New York Times on the Web Forums Science

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 - 09:19am Sep 17, 2001 EST (#9253 of 9261)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

lunarchick 9/17/01 9:12am

We have to notice those things.

Is it right that we mourn?

It is.

We have a lot of mourning to do.

So does the whole world, which should notice that, in the last century, something like one hundred and sixty million people - - almost all innocent by any reasonable standard, were killed in war.

And, as McNamara (no angel) has the decency and courage to point out - things seem to be getting worse.

We need to do better ourselves, and form communities, in mutual defense, mutual protection, mutual control so that the horror is lessened, and the world survives.

We have a lot of mourning to do, it seems to me. For ourselves. But not for ourselves alone.

rshowalter - 09:19am Sep 17, 2001 EST (#9254 of 9261)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

If we had a decent world community, "missile defense" -- like a lot of other kinds of defense, would be tended to, efficiently, decently, and with very little fuss.

lunarchick - 09:24am Sep 17, 2001 EST (#9255 of 9261)
lunarchick@www.com

Sajajevo - held a schedualed conference this past weekend. Looking at ways to bring the Christian and Moslim peoples, and churches, more closely together.
lunarchick "Science News Poetry" 9/13/01 7:14am

rshowalter - 09:28am Sep 17, 2001 EST (#9256 of 9261)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Notes to almarst , that make sense here:

MD1077 rshowalter 3/16/01 1:18pm ... MD1078 rshowalter 3/16/01 1:23pm
MD1079 rshowalter 3/16/01 1:26pm ... MD1080 rshowalter 3/16/01 1:32pm

I was once at a lunch, in Madison, with some distinguished Russian educators. I proposed a toast, thanking the Russian people, whose sacrifices in the Great Patriotic War may well have given me, and others of my American generation, a chance to be born. That toast came from my heart. I personally think the conflict between our coutries has been a great human tragedy. But I can only speak for my own feelings here, not for my country.

We should find ways to do better. I believe that we can, and we must. Nothing would better serve the security of the United States, or her prosperity, or her reasonable reasons for pride.

lunarchick - 09:29am Sep 17, 2001 EST (#9257 of 9261)
lunarchick@www.com

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/terrorism/july-dec01/wolfowitz-9-14.html http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/

rshowalter - 09:33am Sep 17, 2001 EST (#9258 of 9261)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Wolfowitz:

"The policies of the last 20 years, whether you think they were carried out effectively or ineffectively, obviously don't work. This is not going to be a problem solved by locking somebody up and putting them in jail. It's not going to be solved by some limited military action. It's going to take, as the President has said and Secretary Rumsfeld has said, a broad and sustained campaign against the terrorist networks and the states that support those networks."

Suppose that, or most of that, is granted.

You have to consider strategic and tactical realities.

And you have to have and end game that can work, with the real people involved, as they are, and not as you may wish them to be.

lunarchick - 09:35am Sep 17, 2001 EST (#9259 of 9261)
lunarchick@www.com

A Quality issue: Airport security.

It seems that American Airports had little security was well known and documented and brought before congress.

The laissez Faire attitude towards private enterprise in capitalist America is in need of review.

Should the same thing be done in a thousand different ways, at a thousand places?

OR?

Should the thousand places work together to develop an incrementally improving quality model?

(It was the same re the ballot methods for the Presidential election - no standardisation - which would have cost on $15 to implement.)

rshowalter - 09:37am Sep 17, 2001 EST (#9260 of 9261)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Star Wars is an exemplar -- and a remarkably clear example, of a policy that doesn't work - - carried out so sloppily, with so little crosschecking, that it couldn't possibly work.

Something like 100 billion has been wasted, and enormous amounts of technical manpower has been used and corrupted.

We should continue with it?

We shouldn't, on parts (the parts I know about) that cannot reasonably be expected to work at levels that can reasonably serve the security of the United States of America.

Nothing that happened on September 11 changes any of the negative things, on this thread or elsewhere, about the boondoggle and fraud called "missile defense." Or changes the paucity of technical reasons to support it.

(1 following message)

New York Times on the Web Forums Science Missile Defense