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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 - 07:41pm May 15, 2001 EST (#3948 of 3957)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

comments, gisterme ?

rshowalter - 07:58pm May 15, 2001 EST (#3949 of 3957)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

China Assails Missile Defense as Danger to World Security by ERIK ECKHOLM http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/15/world/15CND-CHINA.html

"BEIJING, May 15 — While President Bush's emissary was here making the case for building a national missile defense, the Chinese government today publicly condemned the American proposal, calling it a fruitless step that would endanger global security.

I'm away for 45 minutes.

rshowalter - 08:19pm May 15, 2001 EST (#3950 of 3957)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Reasons for guarded optimism.
3665: gisterme 5/10/01 1:34pm .... 3666: rshowalter 5/10/01 2:03pm

rshowalter - 08:20pm May 15, 2001 EST (#3951 of 3957)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Disciplined beauty, from different points of view -- examples from movies:
3383: rshowalter 5/6/01 8:36pm ... 3384: rshowalter 5/6/01 8:37pm
3385: rshowalter 5/6/01 8:41pm

almarst-2001 - 08:36pm May 15, 2001 EST (#3952 of 3957)

Is there a credible explanation to the US opposition to the International Court for War Crimes, supported, as far as i know, by most of the other nations?

And, if not, why there is no media and public interest to demand a credible explanation from US Government?

On the same note,

The US is the largest direct finacier (against the UN law as pointed out by Yugoslavia) and the most vocal supporter of the International War Crimes Tribunal for the Yugoslavia demaniding the extradition of suspects out from the Balkans to the court in Haage.

Why there is no political/public/media attention to this seeming contradiction and double-standard?

gisterme - 08:41pm May 15, 2001 EST (#3953 of 3957)

rshowalter wrote: "...One dead "innocent bystander" -- a specific fee to a UN fund.

Lets see, Robert. Who would pay that? The tyrant perhaps? :-)

Gotta do better than that. I can't help but think that money involved would cause more problems than it would solve. Besides that, as it is now, the UN is impotent when it comes to helping folks out or enforcing its own resolutions. How would pouring money into that bureaucracy help the people of Iraq today? To me, the idea of linking $$ payoffs to instances of human suffering seems like the wrong kind of motivation. Too many unscrupulous greedy people out there to be rewarding them for bad news.

Any other ideas? Should be some objective parameter or parameters of the human condition that can be quantifiably measured for ANY population. Might be a mix of economic ratios, health statistics and birth/mortality data or some such. Build a database over time then correlate trends to a timeline that reflects changes in leadership for all the populations. Something like that. That kind of database would probably foster all sorts of ideas to show relative conditions of all the populations and current trends. Might also show some interesting things about what happens in human terms when diverse populations interact or how one population is affected by changes in leadership in an adjacent population. Can't see that such a thing would tell us much we can't see with our eyes, but it might be a statistical method to remove some of the subjective emotional fog that seems to appear when people are really suffering. By applying the same technique to past populations, one might learn to predict the future ascendance of Hitler-like figures based on current trends. Lots of food for thought there, Robert. On the other hand, there's also great potential for a tempest in a teacup when too many conclusions are drawn from number-jockying (ala Robert MacNamara). It would be an intersting idea to explore. It might be harder to do than the BMD. :-)

gisterme - 08:58pm May 15, 2001 EST (#3954 of 3957)

possumdag wrote: "...Leadership: It has been said that: the people of Iraq and people of Serbia, would have overthrown the leadership - had they not been nationally united against the USA, via bombings and sanctions..."

It has also been said that the bombing of Serbia weakened Milosevic enough that he could be overthrown. Hard to say which was right, after the fact.

The only time Saddam has been vulnerable at all was during and immediately after the gulf war. He's too powerful to be killed unless it's done by one of his close associates or by massive force. In that sense Saddam is very like Stalin and Hitler. Isn't the only difference in his results one of scale?

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