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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 - 10:19pm Sep 14, 2001 EST (#9066 of 9074)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

I've been deeply influenced by the work of Thomas L. Friedman's columns and ideasm, and have often cited them on this thread
MD8103 rshowalter 8/24/01 12:04pm

He's had many pungent things to say about the Bush administration's missile defense policies.

Friedman's column today seems especially important, in general and in ways that connect closely to missile defense.

Smoking or Non-Smoking? by THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/14/opinion/14FRIE.html

JERUSALEM -- "If this attack on America by an extensive terrorist cell is the equivalent of World War III, it's not too early to begin thinking about what could be its long-term geopolitical consequences. Just as World Wars I and II produced new orders and divisions, so too might this war. What might it look like?

"Israel's foreign minister, Shimon Peres, offers the following possibility: Several decades ago, he notes, they discovered that smoking causes cancer. Soon after that, people started to demand smoking and non-smoking sections. "Well, terrorism is the cancer of our age," says Mr. Peres. "For the past decade, a lot of countries wanted to deny that, or make excuses for why they could go on dealing with terrorists. But after what's happened in New York and Washington, now everyone knows. This is a cancer. It's a danger to us all. So every country must now decide whether it wants to be a smoking or non-smoking country, a country that supports terrorism or one that doesn't."

"Mr. Peres is on to something — this sort of division is going to emerge — but we must be very, very careful about how it is done, and whom we, the U.S., assign to the smoking and non-smoking worlds.

"As Mr. Peres himself notes, this is not a clash of civilizations — the Muslim world versus the Christian, Hindu, Buddhist and Jewish worlds. The real clash today is actually not between civilizations, but within them — between those Muslims, Christians, Hindus, Buddhists and Jews with a modern and progressive outlook and those with a medieval one. We make a great mistake if we simply write off the Muslim world and fail to understand how many Muslims feel themselves trapped in failing states and look to America as a model and inspiration.

" "President Lincoln said of the South after the Civil War: 'Remember, they pray to the same God,'" remarked the Middle East analyst Stephen P. Cohen. "The same is true of many, many Muslims. We must fight those among them who pray only to the God of Hate, but we do not want to go to war with Islam, with all the millions of Muslims who pray to the same God we do."

"The terrorists who hit the U.S. this week are people who pray to the God of Hate. Their terrorism is not aimed at reversing any specific U.S. policy. Indeed, they made no demands. Their terrorism is driven by pure hatred and nihilism, and its targets are the institutions that undergird America's way of life, from our markets to our military.

Comment: It can't be quite that simple - - these people had a system of ideas they were willing to live for, plan for, and die for.

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rshowalter - 10:20pm Sep 14, 2001 EST (#9067 of 9074)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

"These terrorists must be rooted out and destroyed. But it must be done in a way that doesn't make us Osama bin Laden's chief recruiter. Because these Muslim terrorists did not just want to kill Americans. That is not the totality of their mission. These people think strategically. They also want to trigger the sort of massive U.S. retaliation that makes no distinction between them and other Muslims. That would be their ultimate victory — because they do see the world as a clash of civilizations, and they want every Muslim to see it that way as well and to join their jihad.

"Americans were really only able to defeat Big Tobacco when whistleblowers within the tobacco industry went public and took on their own industry, and their own bosses, as peddlers of cancer. Similarly, the only chance to really defeat these nihilistic terrorists is not just by bombing them. That is necessary, but not sufficient, because another generation will sprout up behind them. Only their own religious communities and societies can really restrain and delegitimize them. And that will happen only when the Muslim majority recognizes that what the Osama bin Ladens are leading to is the destruction and denigration of their own religion and societies.

"This civil war within Islam, between the modernists and the medievalists, has actually been going on for years — particularly in Egypt, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Pakistan. We need to strengthen the good guys in this civil war. And that requires a social, political and economic strategy, as sophisticated, and generous, as our military one.

"To not retaliate ferociously for this attack on our people is only to invite a worse attack tomorrow and an endless war with terrorists. But to retaliate in a way that doesn't distinguish between those who pray to a God of Hate and those who pray to the same God we do is to invite an endless war between civilizations — a war that will land us all in the smoking section. "

Comment: In Friedman's usage, "the smoking section" is a literary stand in for a word many others might hesitate to say, as well. Hell.

almarst-2001 - 10:21pm Sep 14, 2001 EST (#9068 of 9074)

The world-wide display of compassion with American suffering, including such places as Iran and China is trully magnificent.

I wish I could say the same abnout American attitude to the suffering of other nations, particularely from the hands of American military.

How many of them noticed the Iranian airliner with 300 citizens shot down over the Gulf during the Gulf war?

How may of them noticed 400 Iraqi citizens killed in a bomb shelter during the same war?

How many where touched during the 78 days of destruction of thye Serbia?

How many protested the Vietnam war not out of fear to die but due to unbelievable suffering of Vietnamese population?

How many remember the hundreds of thousends of innocent civilians killed in Dresden, Hiroshima or Nagasaki?

Why?

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