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Missile Defense

Russian military leaders have expressed concern about US plans for a national missile defense system. Will defense technology be limited by possibilities for a strategic imbalance? Is this just SDI all over again?

rshowalter - 06:02am Apr 12, 2001 EST (#2175 of 2180)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Star Wars, and US nuclear policy, have been aberrations, that have occurred because standared checks and balances in the US political system were bypassed.

The rest of the United States systems is, and ought to be, an important example (among a number) for the world to consider, and respect, and consider emulating. In considering this, I believe that Americans and everyone who must deal with Americans (and everyone whose life is endangered by American actions and mistakes -- which is everyone) ought to carefully consider the concerns about the “military-industrial complex” set out in the FAREWELL ADDRESS of President Dwight D. Eisenhower January 17, 1961. http://www.geocities.com/~newgeneration/ikefw.htm and consider what has happened since. That consideration should include consideration of facts, not denied, but often forgotten, set out in Richard Rhodes DARK SUN: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb Simon & Schuster, 1995 rshowalter 3/22/01 11:48am I believe that, since Eisenhower's time, the military industrial complex has run amok, and become corrupt and out of balance in many ways, corrupting the United States and endangering the world. It is in the interest of the whole world that this be discussed.

More than discussed -- these facts have to be persuasively established, in the minds of many people, and with many ways to check provided, and many ways of questioning the facts provided, so that these fact cease to be "somehow too weak" and become a basis for effective action.

It is in the interest of the whole world, and emphatically in the interest of the United States, which has so much to be proud of, that this aberration be fixed.

rshowalter - 07:31am Apr 12, 2001 EST (#2176 of 2180)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Essential facts about nuclear weapons need to be discussed, and set forward, until they cease to be "somehow too weak" and become "strong enough for action." rshowalter 2/11/01 4:41am

Many arguments against Star Wars have never been successfully or clearly challenged, but instead have been simply ignored. Some of these arguments are set out in Missile Defense System Won't Work by David Wright and Theodore Postol May 11, 2000, the Boston Globe http://www.commondreams.org/views/051100-101.htm

For the survival of the world, for the causes of peace, and plain dealing, and for very strong economic reasons, it is in the interest of the international community to see that these points are discussed to closure --- so that essential facts and logical sequences are clear enough to have substantial, and for many purposes, coercive force, unless these arguments can be successfully challenged, in public, on the basis of evidence.

rshowalter - 07:37am Apr 12, 2001 EST (#2177 of 2180)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

The spy plane that China now has should provide a great deal of evidence, multiply reinforced by large bodies of collaborating detail, making clear how fraudulent many of the claims of "technical feasibility" for missile defense have always been, and remain. There are many other sources as well. Except for assertions of "trust us" -- the administration, and the military industrial complex, has no sufficient moral or logical foundation for what it has claimed, and done, and the trouble and expense that it has caused in this matter -- especially since the fall of the Soviet system.

rshowalter - 07:42am Apr 12, 2001 EST (#2178 of 2180)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

The possibility that many in the military-industrial complex are, in this matter, collectively insane may be a good defense against the apparent fraud (for some, but probably not all, of those involved.) Large groups of people, in trusted positions, who talk only to each other in the course of making certain judgements, can be atonishingly wrong, in very hurtful ways, for long times. Groups of people can be absolutely sure of ideas that are completely wrong -- and do grave damage. The record of the medical profession has many gruesome examples. The poem OUR FATHERS OF OLD by Rudyard Kipling offers a vivid and imaginative, and historically perceptive recounting of how such collective aberrations have occured in the medical profession. rshowalter 3/26/01 8:54pm

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