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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 - 07:20am Apr 26, 2001 EST (#2617 of 2628)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Considering everything, I can see no sufficient explanation for what has happened that does not involve both moral and financial corruption on the part of the clique left to run our nuclear threat exercise from the Kennedy Administration on.

What is being done is deeply inconsistent with US ideals, as they are in the larger culture.

I feel that we should fix this situation.

Things are complicated enough, I believe, that redemptive solutions are going to be the only ones possible.

Forgiveness, redemption are high values. Even so, in my opinion, some people of very high status and current power are going to deserve to be shamed -- and some will deserve to be punished otherwise.

rshowalter - 08:50am Apr 26, 2001 EST (#2618 of 2628)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

md 926: rshowalter 3/11/01 5:02pm read:

"Here is a memo written by Kissenger, Lessons of Vietnam. It is a memo to President Ford, in response to Ford's request for guidance about answering the press. The draft, it is said, was never submitted to the President. One has to believe that the substance of the draft was conveyed. The draft makes stunning reading, in view of other things we now know about Vietnam.

( this was hotkeyed at http://www.lbjlib.utexas.edu/ford/library/exhibits/vietnam/750512f.htm , but the link has been removed, and the search page at the UT library that might permit access also seems to be removed.)

Kissenger's memo closes.

" I do not believe our soldiers or our people need to be ashamed." I don't dispute the judgement, but would ask if Kissinger and other leaders, involved in bad decisions largely motivated by a web of lies, had reason to be ashamed.

"One might argue no. -- One might argue that, considering the alternatives they believed to be real, they made good choices.

"I don't want to debate that now. This is clear. There surely WAS a great deal of deception.

And that tradition of deception continues, in part because what has been done has not been admitted, and perhaps, in the view of many, cannot be admitted.

rshowalter - 08:58am Apr 26, 2001 EST (#2619 of 2628)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

md 742: rshowalter 2/21/01 4:02pm

I believe that everybody concerned about matters of defense, and especially nuclear deployments, should consider carefully 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

With circumstances that appear to show a disproportion and operational mismatch between means and ends, the speech seems to me to raise issues of crucial importance today.

Indeed, when one looks at many things that have happened since 1961, it seems to me that Eisenhower was right to be concerned, and that in many ways his worst fears have been realized. Things have gone far, far worse in the world, in some important ways, than many hoped. Many, even most people believed that by the end of the 20th century, we'd live in a far more prosperous worlda than the one that now exists. C.P. Snow felt so -- and many in his generation felt so.

rshowalter - 09:03am Apr 26, 2001 EST (#2620 of 2628)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

The financial circumstances of many people at the Department of Defense, and many of the people who have had major roles in the Department of Defense, shows how remarkably the "military industrial complex" has come to influence the entire US economy, and the people in positions of special influence about it.

Conflicts of interest, and vulnerabilities to corrupt influence, are hardly hidden anymore. Hardly, any more, thought to be anything special, of anything to be concerned about.

rshowalter - 09:07am Apr 26, 2001 EST (#2621 of 2628)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

The Cold War should be over, and some basic foundations of the decisions on which we based our Cold War military are now obsolete, and dangerous, for us and for the whole world. rshowalter 3/7/01 7:41am

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