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Missile Defense

Technology has always found its greatest consumer in a nation's war and defense efforts. Since the last attempts at a "Star Wars" defense system, has technology changed considerably enough to make the latest Missile Defense initiatives more successful? Can such an application of science be successful? Is a militarized space inevitable, necessary or impossible?

rshowalter - 07:05pm Oct 4, 2001 EST (#10066 of 10185)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

We will make our cases before the world best, when we ourselves stand for right answers, that can be seen and understood. We're right on so much.

Why not right the things we can be reasonably criticised about, that we should be ashamed of ourselves?

MD1060 rshowalter 10/3/01 3:19pm ... MD1061 rshowalter 10/4/01 4:35am

gisterme?

kangdawai ?

rshowalter - 07:22pm Oct 4, 2001 EST (#10067 of 10185)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

News Hour: Monday, October 1, 2001 http://www.pbs.org/newshour/newshour_index.html#

Robert MacNeil gets the perspectives of three New York Times columnists: editorial page editor Gail Collins and columnists William Safire and Frank Rich.

Audio worth listening to. Excellent points by Collins, on focus, Rich on systems and vulnerabilities.

Safire is clear that we need to neutralize the threats from weapons of mass destruction posed by Saddam. I agree. But is he right about the means?

Perhaps not.

With the negotiations going on now, all over the world, it may be shown that there ways to accomplish the key objective - elimination of weapons of mass destruction. Ways which are actually effective, where our policies have not been. And perhaps also much less costly in military, economic, and human terms.

Any such means are likely to involve force, and certain to involve the threat of force. But, as in the case of Afghanistan, we may find that the most direct and crude approaches to force may not be the best ones.

almarst-2001 - 11:36pm Oct 4, 2001 EST (#10068 of 10185)

Sadly, the evenhanded use of the "terrorist" label would mean sometimes affixing it directly on the U.S. government. During the past decade, from Iraq to Sudan to Yugoslavia, the Pentagon's missiles have destroyed the lives of civilians just as innocent as those who perished on Sept. 11. If journalists dare not call that "terrorism," then perhaps the word should be retired from the media lexicon. - http://www.fair.org/media-beat/011004.html

possumdag - 02:30am Oct 5, 2001 EST (#10069 of 10185)
"Bloke at work, doing the best he can." Powell

American has profound thinkers - unfortunately they don't write the news, nor - as yet devise humaine non-nuclear foreign policy.

Poet and author Dr. Maya Angelou says "Now is the time for thinking people to think." see also.

possumdag - 03:04am Oct 5, 2001 EST (#10070 of 10185)
"Bloke at work, doing the best he can." Powell

Pilger thinks see:

rshowalter - 04:12am Oct 5, 2001 EST (#10071 of 10185)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Almarst is right , and the only way to avoid seeing that he is right -- the only way to avoid feeling that he is right - - is the way we do avoid it.

By "compartmentalizing" in false ways things that cannot reasonably be compartmentalized. By erecting distinctions that are false. By lying to ourselves, and others.

I'm proud of my country, about a lot of things. But on this thread, the patterns of evasion, dishonesty, and consistently ugly dispropotion shown by gisterme have made me ashamed of some powerful people, groups, and patterns in America.

Staffed organizations look at this thread, I believe. They can easily go back and read it(though with a search facility it would be easier.)

I suspect that, if they did so, some would see why I feel as I do, though they may not agree.

In engineering, for getting things to work, it is vital to strip away whatever doesn't matter - but to make reasonable decisions on the basis of what matters.

In mathematics, simultaneous equations are simultaneous, and constraints are constraints.

I wasn't there -- but I wonder how many times, in the course of his trip Rumsfeld told a diplomat or a foreign leader

" We won't talk about that."

or

" That is something we'll have to consider later, but not now."

When problems can be simplified (and still solved) that is wonderful, and sometimes the simplification works. When it happens to work.

But often enough, and under circumstances we face now, to strip away things that matter is to classify decent solutions out of existence. To deny hope.

A reasonable definition of terrorism ought to include some things that the United States has done and is still committed to. On September 25th, I had an all day meeting with "beckq" on this thread. It goes from MD266 rshowalt 9/25/00 7:32am . . . to MD304 rshowalt 9/25/00 5:28pm . In my view, a lot of good people would be alive today, and there would be less to fear, if the entirely reasonable request I made in MD304 had been attended to - - there would have been many ways to do it.

"We won't talk about that" is a standard application of power, in politics, journalism, and elsewhere. When the subject matter is sufficiently important, that refusal is a denial of fundamental hope for solution - - especially for solutions that deal with the people involved as human beings.

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