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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 - 09:00am Jul 31, 2001 EST (#7641 of 7772)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Dawn's cites in MD7637 lunarchick 7/31/01 8:22am illustrate the hard work, and human creativity, that is often needed, and sometimes found, to make the complex fit in people's minds. And the work that is needed to determine truth, under adversarial circumstances, with high stakes.

The stakes are as high as they can be here.

MD7621 gisterme 7/30/01 6:49pm . . . MD7624 gisterme 7/30/01 7:41pm
MD7625 rshowalter 7/30/01 8:13pm ...

The stakes are high here, at a number of levels -- and questions of bad faith are involved -- especially in the United States, a society where 1500$/year is spent for every man, woman and child -- but a place where the justifications of that expenditure have not been clear for a long time. And the consequences of US military action, now and in the past, are not completely understood, either at the level of facts, or at the level of moral relations.
MD7614 rshowalter 7/30/01 5:24pm ... MD7599 rshowalt 7/30/01 7:31am
MD7619 rshowalter 7/30/01 5:44pm ...

The United States is deeply straining, and destroying, longstanding relationships in part to support missile defense -- to the point of showing itself willing to reject the rule of law as a restraint on what the United States does, or admits as fact .... . .

OpEd ... Noblesse Oblige By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/31/opinion/31FRIE.html .... "After the Bush team offered no alternatives to Kyoto, there is a real disagreement about what it means for America to be the world's leader."

If other nation states care, and they should, some essential issues are going to get checked. It will take some power, formal and informal, perhaps public, perhaps private - - to get some core facts straight. Because people long committed to a "culture of lying" are going to have to be forced to expose things that cannot stand the light of day. Power relations depend on ideas, MD7078-79 rshowalter 7/16/01 9:54am ... and the issues here are important enough that checking should be very important to nations all over the world. They should be vital to people who care about the United States.

lunarchick - 09:07am Jul 31, 2001 EST (#7642 of 7772)
lunarchick@www.com

The point re kyoto is that the USA makes 25% of the dirty air - carbon pollution. Then, rather than take responsibility to do something, it points the the third world (who make little pollution) saying 'what about them' .. hardly leadership!

lunarchick - 09:14am Jul 31, 2001 EST (#7643 of 7772)
lunarchick@www.com

More than 20 people are being held hostage by heavily armed men - thought to be Chechen separatists - on a bus near an airport in southern Russia http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/europe/newsid_1465000/1465949.stm

rshowalter - 09:16am Jul 31, 2001 EST (#7644 of 7772)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

No foreign power could be weakening the United States as quickly and decisively as the Bush administration is doing. Breaking so many promises made since World War II -- throwing away all the old reasons why people used to defer to the United States. Degrading the country.

And showing many delusional structures that are becoming painfully clear to the rest of the world --- vitiating any claim the US may have to leadership that requires judgement - - as all leadership worth following does.

lunarchick - 09:23am Jul 31, 2001 EST (#7645 of 7772)
lunarchick@www.com

WRT evidence, juries and law:

If everything was clear and straight forward, there wouldn't need to be a jury. The facts would speak for themselves. That 12 humans have to be marshalled into a court room to determine (in/accurately) evidence .. suggests that cases can be a puzzel to sort out. Even so, juries are often wrong. This occurs when scientific evidence is presented to them without interpretation ... or with varied interpretations -- which the individual/tearm can't fully comprehend.

lunarchick - 09:28am Jul 31, 2001 EST (#7646 of 7772)
lunarchick@www.com

Letter to America : I thought Alister Cooke was wrong re his saying that Bush had a 57% popularity factor - still, i believe we posted here that it fell to 54%, and now it's down further to around 51%.
Nite!

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