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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?

Read Debates, a new Web-only feature culled from Readers' Opinions, published every Thursday.

gisterme - 02:57am Feb 8, 2002 EST (#11348 of 11350)

mazza9 2/7/02 9:55pm

"...To what end? That part of the peninsula would glow for 10,000 years!..."

Ask yourself why the millions of innocent people who live there should die, just because their leader, one who essentialy rules them at gunpoint, enables an atrocity by proxy against us?

Deterrance can only work where leadership cares what happens to its people. The leadership in N. Korea and Iraq are already causing their people to be starved. Saddam Hussein could end the UN sanctions on Iraq by simply complying with the UN resolutions that his government agreed to. Kim Jong Il could mitigate his people's suffering by giving up his quest for WMD and long-range delivery systems. What does he need them for?

Judging by their actions, those men place their personal pride and ambition above the well being of their people. Do you think they really care if millions of innocent die? I don't. It's hard for us to understand that mindset, but we must.

Robert is asking why not just preempt the problem? Why not just go there and do what's necessary to eliminate the treat posed by these "rogue" nations and their terrorist proxies?

The problem with doing that is that most of the folks that would be hurt if we did are innocent. Guys like Saddam understand and exploit our reluctance to do harm to the innocent. In that ilk's veiw, that's our Achillies heel. In my view, that's our strength. We care more about their people than they do; but that poses a tough problem for us. Consider that the entire population of Iraq are essentially hostages. Should we just wipe out the good along with the bad? Does the garden have so many weeds that they can't be removed without destroying the vegetables and flowers too?

What solution to that problem would you suggest, Lou? Got any ideas?

lchic - 05:29am Feb 8, 2002 EST (#11349 of 11350)

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rshow55 - 10:44am Feb 8, 2002 EST (#11350 of 11350)

Just got back to the board -- I had some other things to do. Will study calculations carefully -- thanks for them.

On preemption, gisterme said, just above:

"Robert is asking why not just preempt the problem? Why not just go there and do what's necessary to eliminate the treat posed by these "rogue" nations and their terrorist proxies?"

That's still a good question. If the objective is to eliminate missiles - - it could probably be done with pretty minimal carnage. Some, of course, but that's not necessarily intolerable. I, like a lot of other people, believe in scorekeeping.

Preemption, as a general family of approaches, is far less problematic than BMD - for a number of reasons, first among them, that it can actually be made to work. On scorekeeping, I'm in general agreement with what was said in A Merciful War by NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

which ends with this:

"Military intervention, even if it means lost innocent lives on both sides, can serve the most humanitarian of goals."

BUT THAT DEPENDS ON WHAT IS DONE, AND WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENS. YOU HAVE TO KEEP SCORE. And figure out something sensible.

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