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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.

lchic - 08:06pm Mar 13, 2002 EST (#485 of 521)

The Chicken laid the egg ... thinking lays the words :)

In a focusing cycle - it doesn't really matter much where you start -- if the sequence can focus -- then it makes sense to start

There needs to be some discussion! (RS)

Interesting to note that military strategists see dead folks as mere statistics .. whereas .. the readers of National Geographic from 17 years ago saw an orphaned child on the cover .. a girl with green eyes .. and forever after wondered ..

What happened to that orphaned child?

Is she dead or alive?

Did she survive the war in Afghanistan?

She survied in minds as a person with needs .. a daughter .. a lost child ... one who needed support .. a child for whom there was 'caring'.

Seems that amongst military planners and strategists the human statistics don't even have a question mark hung over them!

lchic - 08:10pm Mar 13, 2002 EST (#486 of 521)

"She's really emblematic of the Afghan spirit," he said, adding that an education fund had been set up by National Geographic for young Afghan girls. see

rshow55 - 08:25pm Mar 13, 2002 EST (#487 of 521)

The idea that these things are real, that they deal with people is vital. And a key to reasonable weights - - reasonable decisions.

Good thinking makes for good words and ideas -- like "connecting the dots" . . that people can understand.

Facts and ideas, combined together in space and time let people "connect the dots", as Erica Goode explains in Finding Answers In Secret Plots http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/10/weekinreview/10GOOD.html MD382 rshow55 3/11/02 12:13pm (note images)

Could human conclusions be wrong? That's less and less likely with more and more checked "dots" - - with clear connections.

MD384 almarst-2001 3/11/02 12:29pm comments on Goode's piece, and "connects some dots."

And the first line of the Advertorial http://www.tompaine.com/op_ads/opad.cfm/ID/5241 is a sentence that refers explicitly to a "secret plot":

" "This certainly has the appearance of a well-orchestrated fraud,"

MD 439 almarst-2001 3/13/02 12:47pm ...

We need to touch minds and hearts -- Dickens idea of "a disciplined heart" is something we could use here.

lchic - 08:36pm Mar 13, 2002 EST (#488 of 521)

Inscription in Russian is a saying by Koz'ma Prutkov and reads

"While throwing pebbles in the pond, ponder on the rings produced thereby; otherwise such throwing will be but a pointless pastime."

see

-Jean Cocteau

do see

rshow55 - 08:52pm Mar 13, 2002 EST (#489 of 521)

We're talking about a very serious situation here . . . people are paying attention, and the rather careful folks who write editorials for the TIMES were pretty emphatic on stakes closely related to these questions ... America as Nuclear Rogue http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/12/opinion/_12TUE1.html

Was the uncovering of the Enron situation a "predictable situation?" At the start, it looked like enronation would triumph -- after all, obfuscation and lies carried that organization a very long way.

http://www.tompaine.com/op_ads/opad.cfm/ID/5241

Then things changed. http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/14/business/_ENRON-PRIMER.html

almarst-2001 - 08:53pm Mar 13, 2002 EST (#490 of 521)

"amongst military planners and strategists the human statistics don't even have a question mark hung over them!"

Well, there was a last year interview in one of the newspapers, as far as I recall, of an American General who lost his son in an auto catastrophy. When asked about his grievance he said that having three other children still alive, his loss was quite acceptable in military terms at just a 25%!

And I don't believe he is a such a rare exception. Is it a result of a "natural selection" or of the culture and military "education" - I don't know. Regardless, just a fiew days ago here I expressed my feelings as I see:

The Army in general as an Evil, however a necessary one. The most undemocratic and freedom-less structure burning the huge amounts of a nation's resources. The worst kind of an insurance possible.

The Professional Army as a breeding place for development and advancement of the people who willingly accepted such an environment as their way of life, of the following categories:

Careere opportunists, indifferent to the meaning of their JOB

Brain-washed (or -less), ignorant, macho-driven individuals, if not stright sado-masochists.

Real patriots ready to sucrifice their lives for their nation. A rare species found mostly in a countries struggling for their physical survival.

The USA Professional Army - see above, without the last category.

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