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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 - 06:25pm Sep 2, 2001 EST (#8354 of 8359)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Another key point, that I believe is essential to understanding how wars happen, is set out in

Mankind's Inhumanity to Man and Woman - As natural as human goodness? http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee7b085/0 .. which owes a LOT to Lunarchick's longstanding and deep interest in evolutionary psychology.

It starts:

" Looking at the world, there are so many cases of "unthinkable" and "unexplainable" evil and negligence, that the mind and heart recoils. People recall such behavior among the Nazis, and recoil, as well they might. How could "civilized, aesthetically sensitive, cultured people" ALSO act so monstrously, and with such clear and sophisticated murderous intent.

" But is this behavior so strange? Or is it the NATURAL state of people, dealing with outsiders, outsiders who they naturally dehumanize, and deal with as heartless, exploitive predators? Is it civilization and mercy that are the "unnatural" things - the things that have to be taught, and negotiated into being, and strived for?

" I'm coming to think that it is just as natural for people to act "inhumanly" - that is cruelly, and in a dehumanizing way, towards OUTSIDERS, as it is natural for people to act warmly, and with accommodation and mutual support, for people WITHIN their group.

"I'm coming to the view that, just as there is an instinct for language, and an instinct for becoming a part of a group, inborn in humans, there is an instinct to exclude outsiders, to dehumanize them, to withhold cooperation from them, and to treat them as animals, subject to manipulation an predation. I'm coming to believe that this treatment of outsiders is an instinctive species characteristic, evolved over the millions of years when people lived as gatherers and team hunters.

"If this is true, we all have the basic instincts to be kind, sensitive, and good, within our groups, but at the same time are naturally "monsters" in our behavior toward outsiders.

"If this is right, the role of civilization is to find ways of peace and effective cooperation where isolation, conflict, duplicity, and merciless manipulation, including murder, might otherwise occur.

It is easy for military people to kill "others" --

I think the pattern is to be seen in

''Waging Modern War' by WESLEY K. CLARK http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/02/books/chapters/02-1stclark.html

reviewed in

'Waging Modern War': A Defeated Victor Reflects on Kosovo by ROGER COHEN http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/02/books/review/02COHENTW.html

Americans, from the perspective of other nations, can look a lot like Major Strasser in Casablanca.

I think Americans need to understand that, and deal with its consequences. We shouldn't be a nation others "love to hate" if we can avoid it.

By that standard, Bush seems to me to be doing everything wrong.

rshowalter - 07:18pm Sep 2, 2001 EST (#8355 of 8359)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

On MAN'S INHUMANITY TO MAN . .

Japanese Veteran Writes of Brutal Philippine War http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/02/international/asia/02FILI.html By SETH MYDANS

MANILA — " Jintaro Ishida knows his country's guilty secrets. Like few other Japanese, he knows in detail about the atrocities of World War II, and he knows of the quiet torment of the aging veterans who took part.

" He knows, for example, about the massacre at the well in the Philippine village of Lipa, where 400 people were thrown to their deaths. The blood lust of the soldiers ran so high, he says, that one of them smashed a rock onto the head of a woman who was combing her hair.

. . . .

" Japan's refusal to acknowledge its wartime crimes was highlighted recently by the publication of textbooks that gloss over the past and by the visit of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi to the Yasukuni Shrine, which honors fallen Japanese soldiers.

. . ..

" Like many other Japanese, Mr. Ishida said, he had been ignorant of the dark side of his country's history — of the massacres, sexual slavery, forced labor and the use of chemical and biological warfare.

. . .. .

"When he confronted the Japanese veterans, he said, he found something as disturbing as anything he saw in the Philippines: the men who had committed atrocities were ordinary Japanese like himself.

" "During the war I was in the navy and never went to the Philippines," he said. "But if I had been assigned there I would have been one of the Japanese soldiers who took part in the massacres. So it was hard for me to continue with the interviews. It was a horrible experience for me."

. . . .

" In the beginning, we could not kill even a man," says one of the soldiers at Lipa who is quoted in Mr. Ishida's new book. "But we managed to kill him.

" "Then we hesitated to kill a woman. But we managed to kill her, too. Then we could kill children. We came to think as if we were just killing insects."

" Today, Mr. Ishida seems stunned by what he has learned about his comrades and about human nature. "These stories were beyond anything I had expected," he said. "How could they have done this? Did they have no conscience?"

" After a decade of research he has compiled a wealth of historical material. But he has been left with more questions than ever."

rshowalter - 07:20pm Sep 2, 2001 EST (#8356 of 8359)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Rape Camp by Dawn Riley http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee79f4e/1512

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