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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?

gisterme - 06:24pm Jun 1, 2001 EST (#4455 of 4466)

jimmcd53 wrote: "...I would rather use SEAL Team 6 and/or Marine specialists to execute a few well placed shots into specific chest cavities than bomb any more embassies or pharmaceutical plants.

That's my emotional sentiment as well, Jim; but you still need to know where to send the sniper. Besides that, I believe assasination of civilians is forbidden under current US policy. Please correct me if I'm wrong. But if it weren't, and say, Osama ben Ladin was the target, where in Afghanistan would one send a Seal team to do the job?

Killing people who have nothing to do with our problems bothers the hell out of me.

Me too. That's the power of the assymetric application of force isn't it? The terrorist bombs party A and kills a bunch of innocent people. Out of rage and fustration, party A retaliates, ineffectively by killing some innocent people, because doing SOMETHING seems better than doing NOTHING. Just like bombing the pharmaceutical plant. Then the terrorist stands back and bad-mouths party A becase it has killed innocent people. Just like the terrorist did at first. Hmmm. Who is innocent in that scenario?

If we must kill, we must be judicious about it. One cannot really be all that judicious with a missile launch..."

That's a fact, Jim.

jimmcd53 - 06:57pm Jun 1, 2001 EST (#4456 of 4466)

Gisterme, there is, never has been and never will be a substitute for intelligence, and I'm using the word in its broadest possible sense. I mean "intelligence" as in information gathering and "intelligence" as in the smarts to know what to do with the information you gather. I don't know that we could get to Osama bin Laden under present circumstances, but we could take out a lot of his wealth and cells and operatives, and he can't do a whole lot without them, can he? If no government will host him, and he has very few followers left, and those he has include at least one who will sell him out for fear of what might happen next, he becomes a good deal more vulnerable, doesn't he?

gisterme - 07:23pm Jun 1, 2001 EST (#4457 of 4466)

jimmcd53 wrote: "...If someone knows that the price for assaulting you will be vaporization, they will think twice about assaulting you.

Agreed. But what if they're pretty sure they won't be vaporized?

Suicidal terrorists aren't afraid of being incinerated...

Right. But those are the privates, not the general.

but the populations that shelter them are, and the governments that harbor them wouldn't be too fond of the idea either no matter what they might state publicly..."

Do you incenerate a whole population just to get a couple of bad guys, that the population at large didn't even know about? I hope not. The Cole incident is a perfect example. I noticed that we didn't incenerate South Yemen (thank God). Still those bombers lived right there in the middle of a buisy neighborhood in Aden, built their bomb then killed our sailors along with themselves. Very few if any of the local folks knew what was going on. How are they to blame?

That's a tough problem, Jim.

On the other hand, if the US were to change its policy WRT assasination, that could open up an entirely different can of worms without necessarily closing the present one.

I wonder if the current price that's on ben Ladin's head is for delivery "dead or alive". Perhaps one way to get around the assasination restriction would be try a subject in absencia, providing a competent defense team and honest due process, of course. If the subject is found guilty by a jury, based on evidence presented, and sentenced to death, perhaps that should be the exception that allows a "hit". Perhaps not. Lots of probems with that idea come to mind too.

The biggetst probem is that terrorists don't have to follow any rules.

jimmcd53 - 07:34pm Jun 1, 2001 EST (#4458 of 4466)

Neither do we, other than those we choose to follow. And I'm not talking about indiscriminate slaughter - I had thought, or at least hoped, I'd made it clear that I oppose that not only on moral grounds but also because it can be counterproductive - I'm talking about using the right amount and kind of force where it will do the most good. That takes judgment, and just as there's no substitute for intelligence there is also no substitute for the kind of judgment that can be exercised properly only by the kind of leadership we need to prevail in the kind of long, twilight war we're talking about.

jimmcd53 - 07:49pm Jun 1, 2001 EST (#4459 of 4466)

Gisterme, as I looked back on our last few posts it occurred to me that there's a major component missing here. Counterterrorism, effective counterterrorism, that is, involves more than just force. This is a multi-dimensional problem and dealing with will require a lot of different approaches at once. The military end involves killing terrorists and making life extremely difficult for those we cannot kill right away. At the other end of the spectrum, though, there are things we can do to shrink their recruiting pool, not by violence but by winning friends and influencing people. These people do not operate in a vacuum. They have reasons for wanting to attack us in the first place. Some of them we can't do anything about (example: for good or ill, we are allied with Israel and committed to a peace process the Egyptians and Jordanians have signed on to, and I am not for abandoning it or any of them), but some we can. That is another of Colin Powell's challenges.

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