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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 - 07:42am Oct 5, 2001 EST (#10079 of 10083)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

almarst-2001 10/5/01 7:36am I think I do.

I have been on your side, all through this thread, on a lot of points (not all.)

We need stable and reasonably proportionate systems of deterrance and incentive between nations.

rshowalter - 07:45am Oct 5, 2001 EST (#10080 of 10083)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

almarst-2001 10/5/01 7:31am

That's true, almarst . And the whole world has a right to insist on some special care from the United States, exactly because we are so powerful, and have been so agressive.

We need improvement from both the US and Iraq. And from plenty of other nations as well.

It isn't even very interesting who is "worst" .

The things that need to be corrected are bad enough.

Punishment may or may not be worth it, considering the real costs, in the situation as a whole.

rshowalter - 07:49am Oct 5, 2001 EST (#10081 of 10083)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

almarst-2001 10/5/01 7:36am

I think I understand something of the desperate fear, and the need to fight, that you describe almarst.

If many more people in the United States did , some problems might be soluble that aren't otherwise.

For myself, I'm hopeful that things can be made better, in part, almarst because of your efforts.

rshowalter - 07:51am Oct 5, 2001 EST (#10082 of 10083)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

From October 11, 2000 to the end of March there was a thread on the Guardian, Emotional Peace in the Middle East that I spent much time on, with Dawn Riley. The thread was featured for almost all that time on the Guardian's Middile East News roundup page. There were 1200 postings --- many impassioned, many good, some, I believe, by political leaders. Here is the opening of that thread, which I kept as it was from October.

"We are in an impasse that is just as dangerous as it looks in the Middle East. It looks like an emotional crisis, and whatever else it may be, it is surely just that. Here are some basics about the impasse, and the radically different ideas and feelings now at play

"The Israelis have been looking for a limited, coexisting place of their own in the Middle East, and have been fighting for their lives, outnumbered, for more than half a century. They've wracked their brains to find ways to coexist, and tried to forgive all manner of insults, injuries, and consistent themes and variations of genocidal threats upon them.

"true.

"The Israelis have become militarily effective in the extreme, in all sort of warfare, including psychological warfare, and the Palestinians are now psychologically so reduced that they are "fighting" by having a rabble of unarmed, fanatical children throw rocks at Israeli soldiers, hoping to provoke the Israelis into killing them, and hoping that their death, in this way, somehow leads to a workable human situation.

"also true.

"It is now clear how upset the Palestinians are, and they have said that they feel so degraded, so demasculinized, that the only thing they see remaining to them is a fight to a self sacrificing death, under conditions where they are only fodder to be cut down by disciplined troops.

"That's not conducive to peace. The psychological state of the Palestinians must be adressed, including the (considerable) role in that psychological state due to effective psychological warfare by the Israelis. Livable, masculine and human roles for the Palestinians must be worked out, mutually, between Israel and the Palestinian governments and people. The Israelis have to let this happen - which means that both sides have to understand the psychological degradation of the Palestinians.

"Anybody blame the Israelis for using any and all pyschological warfare technique against the Palestinians, with the Israeli risks as they've been? I find them blameless. This was life and death. All the same, for peace, some psychological warfare injuries need to be acknowledged, and healed.

"The physical compromises necessary for peace are now, after much effort, largely in place.

"The emotional healing is absolutely necessary, too. It needs to be begun.

"If Palestinians are to become a nation, they can't ask their children to fight by throwing rocks at armed and organized soldiers. And if Israel is to have peace, the Palestinians have to become a working nation.

"We are looking at emotional problems, that are no accident, but that are at least as dangerous as they look.

"They need to be adressed. Only the truth, only a situation where "everybody is reading from the same page" can possibly work here. The situation is too desperate and too complicated for anything else. Anybody interested in talking about this?

M. Robert Showalter

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