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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?

almarst-2001 - 05:20pm Jul 3, 2001 EST (#6504 of 6514)

I used to send e-mails and make a phone calls to senators, congress, the NYT, the Public Radio. I used to walk with a"bull eye" on my coat during the first weeks of the bombing.

I guess I could have come and burn myself in front of the White House. But I didn't.

almarst-2001 - 05:22pm Jul 3, 2001 EST (#6505 of 6514)

On what basis do we single out some as war crimes? Why now? In the half century after the trials of leading Nazis at Nuremberg, many atrocities were committed around the world, a good many of them by governments allied to the West in the Cold War. Yet there was never any serious consideration given to setting up an international tribunal. So why is there now such enthusiasm for war crimes trials in relation to the civil wars in the former Yugoslavia? And even there, it is at least worth asking why Milosevic has been singled out. - http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,248-2001223329,00.html

almarst-2001 - 05:24pm Jul 3, 2001 EST (#6506 of 6514)

In March 1968, US infantrymen under the command of Lieutenant William Calley massacred the civilian population of the Vietnamese hamlet of My Lai in four hours. When Calley eventually faced a court martial, he said: “I was ordered to go in there and destroy the enemy . . . I did not sit down and think in terms of men, women and children. They were all classified the same.” Calley was sentenced to life imprisonment. After just three days in prison, President Richard Nixon ordered that he be moved to his apartment under house arrest. Three years later he was free on parole. - http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,248-2001223329,00.html

almarst-2001 - 05:26pm Jul 3, 2001 EST (#6507 of 6514)

It is arguable that the existence of this tribunal is an infringement of international law. It was set up by the permanent members of the UN Security Council — the US, UK, France, Russia and China — in contravention of the UN’s own principle of non-intervention in the affairs of member states. There are no juries at The Hague, and measures have been permitted during trials — such as the use of hearsay evidence and anonymous witnesses — that even new Labour Home Secretaries have so far fought shy of proposing for UK courts. - http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,248-2001223329,00.html

almarst-2001 - 05:27pm Jul 3, 2001 EST (#6508 of 6514)

All in all, the tribunal looks less like a neutral court of international law than a creature of global power politics. Fears that such a body will dispense a justice tainted with double standards are unlikely to have been assuaged by plans to establish a permanent International Criminal Court which, as then Foreign Secretary Robin Cook assured Newsnight viewers last year, “is not a court set up to bring to book Prime Ministers of the United http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,248-2001223329,00.htmlKingdom or Presidents of the United States”. -

rshowalter - 05:33pm Jul 3, 2001 EST (#6509 of 6514)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

So, we have essential problems with a biased press and biased justice. It seems to me that those are vital and fair concerns.

rshowalter - 05:36pm Jul 3, 2001 EST (#6510 of 6514)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

I'm not trying to be dismissive at all - and I'm usually quite willing to consider linkages, and am here.

But I do ask -- how do these concerns link to missile defense?

And can a country's possession of nuclear weapons be protection against these concerns?

If it is, then we have something very important indeed to talk about.

And we may.

rshowalter - 05:43pm Jul 3, 2001 EST (#6511 of 6514)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

MD817 rshowalter 3/1/01 4:27pm

Summary of postings since #266 (6)

People interested in religion and ethics may be particularly interested in #792-797. rshowalter 2/27/01 6:03pm ... It begins: .....

Tina Rosenberg represents one of the most admirable flowerings of a tradition, admirable in many ways, that , taken no further than she takes it, makes an effective nuclear disarmament impossible.

Rosenberg believes .... People need to know what was actually done. ...That's surely right.

But what was to be done with the facts? . .. . .

Something was missing from the book, and the situations it described.

In the complex, conflicted situations described, beautiful justice is impossible. There are multiple contexts, each inescapable and in a fundamental sense valid.

An aesthetically satisfying justice can be defined for each and every set of assumptions and perspectives that can be defined. But there are too many sets of assumptions and perspectives that cannot be escaped in the complex circumstances that are actually there. . . .. .. . .

The situations Rosenberg describes, where she hungers for justice, do not admit of satisfactory justice. They are too complicated. . . . . . What is needed, for logical reasons that are fundamentally secular rather than religious, is redemption. rshowalter 2/27/01 6:06pm

Does this apply to your problems with war crime trials, almarst?

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