New York Times on the Web Forums Science

Missile Defense

Technology has always found its greatest consumer in a nation's war and defense efforts. Since the last attempts at a "Star Wars" defense system, has technology changed considerably enough to make the latest Missile Defense initiatives more successful? Can such an application of science be successful? Is a militarized space inevitable, necessary or impossible?

Read Debates, a new Web-only feature culled from Readers' Opinions, published every Thursday.

almarst-2001 - 01:05pm Mar 10, 2002 EST (#326 of 330)

"So you're a Leninist."

I wonder if you read my post at all. And, if you did, you clearly understood nothing.

(mazza) - "I subscribe to Jesus the prince of PEACE."

I wonder if you realy understand or take seriously the Jesus phylosophy. We all witnessed that quoting the Jesus does not prevent the humans to commit crimes. The most disturbing example would be the inquisition. If you know what I am talking about.

Again. I don't question your personal moral believes which I have now idea of by not knowing you personally. I question your positions expressed in your statements and try to show the cosequences of such. As well, you may recall that "The road to Hell is pawed with a good intentions". This is a direct result, in my view, of a Christian interpretention of the Golden Rule I was trying to show again and again. To think differently means to appropriate a GOD's Wisdom. Is it so hard to understand?

As for your Space related activities, particularely the importance of such to the Humans as promoted by our group, is out of my comprehention. At a time when this Planet faces probably, the most critical period of its existance. When millions of people die needlesly, the vast majority live in povetry and misary, lacking the most basic things like food and clean water, education and medicine - to establish the Space exploration priority as you did is quite STRANGE.

mazza9 - 01:29pm Mar 10, 2002 EST (#327 of 330)
Louis Mazza

almarst

I did not participate in the Inquisition and since you speculate ".. I wonder if you realy understand or take seriously the Jesus phylosophy.", I'm curious regarding you philsophical underpinnings.

Your labelling of everyone with these predigested opinions call into question your ability to synthsize rather that propogandize.

Name calling and disparaging people who don't hold your views is puerile.

LouMazza

lchic - 01:55pm Mar 10, 2002 EST (#328 of 330)

Deflection Deflection Deflection Deflection

mAzzA is deflecting to past philosophy
rather than looking at
US current military strategy ...
too hot in the
US nuclear kitchen
Sunday Roast-ing ....

-----------------------------------------------

NYT
Conversations

Bill Keller discusses why 9/11 made things
more difficult for military reformers.
• More Conversations

rshow55 - 02:03pm Mar 10, 2002 EST (#329 of 330)

Mazza, I believe that the level of coherence and respect for evidence almarst has shown far, far exceeds yours. Your purpose, almost always - is to distract, and defocus the coherent.

As it has been for a long time. Some key issues aren't being denied any more - - but people in power, in the United States and Europe, aren't seeing them clearly still. The Missile Defense program is essentially a fraud - a boondoggle

MD14-15 rshow55 3/1/02 6:07pm

Almarst has asked me about the military-industrial complex. The print part of the NYT Magazine leads

. "3.10.02 In this week's issue, two lumbering, bureaucratic dinosaurs -- the Coca-Cola Company and the United States armed forces --- wrestle with institutional intertia and an uncertain, occasionally terrifying future. . . . . . . . Inside the Pentagon, as Bill Keller explains, the beleaugered theorists in the Pentagon's new Office of Force Transformation are up against defense contractors who "have so thoroughly dispersed their subcontracts" that no congressman can oppose these outdated weapons systems. As the defense budget grows and battlefield tactics shift, our nation's primary strategic enemy, Keller writes, may not turn out to be not Al Queda terrorists but "the vested-interest politics and sclerotic culture governing military affairs. The Fighting Next Time http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/10/magazine/10MILITARY.html (video): http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/international/20020310begwer-video.html

If enough people recognized how strange our military-industrial-political complex is, and how many assumptions - some horrible, some silly, it is based on - - the United States, and other countries, might come to some better decisions.

Sometimes it is a matter of "connecting the dots." If we looked more clearly at some of the most basic horrors of the world - we could be safer than we are today.

The "missile defense" fraud-face-boondoggle involves an especially good body of facts to connect, because so many key things are so clear -- and so many key lies and evasions have been made to Americans and the leaders of other nations.

That "connecting of the dots" would be both practical and effective if real leaders, with real power, wanted it to be. If they asked for the focusing, it would happen, and attract enough attention to make a differnce.

(1 following message)

New York Times on the Web Forums Science Missile Defense