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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 - 12:30pm Oct 5, 2001 EST (#10087 of 10092)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

There are awkwardnesses in spots, but taking everything into consideration, I can't help being cheerful an lot of the time (no fun being scared all the time.) There are so many stupid, terribly awkward "solutions" people have gotten themselves locked into, that if people show a little application and good sense, a lot of things that have been astonishingly bad, given how smart people often are, may be fixable now.

There is no solution, on a longish list of important issues, unless there's a convention change. Now, the convention is that if somebody with power really objects, nothing that really matters can be checked to closure -- at the level of clarity people really need for closure.

If the convention were changed so that, at least often, checking in such circumstances became morally forcing . . . a lot of problems would be solved, by the people involved, and often without the checking actually having to take place. Often enough, people know what their problems are. And they know the lies they're telling. And they'll face up to reality when they have to.

And, when people are in messes, on practical things, it often happens that reality is the only real hope.

For example, "missile defense" people have gotten themselves into a terrible box -- where, technically, a great many interlocked lives look as vulnerable as a house of cards.

Once that is admitted, much better solutions for almost everybody concerned become possible.

There is so much to do that competent managers and engineers should have little to fear.

In the middle east, there are solutions, too, once the density of lies is cut down. That would make a lot of people happier. When a population is so screwed up that suicide starts looking good to them, for their own people, and even for themselves - - then that population needs to be helped, and shown practical ways that it can cheer up. The entire Arab world is full of people in desperate emotional and practical trouble, and that makes them dangerous in some ways, but very weak and vulnerable in many others.

It shouldn't take great inspiration to come up with a lot of human solutions that are better than the ones working so badly now.

possumdag - 02:06pm Oct 5, 2001 EST (#10088 of 10092)
Possumdag@excite.com

From the Friedman link above:

America should look deeper into its policies and actions

The reality for Americans is that foreign policy seems rarely to have been put before them. That liberation fighters for democratic advancement were so often labelled as ideologically 'unclean' and repressed with American Assistance, might be pursued.

Friedman talked of Clinton-Palestine. (No date provided.) Would this pre-date the Phillipine finding of the WTC-determination in the paperwork of those plotting to assassinate the Pope in Manilla in 1993?

Friedman spoke of Arab utilisation of oil revenues and their failure to build the infrastructure of a modern state.

The 'party' did go on for a long time.

What did happen to all the oil money?

As the demand for Oil is seen to be lessening, and revenues diminish, the people of Gulf Arab nations are moving to establish more regular national economies and prepare to work jobs - once exported to foreign labor, and train for modern roles.

Where did/does the nuclear questions fit - in terms of gulf oil - as a 'threat' perhaps?

rshowalter - 02:23pm Oct 5, 2001 EST (#10089 of 10092)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Wonderful questions! And very welcome, too. Just now, I'm on a bit of a stumper. May crack soon. Friedman got me to thinking . . .

Do we really have to respect the role of religious teachers, or people whose claim to power is based on religion?

No matter what?

What are the consequences?

First thought - - it is a formula for making checking impossible that looks a lot like "military classification" in some ways.

How do you check these people?

I suspect it matters.

jorian_s - 02:54pm Oct 5, 2001 EST (#10090 of 10092)

That last comment by rshowalter echoes my thoughts. Is Islam the only major religion that requires that its followers acknowledge no governmental authority (other than itself)?

rshowalter - 03:13pm Oct 5, 2001 EST (#10091 of 10092)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

May be. I don't see how you can run a modern economy, if clergymen are in a position to give orders rather than advice.

Industrialization sure didn't get very far in European history, in countries where the Church maintained really significant secular power. The Islamic countries very often look a lot like another medieval country - that stayed poor, and wasn't very flexible, even with great amounts of money running through it. Spain, hobbled and degraded by the Spanish Inquisition, owned almost all the New World, but lagged very far behind parts of Europe where religious power was less oppressive.

I wonder what real justification, that is intellectually decent, evidentially supportable justification, the Moslem clerics have for their secular power. If all they have is raw coercive power, that is ugly . . . and probably connects to a great deal, on economic and sexual matters, where the clergy is unclean, in their own terms, and, if the truth we known, in the eyes of most decent people everywhere.

I don't want limits on religious leaders giving advice -- for people who want it. But in more advanced, flexible, and successful countries - they give advice, not orders.

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