will be "why didn't we realize until it is too late that the more weapons we point out at the world, the more weapons the world points back at us."

Oh sure, swell plan, Saddam and his ilk would drop the whole thing if we disarmed. It's the presence of US nukes that made Saddam use the poison gas, for the first time since WWI, in war and for domestic control.

Riiiiight.

I guess the argument to be vollied against the premise of this post is that without more defense we won't be as safe.

Yep.

Well, I hate to break it to all of you, but "safe" is a fleeting sense of security that has nothing to do with the amount of military defense we have.

Man, like, that is so wrong. Goodness knows that it's getting better, he world is a cold cruel place. There are thugs everywhere.

If someone can make a buck or sieze power doing anything, anything whatsoever, there are enough people around that one of them will do it.

No axiomatic system is complete, there is always a loophole, but what you have to do is have control mechanisims that carry the weight of force.

If the United States of America was a great big bunny rabbit, never ever doing anything mean to anyone, unless there was force to stop them, there would be a gold rush of predatory thugs coming to conquer and enslave us. Maybe exterminate us.

Unless we genetically alter humans, we will always have the need for force. And, since weapons of mass destruction are so easy to make, and perhaps even if there is a world government, on the world stage, nuclear and worse weapons will always be with us.

rshowalter - 02:39pm Jan 11, 2001 EST (#565 of 573)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Dirac, you're making interesting statements. Why don't you go on? I'm a little busy with other things just now, but after a while I'll get back to you.

I notice you're raising your voice, and saying that "we CAN build an ABM system, because we MUST"

Neither the "can" nor the "must" necessarily follow.

If you've read my stuff, you'll know that I'm frequently an advocate of force, including especially disciplined military force. I think militaries will always be needed. But nuclear weapons are disastrously dangerous, operationally ineffective weapons, and we should get rid of them.

zero_pattern - 04:29pm Jan 11, 2001 EST (#566 of 573)

Dirac

Anywhere in my statement did you see the word "disarm?" The whole point of my post is that if you build a sword, you'll also likely die by it. If we think that we are making the world a better place by proliferating arms, then the core of the logic you use is the very logic that will contribute to the horrific state of affairs in the world.

Notice I didn't use the word "cause" -- "cause" is something way to big to tackle in a forum because it would mean looking to the first place that needs improvment - ourselves - and that has proved so difficult we don't even bother any more. Sure, things need to stay (in a relative way) the way they are to maintain the fragile balance, but nothing stays in balance forever. And the longer we patch the world's problems by the use of force, the longer we perpetuate a cycle of destruction that will only keep us safe until it doesn't anymore. It just seems like it's time to start trying to understand the problem of the world in a new way, so we can start to deal with it in a new way. Because the old way only appears to be working. It is in actuality, causing greater and greater catastrophy

And I find your example of Saddam typically slanted. If not responsible, we are at least culpable in the creation of these anti-American fundamentalists by promising them things in exchange for overthrowing their communist governments or for averting communist rise to power with our weapons and then boo-hooing when religious fanatics come to power.

Where do you think Iraqis got their weapons? Who do you think trained them in effective guerrilla warfare or the most effective techniques for extracting information by means of torture? CIA and U.S. military intelligence. Does that make you proud? I'm so tired of the American mentality that the world is a horrible place because that's the way it is, not because that is the way we help to make it.

We only assume we don't make it that way because we have never truly tried making it any other way. Death will always come for us. We don't need hemmoragic bullet holes spilling our guts onto the earth to find it, however. It'll get here when it gets here. Why are we so eager to invite it early?

I'm not suggesting that I have an answer to the problem, I'm just trying to point out that we don't even seem to be asking the right questions.

zero_pattern - 04:45pm Jan 11, 2001 EST (#567 of 573)

"If someone can make a buck or sieze power doing anything, anything whatsoever, there are enough people around that one of them will do it." - ala Dirac

I also suggest this. Look inside yourself and see if you have any of those things (greed, anger, distrust, aggression) at any level -- it need not be on the level of tyranny. Even the smallest amount of any of these things is the same as having them at all levels. Greed is greed, whether for power to control a nation, control a spouse, or to control whether or not you win at Monopoly.

When you realize that you have in you aggression, fear, anger, distrust, greed- you will come to understand that the outer world and the inner world are NOT DIFFERENT. The collective outer state of the world is a direct reflection of the collective inner state of man. If that doesn't change, the rest is just window dressing. The first place to start the change is within, because then the fundamental change without happens spontaneously.

And I'm not talking God, or the great divine, or any of these other ridiculous guises we have cloaked the inner world with. I'm talking about relationship. What kind of relationship do you want to have with the world? What kind of relationship do you want your children, and your children's children to have with the world. One with understanding, trust, generosity, kindness? Or one with anger, fear, aggression, greed, conflict?

mhunter20 - 10:42am Jan 12, 2001 EST (#568 of 573)

The history channel had a great show last night on the role of radar in WWII. The last statement on the show was, "the bomb [atomic] may have ended the war but radar won it."

(5 following messages)

New York Times on the Web Forums Science Missile Defense