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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 - 09:59am Jul 13, 2001 EST (#6997 of 7001)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

MD664 rshowalter 2/9/01 1:53pm

In "Beauty" http://www.everreader.com/beauty.htm Mark Anderson quotes Heisenberg's definition of beauty in the exact sciences:

" Beauty is the proper conformity of the parts to one another and to the whole."

SUGGESTED DEFINITION: Good military theory is an attempt to produce beauty in Heisenberg's sense in a SPECIFIC context of assumption and data.

Goodness can be judged in terms of that context, and also the fit with other contexts that, for logical reasons, have to fit together.

Things can be beautiful in terms of some assumptions, and ugly in terms of others. It matters what is true -- it matters how things fit together to form whole pictures.

This administration seems to have a genius for getting committed to ideas that lead to ugly, disporportionate outcomes, again and again. In large measure because they make assumptions, that they will not question, and will not check -- that don't fit the case when checked in detail.

Missile Defense seems a good example. To Wolfowitz, it seems beautiful. But it seems to me that Wolfowitz's sense of beauty, sense of a "conformity of the parts to one another and to the whole" is based on a gross misunderstanding of the facts. Many of those facts can be checked - by a matching process.

People are looking at what the Bush administration is saying, and doing -- and finding the things seid and done disproportionate, unreliable, and ugly.

The poll numbers of President Bush are low, though Americans want to trust their president, and want to support him -- because there is so much ugliness, so much disproportion -- there to see.

If you'd like to see some good reasons why they are -- search gisterme , this thread, and read what he says from the top.

Is the administration now acting "in good faith" -- even on their own terms? I'm finding that harder and harder to believe -- though perhaps it is true. If they are "in good faith" than they are also living in a grossly defective, counterproductive and dangerous dream world.

rshowalter - 10:02am Jul 13, 2001 EST (#6998 of 7001)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

By now, the possibility of corruption, in many senses, ought not to be discounted.

MD6963 rshowalter 7/12/01 8:57am

When irrational decisions, against the national interest of the United States and other nations, are made -- it is worth remembering how wonderfully well former military and political leaders can be compensated, in organizations like the Carlyle Group .

The potential for impropriety surely exists. And the pattern shown in Elder Bush in Big G.O.P. Cast Toiling for Top Equity Firm by LESLIE WAYNE March 5, 2001 http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/05/politics/05CARL.html?pagewanted=all are ugly.

The administration is advocating, against a prepoderance of evidence, a program that will waste tens of billions of dollars and that will probably enrich key members of this administration, including George W. Bush, personally.

For an estimate of the magnitude of the enrichment possible -- look at the wealth, in hundreds of millions of dollars, generated to partners of Carlyle working on inside information, with much capability for secret, corrupt, and coercive manipulation of multibillion dollar deals.

rshowalter - 10:03am Jul 13, 2001 EST (#6999 of 7001)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Directories of this thread - - MD6965 rshowalter 7/12/01 9:22am

rshowalter - 10:08am Jul 13, 2001 EST (#7000 of 7001)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

There are solid possibilities for real peace -- including workable handling of the difficulties with the N. Koreans, Iranians, and Iraqis, if the major players involved would just decide what they can reasonably want, in terms of facts.

In the interest of the nations that they serve.

MD6939 rshowalter 7/11/01 7:50pm

lunarchick - 10:09am Jul 13, 2001 EST (#7001 of 7001)
lunarchick@www.com

The Wheels that wing the Bwsh agenda are:

Paybacks to those who swung the election +
Launching Alaskan Oil and Rockets

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